The French Canadians of Michigan: Their Contribution to the Development of the Saginaw Valley and the Keweenaw Peninsula, 1840-1914

Chapter 1: Quebec in the Nineteenth Century

Chapter 1 Quebec in the Nineteenth Century It is common knowledge that Lower Canada has been poorer in the last two or three years than at any time in the past half century. Cash has disappeared; there is no credit; real estate is mortgaged to the hilt; bankruptcy is the order of the day; trade is dead and agriculture threatens to follow it to its grave. What have we left? Factories? They have been smothered in their cradles. Logging? It has hastened the ruin of the country. All that we have left, I tell you, is poverty.l Thus J. B. A, Ferland, the principal of Nicolet College, described the economic situation prevailing in Quebec in the midnineteenth century. He was responding to a questionnaire prepared by the committee of inquiry set up in 1849 by the Legislative Assembly of the Province ofCanada to analyze the reasons for migration to the United States—the extent of which was cause for alarm among the political elite. But this observation could have been voiced by thousands of French Canadians, wherever they resided, who had witnessed—and fallen victim to—the deterioration of the economy. Between 1760 and 1850, French Canadian society underwent profound socioeconomic and demographic transformations that engendered economic problems affecting the entire population . The unabated worsening of socioeconomic conditions confronted French Canadians with an endless series of challenges, continually obliging them to adapt to new situations and devise different strategies to limit the consequences of the situation. Several options were available—seasonal employment in the fur trade, temporary work in logging camps, leaving the land, colonizing undeveloped regions, and migration to the United States. CHAPTER ONE These options, all of which involved geographic mobility, served as strategies ofsurvival for thousands ofFrench Canadians seeking to mitigate the deterioration of their living conditions. THE SOCIOECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF QUEBEC The British conquest of New France in 1760 appeared to sound the death knell for the survival of the French Canadians in North America, In the 150 years of the existence ofNew France, its population had grown to only seventy thousand. Under the provisions of the Treaty of Paris and later of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the disappearance of French Canadian society seemed to be but a matter of time,2 Yet the reality was quite different. The meager numbers of British immigrants to Quebec, along with the social and political disturbances in the American colonies and the fear of their possible spread northward, soon altered London's attitude toward its new colony. The Quebec Act, passed in 1774, followed by the Constitutional Act in 1791, allowed the French Catholic population and its religious and economic elites to regain certain prerogatives essential to preserving economic, linguistic, and religious identity. The Quebec Act supported French Canadian institutions by recognizing the seigneurial system and French civil law, legalizing the Catholic Church, and guaranteeing the right of French Canadians to practice their religion. Furthermore, with the aim of curbing the rebellious American colonies' desire for westward expansion, the Quebec Act placed under the colony's administration a vast territory west of the Appalachians , around the Great Lakes, which became an integral part of Quebec's geopolitical reality. The Constitutional Act divided the province into two political entities, Upper and Lower Canada, and reaffirmed the intent of the Quebec Act, However, it did make an amendment to one section of the 1774 act, inserting a clause stipulating that all new concession of lands would hence- Quebec in the Nineteenth Century 3 forth be made in "free and common socage," thus restricting the seigneurial system to the regions then within its jurisdiction.3 Constitutional changes were not the only factors that enabled the French Canadian community to sustain itself In fact, from the beginning of the eighteenth century, the population of Quebec experienced spectacular demographic growth.4 It increased at a remarkable rate, doubling every twenty-seven years, with an average birth rate hovering around fifty per thousand between 1760 and 1850. In spite of a high mortality rate, the net result was still a natural growth rate of about twenty-five per thousand.5 This high rate carried the Quebec population to record levels, increasing from 70,000 in 1765 to 161,000 in 1790, then to 335,000 in 1814 and 697,000 in 1844, finally reaching 890,000 inhabitants in 1851, 75 percent of whom were of French Canadian origin.6 However, by...