From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Canadian Identity: A Francophone Perspective/Simon Langlois
The French presence in North America was the second basis for constructing the Canadian identity. The first French settlers called themselves Canadiens, with the explicit aim of distinguishing themselves from the people of metropolitan France. The earliest historical writers and explorers took pains to describe their customs, habits, and way of life that was already so different. This self-identification as Canadiens has ever since remained deeply rooted in the imagination of francophone Quebeckers. Until the 1960s, older francophones continued to define themselves as Canadiens, by which they distinguished themselves from anglophones, whom they called les Anglais. Two constitutive aspects of identity appear clearly here: a definition of oneself and a reference to a significant other, an opposing figure.
Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, inhabitants of English or Celtic origin gradually appropriated the Canadian identity, leading the Canadiens to define themselves as French Canadians. After the failure of the union of Upper and Lower Canada, confederation in 1867 marked the emergence of two parallel identities, French-Canadian and English-Canadian. The “two nations warring in the bosom of a single state” that Lord Durham had described in 1838, and the two races that André Siegfried observed in 1912, were forced to redefine Canada together.
From the French-Canadian point of view, the Canada that was established at confederation was binational for about a century, roughly from 1867 to 1967. During this period, the British North America Act was defined as a compact between two nations, or two founding peoples. The 1867 constitution did not refer to a Canadian nation. Rather, it described the establishment of a federation recognizing some particularities of French Canada on the one hand and the British character of the rest of Canada on the other. Gordon Robertson clearly showed that the Fathers of Confederation were persuaded of the need to preserve two forms of diversity: regional diversity, and linguistic and cultural diversity.
The interpretation of confederation as a compact between two founding peoples was rejected by some English-Canadian historians, although it was accepted by numerous others. It was explicitly recognized in the Conservative Party’s 1968 election platform under Robert Stanfield and the Blue Pages of the report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (the Laurendeau-Dunton Report), among other places. The Laurendeau-Dunton Commission’s terms of reference also referred explicitly to the notion of “an equal partnership between the two founding races, taking into account the contribution made by the other ethnic groups to the cultural enrichment of Canada ...”
The point here is not to choose one interpretation of history over another. Rather, what is important is that French Canada believed in the federation, or compact, thesis for generations. Holding this belief was a concrete way of marking its Canadian identity and indicating that it belonged to Canada as a collective entity, a national community that referred to a common symbolism. It was also a way of holding out a kind of utopia: a Canada that at its very origin formally recognized the founding contribution of the French.
In some ways, the two founding peoples lived in separate social realms. Even more, however, they lived in separate symbolic universes. Using analytic categories that were popular in the 1960s, French Canadians related to English Canadians as colonized to colonizers, as drawers of water for the English boss. To extract themselves from a situation of economic inferiority and colonial dependency, two models were presented to francophones. The quiet revolution of the early sixties was based on national affirmation supported by the Quebec state. Later, under Lester Pearson as prime minister and even more strongly under his successor Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Ottawa offered affirmation of the French fact throughout Canada. Thus, since the late 1960s, two opposing visions for promoting the French fact have been in conflict: national affirmation of a majority community in Quebec and affirmation of the individual rights of francophones living as minorities throughout Canada.
How has French Canada evolved? And in particular, how has the way it interprets itself changed over time? The traditional French-Canadian identity was based on ties of descent, lineage, and blood relationship. It was not restricted to a particular territory. Rather, it was expressed throughout Canada, in New England, and indeed in any place where French Canadians of the diaspora lived in the shadow of their parish church. This traditional French-Canadian identity has now disappeared and takes the form of a shattered identity.
It was shattered as a result of a fundamental contradiction that characterized French Canada. This contradiction was pointed out by Gilles Gagné, who showed that in the nineteenth-century traditional French Canada was deployed in two separate institutional spheres. The major national institutions that spanned French Canada from the Northwest Territories to Massachusetts, spilling over the borders of provinces and countries, were effectively controlled by the church. At the same time, an embryonic state and a modern democratic legislative apparatus emerged in Quebec, controlled by French Canadians but with no effective power over a major part of French Canada.
Several other factors contributed to the shattering of the traditional French-Canadian identity. Clearly the most significant was the loss of influence by the Catholic Church. The church as an institution no longer organizes the daily life of French Canadians as effectively as it did in the past, and responsibility for schools, hospitals, and welfare institutions has been taken over by the welfare state. Nevertheless, the important role that the Catholic Church plays in the survival or maintenance of the French Canadian identity in anglophone environments can still be seen in a number of communities outside Quebec, such as in New England and western Canada.
Urbanization certainly helped to destroy most of the homogeneous rural environments in which francophones lived close to their parish churches. Saint-Boniface, which has become a suburb of Winnipeg, and the francophone villages built near Winnipeg are a good illustration of this process. In addition, industrialization resulted in francophones working in heavily anglophone environments. The education of young people, more often than not, takes place in bilingual institutions, especially at the secondary and university levels. And the media and cultural industries are powerful factors that not only impose the use of English but also help structure the collective imagination.
The end of the idea of French Canada can probably be dated to 1967, an important date in Canada’s constitutional history. Several other landmark events took place in that year, including the publication of the first volume of the Laurendeau-Dunton Report, the provincial premiers’ first constitutional conference, the rise of Pierre Elliott Trudeau and the publication of his book on federalism, and the visit of President de Gaulle and his famous speech that brought the Quebec autonomy movement to worldwide attention. Finally, the Estates-General of French Canada that were held in Montreal inevitably highlighted the inevitable break between French Quebec and the French-Canadian communities scattered through the rest of Canada.
The distinction between the Acadian identity and the French-Canadian identity centred in Quebec dates back to the French regime. With the support of the New Brunswick government, Acadia has enjoyed a kind of second wind. The Acadians are a national community with a strong sense of belonging and common references, if only to the mythic memory of the deportation of their ancestors, now euphemistically referred to as Le Grand Dérangement, the Great Disturbance. Acadians have asserted themselves vigorously – in the education system, the arts, and literature as well as the economy – even though they remain a numerical minority. Their political power has increased and they hold a larger share of civil service positions in New Brunswick, where they are primarily concentrated. The legal recognition that comes from New Brunswick’s adoption of official bilingualism has given the Acadian community new levers of development. In Acadia, the best-educated people are most likely to define themselves primarily as Acadians, highlighting their francophone identity. People with less education are more likely to define themselves as bilingual, thus giving English a place in their self-definition and minimizing the distinction between themselves and the anglophones, les Anglais. According to Annette Boudreau, defining oneself as bilingual means not having to choose between a French and an English identity.
Outside Quebec and Acadia, while the French-Canadian identity still has some of the features of a group identity, it is increasingly becoming an individual characteristic. Some will no doubt find this statement surprising, but there is evidence to support it. First of all, francophone communities outside Quebec and Acadia have little political control over the major institutions around which daily life and work are structured. In addition, the originator of the federal Official Languages Act, Pierre Trudeau, saw this legislation as being aimed primarily at guaranteeing access to services in French throughout Canada. In this respect it differs from Quebec’s language laws, which aim to promote the collective interests of a national group.
Franco-Ontarians, Franco-Manitobans, Fransaskois, Franco-Albertans, and Franco-Ténois (francophones of the Northwest Territories) define themselves as belonging to their province or territory rather than to a mythic French Canada. They have a positive view of their bilingualism and see it as an advantage, despite the dangers of assimilation that go along with it. Here too, there are differences based on social class. The Toronto francophone elite has adopted multiculturalism, in effect opposing the Franco-Ontarian elite, which is more attached to a traditional vision of the French-language community.
Outside Quebec and Acadia, the entity francophones refer to when they say we is in danger of being reduced to an ethnic group. This drastic diagnosis can be mitigated: francophones outside Quebec and Acadia still see themselves as a national community, although they have lost the political significance they had at the time of Confederation and throughout the period when Canadian duality was a prevailing idea. Once English Canada became more reluctant to accept the idea of two founding nations, and once Quebec defined itself as a distinct society, French Canada clearly lost the means to assert itself as a political community and, for all practical purposes, fragmented into national minorities within each region. The very expression French Canada has aged rapidly in the last few years, to the point where it seems slightly anachronistic and outdated when one hears it in a speech or in conversation.
It is worth noting that the Franco-American identity has also been transformed. The Franco-American community has gradually moved away from French Canada, of which it used to be considered a natural extension. French Canadians living in the Little Canadas of the United States became Franco-Americans, and then Americans with French roots. From 1930 on, Franco-American historical writing has gradually abandoned its exclusive reference to French Canada and devoted more attention to France as the mother country, and thus to a mythic origin with more prestige than the impoverished French Canada of one’s great-grandparents. The French language is disappearing in these communities, although there are a few places where it survives. What remains is the memory not of a national utopia but rather of an ethnic origin, one among many in the United States of America.
