In 1880 a family arrives in Lewiston or Biddeford. It’s been a long journey: by wagon to the local railhead, then several changes of train. Perhaps a relative or friend meets them at the station, has found lodgings for the family, even jobs. They are strangers, uprooted, speaking a foreign tongue. But not really alone: hundreds of thousands of canadiennes and canadiens had similar experiences. They would reshape New England, and themselves.
Camille Lessard-Bissonnette’s Canuck, recently translated, describes the immigrants and their children in the Petits Canadas. It also addresses the big, contested issues of making livings, new places, male chauvinism, women’s place, and cultural survival.
Quebecois were pushed and pulled: too many farmers on too little land. In New England, textile production, not to mention shoes, hats, timber and construction, was growing exponentially and the mills needed hands (a terribly suggestive term). French-Canadian families of six or eight or more fit the bill.
Mill jobs were hard: long hours, low pay, little advancement. But the factories paid regularly. You could quickly make yourself at home in the developing “Little Canadas” of mill towns; speak French at home, at work, in shops and church. The parish priest would marry and baptise, preach and bury. The nuns would school the children, succour the orphans, treat and comfort the sick. You could bank with the credit union, insure with a benevolent society, read a local newspaper, perhaps buy a three-decker and become a landlord. See Yves Roby’s detailed account, “The Franco-Americans of New England”.
New England was not Quebec. Language, religion and customs inevitably altered. Assimilation, or adaptation, had its advantages. To grow a business or go to college or play a sport or get a better job beyond Little Canada you needed English. Jack Kerouac’s “Doctor Sax” and “Visions of Gerard” detail life among those aspiring to rise above factory work in a New England city.
In the latter half of the 20th Century, Franco-New Englanders joined the rush to the suburbs; they drove to the Little Canadas to show the children a three-decker. Today’s Franco-Mainers are multi-generational Americans. Some take French in school. A few learn to fiddle or sing the old songs, or to make tourtiere. More eat poutine in New England restaurants. Many still take pride in their heritage.
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