Grouper, Unir, Protéger - Elite Strategies and the Formulation of a French Identity in Western Canada, 1870 to 1930

Abstract

It has generally been assumed that the marginalization of French communities and identity in western Canada was the result of widespread English and Protestant immigration to the West, combined with an absence of support from Québec. My research, however, has established that French and Catholic elites, both from the Church and elsewhere, did as much to transform French settlements into Franco-Manitoban, Fransaskois and Franco-Albertan communities through the settlement period of 1870-1930. It is this process of western French settlement building and identity formation that I explore in this dissertation. Driven by mass immigration of a mostly English and Protestant population, French communities already in place or those yet to establish themselves were challenged to survive. While studies of assimilation examine the ways in which local communities and cultures were subsumed by larger outside forces and groups, this dissertation examines the values and structures based in Catholicism and the French language that helped to group, unite together and struggle. This process or these strategies have been little analyzed. Historians have long acknowledged the French-Catholic presence in the Canadian west, but there has been little scholarship on the settlement of these groups and their process of community and identity construction. They do not examine French-Catholic settlement and identity as a larger (provincial or regional) phenomenon, nor do they consider the strategies to achieve them. My research project examines the origins of French-Catholic immigration to the prairies, their settlement patterns, and the ways in which these groups constructed identities and communities in the building years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. I focus on three representative French localities, including: south of Winnipeg along the Red River (including the communities of Saint-Joseph, Letellier, Saint-Jean-Baptiste), the southern plains of Saskatchewan (and Gravelbourg), and the central and rural communities of Alberta (with emphasis on Morinville and St. Paul des Métis). My approach to this research is sequential. First, I place French-Catholic immigration in context. I outline a chronology and geography of French-Catholic settlement to the Canadian West after 1870, I examine the process of colonization and community construction. I identify particular colonization efforts and how these utopian schemes attempted to transform existing areas into French-Catholic cultures and settlements. I then focus on ways these communities, and their leaders, were able to construct their own identities through their relations with the majority English-Protestant population. I conclude that a regional French identity evolved throughout the settlement period of 1870-1930, and that this evolution can be attributed to the struggle of the French leadership group intent on defending their language and ethnic identity.