Histoire populaire du Québec, tome 3. 1841–1896 by Jacques Lacoursière (review)

Book Reviews 351 women's religious orders. Moreover, in a careful balance between imperial and colonial forces, she explains the conception and establishment of Montreal. For instance, she skilfully interprets key events such as the political and ecclesiastical wrangle between Bishop Frarn;:ois de Laval and Gabriel de Queylus over jurisdiction of the island colony. Additionally, she sets right several historiographical errors, such as those found in earlier biographies, and many written by hagiographers intent on seeking 'in the childhood of the subject evidences of future sanctity' (24). Simpson's text is enlivened with rich descriptions of seventeenth-century overland and transatlantic travel, and with intimate portraits of Bourgeoys's associates, particularly de Maisonneuve and Jeanne ,Mance, founder of Montreal's Hotel-Dieu and Hospitallers of Saint Joseph. The book succeeds in setting the scene for Bourgeoys's life in this period by providing context and supporting players. It falls somewhat short, however, in bringing Bourgeoys onto centre stage. One is left wanting to know more about her Montreal community of women and their instruction' of colonial and Native children - unfortunately described in only a few pages. More -work in the French archives, perhaps those of the mother house of the Congregation de NotreDame , and the Seminary and National Archives of Quebec (particularly in the personnel files), might yield some important information, as might Roger Magnuson's work on education in New France. Although the book has some excellent illustrations, two maps are needed for the travel sections: one of the French provinces, with delineation of Paris, Troyes, and the west-coast ports; and the other of Montreal and the Saint Lawrence region. In sum, for students of Canada in the French colonial empire, the history of women, and the history of religion, Marguerite Bourgeoys is an important book for its rendering of a French woman's spiritual commitment and experience. Simpson creatively links her own present with the past by bringing to her work a sympathetic treatment of her subject and a contemporary appreciation ofthe Congregation de NotreDame of Montreal. KATHRYN A. YOUNG University ofManitoba Histoire populaire du Que'bec, tome } 1841-1896. JACQUES LACOURSIERE. Sillery: Les Editions du Septentrion 1996. pp. 496, illus. $29.00 The third volume of Jacques Lacoursiere's Histoire populaire du Que'bec covers the period from the Act of Union to the ascension of Laurier 352 The Canadian Historical Review (1841-96). As with the two previous volumes, it is essentially a reprint of those textual portions of the Nos Racines series of the early 1980s that dealt with the political history of the period (numbers 79-109), with a few words changed and a few paragraphs (and one entire issue) omitted. The portions of Nos Racines dealing with the socioeconomic history of the period (numbers no-16) have been dropped, along with the illustrations and the anecdotal sidebars. The result, as with the previous volumes, is not a history of the people of Quebec, but a traditional political history. There is virtually no discussion of such fundamental transformations of Quebec society as urbanization or the rise of industrial capitalism; of the experiences and actions of social groups such as industrial workers, women, agricultural colonists, immigrants, or Natives; or, with a few exceptions, of the changes in institutions such as the church, the educational system, or the law. Even taken simply as narrative political history, the work is flawed. First, as a reprint of a text prepared in the late 1970s, it fails to reflect more recent developments in political historiography. For example, a major debate of the last two decades concerns the thesis that, rather than being increasingly dominated by a conservative-clerical ideology, Quebec politics in the second half of the nineteenth century preserved a healthy dose of liberalism. Lacoursiere's text provides no sense of this historiography: references to liberalism serve mainly to chronicle its demise, such as its abandonment by the Liberal Party, thereby perpetuating the old stereotypes of Quebec politics from the 1840s to the 1950s which are still popular among certain journalists and politicians today. A more fundamental issue concerns the subject of the work itself. 'National' history in Quebec was long an uneasy amalgam of Quebec...