Franco-Amérique, and: Loyal but French: The Negotiation of Identity by French-Canadian Descendants in the United States

Franco-Amérique and Loyal but French are welcome additions to the study of Franco America in the past and the present. In Franco-Amérique, two geographers at the Université Laval, Dean Louder and Éric Waddel, bring together twenty essays that extend, elaborate, or shift claims they made in their groundbreaking work twenty-five years ago (Dean R. Louder, Du continent perdu à l'archipel retrouvé : le Québec et l'Amérique française, 1983). The backgrounds of the twenty-three authors of Franco-Amérique are diverse. Some are academics in geography, history, sociology, ethnology, anthropology, and literature, others are genealogists and historians by practice, still others literary figures, activists, and French-language promoters. The diversity of their disciplinary and professional backgrounds, and of their personal and family ties to Franco America, colour this important volume in more ways than one.

In the introduction, Louder and Waddel question the definition of Franco-Amérique as French-speaking America (13). The distinction between the two expressions is important as it reflects the editors' awareness of the changing nature of Franco America, which includes the francophone population (typically in Quebec, Acadia, Ontario, and the Prairie Provinces), as well as descendants of Franco diasporas who no longer speak French or have never done so, in New England, and on the West Coast on both sides of the border. Two 'non-negotiable' premises, according to Louder and Waddel, define Franco America: its continental dimension and métissage. The espaces francos extend beyond the shores of the St Lawrence River to past the eastern and western provincial borders of Quebec, to the south (Floribec and Louisiana), to the west (the Prairies, Illinois, Michigan, and California), and to the northeast. The openness to métissage was a cornerstone of Franco America. Louder and Waddel cite, for example, Samuel de Champlain's 1663 projection regarding Trois Rivières of intermarriage between 'nos garçons' and 'vos [Amerindian] filles' (14). Marriages, parenting of orphans, and neighbourly contacts also encouraged close and frequent exchange among French, Scottish, and Irish residents in cities and villages during the nineteenth century. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries such practices have become even more common with the accelerated levels of immigrant arrivals of greater diversity. Yet, the editors point out, the official discourse in French Canada has denied this constant reality of métissage and plurality in the early history of Franco America. Instead, the insistence on the 'French fact' has created and fortified the myth of purity as the origin of French Canada. In his concluding essay to the volume, Joseph Yvon Thériault also convincingly argues this point.

Twenty essays that follow the editors' introduction take the reader on a tour of Franco America. Quebec is notably absent from this exploration except for the narrative by Rodney Saint-Éloi, although its presence runs through almost every essay as a point of departure, reference, or contrast. In part 1 Christian Morissonneau presents a chapter on the act of naming Amérique, Maurice Lamothe on the chansons, and François Paré on the literature. Part 2 addresses the past and present of Franco America in Ontario (Anne Gilbert), Acadie (Adrien Bérubé and Benoît Bérubé), and New England (Barry Rodrigue). Part 3 introduces readers to 'Québec elsewhere,' first in Floribec where Quebecers seek refuge from the long winter (Rémy Tremblay) and then in California where largely a carrier-based move propelled workers, students, and professionals to head there now and then. (Marc T. Boucher). Part 4 takes the reader to the pays lointains, including Louisiana (Richard Guidry), Michigan, and Illinois (Jean Lamarre), where French Canadians contributed to agriculture, forestry, and mining in the nineteenth century. Christian Fleury's chapter on Saint-Pierre et Miquelon explores the duality of américanité and francité on the island, and Michel Bouchard recounts his family history of migration from the Acadie to Kansas and then to Alberta. In part 5 readers learn about Francos in the valleys of the Red River in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Manitoba (Virgil Benoît), La Vieille Mine, Missouri in the pays d'Illinois (Kent Beaulne), and in the valley of the Willamette in Oregon (Melinda Marie Jetté). None are French-speaking spaces any longer but each retains traces of its French past. Jetté's essay on the bicultural nature of Franco-Amerindian families of the voyageurs and trappers of the fur trade leads the reader to the following section on the Metis background of Franco America (part 6, Étienne Rivard and Jean Morisset). Together with the Jetté's contribution, the essay by Rivard on the cartography and Metis probably most cogently demonstrates one of the central arguments of the collection – the ethnic plurality of Franco America – and how such a fact has long been erased but only partially from the public memory. The last section, 'Des Voix / voies nouvelles' (new voices / new routes), refreshes the notion of Franco America by focussing on Haitian migrants in Montreal and those wishing to become so (Rodney Saint-Éloi) and on neo-francophones outside Quebec at the turn of the twenty-first century (Yves Frenette). Finally, Thériault's essay concludes the volume with a sociological analysis of one of the most pertinent and perhaps troubling questions in the study of Franco America: its relationship with études québécoises.

A kaleidoscope of essays enhanced with photos and images as well as sidebars on places and personalities of importance to Franco America, Franco-Amérique invites novices and specialists on the topic to enjoy the pleasure of discovering multiple facets of this universe. Like other collaborative anthologies, this one includes essays that diverge in their theoretical reflections, empirical solidness, and analytical breakthroughs. This said, weaving together the lives and memories of Francos in North America, the volume expands the horizon of Franco-American studies.

In Loyal but French, Mark Paul Richard, a historian at the State University of New York, presents a detailed account of French-Canadian immigrants and Franco Americans in his native Lewiston, Maine. The overarching question the book investigates is how the city's French Canadians altered their ethnic identity over a century and a half, from 1850 to 2007.

Richard argues that for French-speaking residents in Lewiston, acculturation and survivance did not present contradictory goals. Rather, preserving ethnic traditions and becoming participants in us society were compatible and indeed inseparable goals in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, when pressure for assimilation mounted as a result of the influences of the city's Irish bishops and nativist us citizens. French-speaking Lewistonians then chose to maintain their French language, Catholic faith, and French-Canadian customs while at the same time 'learning English, becoming citizens and voters, joining trade unions and labour protests and taking part in U.S. holiday celebrations and wars' (71). By the mid-twentieth century, however, the hitherto intertwined goals of ethnic retention and participation in us society diverged (228). In depicting these goals of ethnic retention and acculturation, as well as the negotiation of identity of an ethic group in us society, the book claims to offer 'a new conceptualization of the process of Americanization' (3).

The volume chronicles the transformation of identity among Lewiston's French-Canadian immigrants and their descendants – an identity that evolved from Canadiens to Franco Americans in the 1890s (71) and then to Americans at the mid-twentieth century (215, 227). Richard maintains that, unlike the claims made by other historians, such identity shifts did not result primarily from the social, cultural, economic, and technological changes external to their community in the twentieth century (72). Instead, the change derived from the social and political dynamics internal to the community. A number of articles from Le Messager, the French-language newspaper published in Lewiston, as well as data drawn from federal decennial censuses, naturalization records, and the Dominican archives, support his contention. The ecclesiastical sources (in English and French) are of particular importance in shedding new light on the role of Catholic clergy in the process of Americanization among Lewiston's French-speakers.

Some of Richard's arguments are problematic, however. His claim regarding the novelty of the identity changes among French-speaking Lewistonians through the early twentieth century has been acknowledged by historians such as Yves Roby and Yves Frenette as having been evident throughout New England. In his study on Franco Americans in New England published in 1990 (Les Franco-Américains de la Nouvelle-Angleterre), Roby observes, 'It is out of the question for these Americans [of French-Canadian descent] to maintain the designation Canadien français des États-Unis,' and that 'during the decade from 1890–1900' they came to identify increasingly as 'Franco-Américains' (214). Further, Roby has argued that the choice of identity and acquisition of the English language were propelled by the urban, industrial milieu where immigrants and Americans worked, shopped, and played side by side (210). Of particular importance, according to Roby, was the bilingual French-Canadian parish school, which had a double role as the keeper of ethnic tradition through its teaching of the French language, religious values, and cultural traditions and as the promoter of Americanization through its teaching of the English language and us history. Loyal but French fleshes out, rather than discovers, this well-known transformation discussed in the earlier historiography.

Richard's volume does not define key concepts such as identity, assimilation, and acculturation, all of which are of fundamental importance to this book. Despite voluminous literatures on these social processes, theoretical discussion of them is relegated to a brief mention in the introduction. Referring to a point made by Dirk Hoerder in 1996, Richard writes that acculturation rather than assimilation describes better the experiences of French speakers in the United States. One wonders, however, whether the distinction between acculturation and assimilation such as the one made by Milton Gordon (Assimilation in American Life: the Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins, 1964) would not have been more pertinent to Richard's argument.

In his discussion of naturalization, Richard seems to suggest that the act of naturalization among Franco-Lewistonian men was a decision to modify one's ethnic identity permanently. Accordingly, he juxtaposes settled and naturalized Franco Americans in late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century Lewiston with the more fluid status of their counterparts throughout New England in the nineteenth century as studied by Ralph Vicero (38, 86). Such a contrast posits that the act of naturalization implied a permanent change of one's identity and, possibly, permanency of residence in the United States. These assumptions parallel the romanticized belief among nationalist Americans at the time for whom, as Roby noted, naturalization was the ultimate proof of an immigrant's assimilation to American society. But was naturalization truly the symbol of conversion? Ethnic identity and political loyalty to us institutions as a whole are issues that can converge but also diverge. Despite the evidence of a multitude of possibilities and shades of meaning pertaining to naturalization and ethnicity, as well as the acts of staying in Lewiston, returning to Canada, and/or moving on to another locality (57), Richard's argument in this section tends to flatten such differences into a simple choice between becoming American and remaining French Canadian. This point is ironic, considering the author's central argument that the two constituted intertwining goals – 'Loyal (Americans) but French' – at least until the 1930s (68, 120, 122).

The section on the small-scale worker protests in the Androscoggin Mill in 1901 (114) explores labour activism among Lewiston's Franco Americans. According to Richard, labour activism distinguished French-speaking Lewistonians from Francos in other industrial cities in New England. Richard conscientiously culls evidence from reports on the 1901 strike in Le Messager, which stood in contrast to the silence on the event in the English-language newspapers. However, the author's deduction is somewhat troubling. He notes that the French-language press did not identify the strikers as Franco Americans but he concludes that they were, arguing that the paper's reporting of the strike 'implies that they [the strikers] were [French Americans]' (114). But coverage of the strike alone does not indicate that the strikers were Francos. The author may have had other evidence to corroborate his conclusion, but it is not presented.

While Loyal but French leaves readers with a desire for more precision and nuances at times, the book offers a mine of new historical information about the Franco-American population in Lewiston. The book opens the door for more investigation of themes of long-time interest to scholars of Franco America.