University of Alberta - Conseil international d`études canadiennes

Transcription

Editorial Board / Comité de rédaction
Editor-in-Chief
Rédacteur en chef
Claude Couture, University of Alberta, Canada
Associate Editors
Rédacteurs adjoints
Robert Schwartzwald, Rédacteur en chef sortant, Université de Montréal
Daiva Stasiulis, Carleton University, Canada
Managing Editor
Secrétaire de rédaction
Guy Leclair, ICCS/CIEC, Ottawa, Canada
Advisory Board / Comité consultatif
Malcolm Alexander, Griffith University, Australia
Rubén Alvaréz, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Venezuela
Shuli Barzilai, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israël
Raymond B. Blake, University of Regina, Canada
Nancy Burke, University of Warsaw, Poland
Francisco Colom, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain
Beatriz Diaz, Universidad de La Habana, Cuba
Giovanni Dotoli, Université de Bari, Italie
Eurídice Figueiredo, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brésil
Madeleine Frédéric, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgique
Naoharu Fujita, Meiji University, Japan
Gudrun Björk Gudsteinsdottir, University of Iceland, Iceland
Leen d’Haenens, University of Nijmegen, Les Pays-Bas
Vadim Koleneko, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia
Jacques Leclaire, Université de Rouen, France
Laura López Morales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico
Jane Moss, Romance Languages, Colby College, U.S.
Elke Nowak, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
Helen O’Neill, University College Dublin, Ireland
Christopher Rolfe, The University of Leicester, U.K.
Myungsoon Shin, Yonsei University, Korea
Jiaheng Song, Université de Shantong, Chine
Coomi Vevaina, University of Bombay, India
Robert K. Whelan, University of New Orleans, U.S.A.
The International Journal of Canadian
Studies (IJCS) is published twice a year
by the International Council for
Canadian Studies. Multidisciplinary in
scope, the IJCS is intended for people
around the world who are interested in the
study of Canada. The IJCS publishes
thematic issues containing articles (20-30
pages double-spaced), research notes
(10-15 pages double-spaced) and review
essays. It favours analyses that have a
broad perspective and essays that will
interest a readership from a wide variety of
disciplines. Articles must deal with
Canada, not excluding comparisons
between Canada and other countries. The
IJCS is a bilingual journal. Authors may
submit articles in either English or French.
Individuals interested in contributing to the
IJCS should forward their papers to the
IJCS Secretariat, along with a one-hundred
word abstract. Beyond papers dealing
directly with the themes of forthcoming
issues, the IJCS will also examine papers
not related to these themes for possible
inclusion in its regular Open Topic section.
All submissions are peer-reviewed; the
final decision regarding publication is
made by the Editorial Board. The content
of articles, research notes and review
essays is the sole responsibility of the
author. Send articles to the International
Journal of Canadian Studies, 250 City
Centre Avenue, S-303, Ottawa, CANADA
K1P 5E7. For subscription information,
please see the last page of this issue.
Paraissant deux fois l’an, la Revue
internationale d’études canadiennes
(RIÉC) est publiée par le Conseil
international d’études canadiennes.
Revue multidisciplinaire, elle rejoint les
lecteurs de divers pays intéressés à l’étude du
Canada. La RIÉC publie des numéros
thématiques composés d’articles (20-30
pages, double interligne), de notes de
recherche (10-15 pages, double interligne) et
d’essais critiques, et privilégie les études aux
perspectives larges et les essais de synthèse
aptes à intéresser un vaste éventail de
lecteurs. Les textes doivent porter sur le
Canada ou sur une comparaison entre le
Canada et d’autres pays. La RIÉC est une
revue bilingue. Les auteurs peuvent rédiger
leurs textes en français ou en anglais. Toute
personne intéressée à collaborer à la RIÉC
doit faire parvenir son texte accompagné
d’un résumé de cent (100) mots maximum au
secrétariat de la RIÉC. En plus d’examiner
les textes les plus pertinents aux thèmes des
numéros à paraître, la RIÉC examinera
également les articles non thématiques pour
sa rubrique Hors-thème. Tous les textes sont
évalués par des pairs. Le Comité de rédaction
prendra la décision finale quant à la
publication. Les auteurs sont responsables du
contenu de leurs articles, notes de recherche
ou essais. Veuillez adresser toute correspondance à la Revue internationale d’études
canadiennes, 250, avenue City Centre,
S-303, Ottawa, CANADA K1R 6K7. Des
renseignements sur l’abonnement se
trouvent à la fin du présent numéro.
The IJCS is indexed and/or abstracted in
America: History and Life; Canadian
Periodical Index; Historical Abstracts;
International Political Science Abstracts;
Point de repère; and Sociological
Abstracts/Worldwide Political Science
Abstracts.
Les articles de la RIÉC sont répertoriés
et/ou résumés dans America: History and
Life; Canadian Periodical Index; Historical
Abstracts; International Political Science
Abstracts; Point de repère et Sociological
Abstracts/Worldwide Political Science
Abstracts.
ISSN 1180-3991
ISSN 1180-3991
ISBN 1-896450-32-6
ISBN 1-896450-32-6
© All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced without
the permission of the IJCS.
© Tous droits réservés. Aucune reproduction n’est permise sans l’autorisation
de la RIÉC.
The IJCS gratefully acknowledges a grant
from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada.
La RIÉC est redevable au Conseil de
recherches en sciences humaines du
Canada qui lui accorde une subvention.
Cover / Couverture (photo): Copyright © Texture Farm (1996)
International Council for Canadian Studies / Conseil international d’études canadiennes
(and its licensors / et les concédants de licence).
All rights reserved / Toute reproduction interdite.
International Journal of Canadian Studies
Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
30 years of Canadian Studies around the World
30 ans d’études canadiennes dans le monde
33-34, 2006
Table of Contents / Table des matières
Claude Couture
Introduction / Présentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Robin Winks
The Blacks in Canada: A History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Jean-Claude Lasserre
L’organisation linéaire laurentienne : un corridor et une ville-seuil . . . 33
Coral Ann Howells
Canadianness and Women’s Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Jósef Kwaterko
Le Roman québécois de 1960 à 1975 : idéologie et représentation
littéraire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Seymour Lipset
The Canadian Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Karen Gould
Writing in the Feminine: Feminist Misgivings about Modernity . . . . . 99
Marc Levine
La Reconquête de Montréal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Béatrice Collignon
Les connaissances géographiques : des pratiques et des récits . . . . . . 159
Valerie Alia
Un/Covering the North . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Leslie Choquette
Religious Diversity: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics. . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
33/34, 2006
Masako Iino
A History of Japanese Canadians: Swayed by Canada-Japan
Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Anthony Sayers
Candidate Nomination. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Teresa Gutiérrez-Haces
Canada et Mexique : à la recherche d’une origine commune . . . . . . . 263
Archana Verma
The Establishement of Little Punjab in Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Nubia Hanciau
La sorcière dans l’imaginaire fictif chez trois écrivaines
de l’Amérique française . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
Authors / Auteurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
Canadian Studies Journals Around the World /
Revues d’études canadiennes dans le monde . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
Calls for papers / Soumissions de textes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
4
Introduction
Présentation
In 2005, the Editorial Board of the
IJCS was approached by
representatives of the Department
of Foreign Affairs and International
Trade (DFAIT) in order to
constitute a list of the 30 most
significant works on Canadian
Studies written by internationally
renowned specialists on Canada.
The objective was to celebrate
knowledge and scholarship on
Canada developed at the
international level in honour of the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the
International Council of Canadian
Studies. The journal’s editorial
board at that time was: Claude
Couture, Robert Schwartzwald,
Daiva Stasiulis and Guy Leclair.1
En 2005, le comité de rédaction de la
RIEC fut approché par des
représentants du ministère des
Affaires étrangères et du Commerce
international (MAECI) afin de
constituer une liste de 30 ouvrages les
plus marquants en études canadiennes
écrits par des spécialistes
internationaux du Canada. L’objectif
était de célébrer le savoir et
l’érudition sur le Canada développés
au niveau international à l’occasion
du vingt-cinquième anniversaire du
Conseil international d’études
canadiennes. Le comité de rédaction
de la revue était alors composé de
Claude Couture, Robert
Schwartzwald, Daiva Stasiulis et Guy
Leclair.1
In order to compile a list from the
thousands of works published over
the course of the last thirty years,
the decision was made to draw a
list that would not necessarily
reflect the “best” works on
Canadian Studies at the
international level, but rather, a list
composed of samples of important
works illustrating a balance among
disciplines, regions, decades and
genders. Also, in order to select
works based on relatively objective
criteria, the board decided that
authors would be chosen from the
following lists of award recipients:
Northern Telecom Awards for
Canadian Studies, Northern
Telecom Five Continents Award in
Canadian Studies, Governor
General’s International Award for
Canadian Studies, Pierre Savard
Awards, and finally, from those
authors who had been recipients of
the ICCS Publishing Fund. In this
manner, we could be sure that
chosen texts had already been
Afin d’établir cette liste, parmi les
milliers d’ouvrages qui ont été publiés
depuis les trente dernières années, il
fut d’abord décidé que le choix des
textes ne reflèterait pas
nécessairement les « meilleurs »
ouvrages en études canadiennes au
niveau international mais des
échantillons d’ouvrages importants
illustrant un équilibre entre les
disciplines, les régions, les décennies
et les genres sexuels. Pour en arriver à
un choix d’ouvrages à partir de
critères relativement objectifs, il fut
aussi décidé que les auteurs choisis le
seraient principalement à partir des
listes de récipiendaires des prix
suivants : le prix Northern Telecom en
études canadiennes, le prix Northern
Telecom des cinq continents en études
canadiennes, le Prix du Gouverneur
général en études canadiennes, les
Prix Pierre Savard, enfin les auteurs
ayant reçu une subvention du Fonds
d’aide à l’édition du CIEC. De cette
façon, on s’assurait que les textes
retenus avaient déjà fait l’objet de
33-34, 2006
through several evaluations. The
review work was therefore
distributed according to disciplines,
although in some cases, as with the
works by Lipset or by Winks, all
board members had read the books.
The list of the 30 chosen works is
reproduced at the end of this
introduction.
plusieurs évaluations. Le travail du
comité fut alors réparti selon les
disciplines bien que dans certains
cas d’ouvrages « classiques »,
comme celui de Lipset ou de Winks,
tous les membres du comité avaient
déjà lu ces travaux. La liste des 30
ouvrages finalement retenus est
reproduite dans le tableau à la fin de
cette présentation. À partir de cette
Later, we decided as well not to
liste, il fut par la suite décidé de
choose the “best” fifteen works to be choisir non pas, encore une fois, les
published in the IJCS from this list,
quinze « meilleurs » ouvrages pour
but rather, again, to choose samples publication dans la RIÉC, mais un
of works reflecting the same balance échantillon d’œuvres reflétant ce
among disciplines, regions, decades même équilibre des disciplines,
and genders. We believe the result is régions, décennies et genres sexuels.
an interesting anthology that should Il en résulte, croyons-nous, une
at least serve as a major reference on anthologie très intéressante qui
Canadian Studies. This special issue devrait à tout le moins servir de
of the journal can also be considered référence majeure en études
as an important complement to the
canadiennes. Ce numéro spécial de
work of Serge Jaumain published in la revue pourra aussi être considéré
2006 and titled: The Canadianists.
comme un complément important à
The ICCS, 25 Years in the Service of l’ouvrage de Serge Jaumain publié
Canadian Studies / Les
en 2006 et intitulé Les
Canadianistes. Le CIEC, 25 ans au
Canadianistes. Le CIEC, 25 ans au
service des études canadiennes.
service des études canadiennes / The
Canadianists. The ICCS, 25 Years in
As observed by several authors like
the Service of Canadian Studies.
Serge Jaumain, David Cameron in
his report published in 1996 on the
Comme l’ont rappelé Serge
state of Canadian Studies, and Stan
Jaumain, David Cameron, dans son
MacMullin who wrote in The
bilan sur les études canadiennes
Canadian Encyclopedia on
publié en 19962 et Stanley
Canadian Studies, it is a field of
MacMullin dans l’Encyclopédie
research developed in a context of
canadienne, les études canadiennes
redefining Canadian nationalism of
se sont développées dans un
the 60s and 70s. Several texts were
contexte de redéfinition du
benchmarks in the evolution of
nationalisme canadien des années
Canadian Studies. For example, in
1960 et 1970. Plusieurs ouvrages et
1968, inspired by Centennial
travaux ont marqué cette évolution.
celebrations, A.B. Hodgetts
Par exemple, en 1968, A.B.
published What Culture? What
Hodgetts publia Quelle culture?
Heritage? in which he formulated a Quel héritage?, dans lequel il
scathing critique of the lack of vision déplora le manque de dynamisme
in education circles about how
dans la façon d’aborder l’histoire
Canadian History was taught. This
canadienne. La polémique lancée
6
Introduction
Présentation
diatribe was followed in 1969 by
another one entitled The Struggle
for Canadian Universities, by R.
Mathews and J. Steele, in which
the authors denounced the bias of
non Canadian scholars teaching in
social sciences in Canada. A few
years later, in 1972, the
Association of Universities and
Colleges of Canada (AUCC)
asked T.H.B. Symons to preside
over a commission on the teaching
and research on Canada. Published
in 1976, Symons’ first report,
entitled To Know Ourselves, had a
considerable impact and became
the source of many renewed
programs and activities in
universities, governmental
organizations, and private sector
organizations. Numerous other
reports, studies and commissions
did not have that impact.
Hodgetts, Symons and other
authors also drew attention to
questions about the publishing
industry, science and technology,
archives, and international
relations. The public debate that
ensued after these changes was
increasingly on the notion of
“Canadian identity” and it
encouraged other initiatives.
Therefore, in 1970, the Canadian
Studies Foundation was created
with the help of the Ontario
Institute for Studies in Education.
Among the Foundation’s
numerous achievements was the
1978 publication of a model
program of study entitled
Teaching Canada for the 80s.
Unfortunately, because of
decreasing public funding during
the 1980s, the Canadian Studies
Foundation was dissolved in 1986.
Leadership in Canadian Studies
was, thereafter, increasingly
assumed by university faculty
par Hodgetts fut suivie en 1969 d’une
étude publiée par R. Mathews et
J. Steele intitulée The Struggle for
Canadian Universities qui fit ressortir
la faible proportion de professeurs
d’origine canadienne dans les
programmes de sciences sociales au
Canada. Plus tard, en 1972, sans doute
en réponse à ces polémiques,
l’Association des universités et
collèges du Canada (AUCC) demanda
à T.H.B. Symons de présider une
commission d’enquête sur
l’enseignement et la recherche sur le
Canada. Paru en 1976, le rapport
Symons, intitulé Se connaître, eut un
impact encore plus considérable que
les polémiques lancées par Hodgetts,
Mathews et Steel, et entraîna un
renouvellement de programmes et
d’activités au sein des universités et
des organismes gouvernementaux
pouvant favoriser une meilleure
connaissance du Canada. L’enquête de
Symons et d’autres auteurs souleva
aussi plusieurs problèmes reliés à
l’édition, la science et la technologie,
les archives, les relations
internationales.
Par ailleurs, le débat public qui suivit
ces changements porta de plus en plus
sur la notion d’« identité canadienne »
et provoqua d’autres initiatives. Ainsi,
en 1970, la Fondation d’études du
Canada, une institution pionnière mais
oubliée aujourd’hui, fut lancée avec
l’appui de l’Institut d’études
pédagogiques de l’Ontario. Parmi les
nombreuses réalisations de la
fondation, on compta la publication en
1978 d’un modèle de programme
d’études intitulé Perspectives nouvelles
en enseignement du Canada.
Malheureusement, la Fondation
d’études du Canada fut dissoute en
1986. Cependant, le leadership en
études canadiennes fut alors de plus en
plus assumé par des professeurs
7
interested in Canadian Studies—
they created the Association for
Canadian Studies, an
interdisciplinary organization
devoted to promoting teaching,
publishing and research on Canada
at the post-secondary level and
supported by various national and
regional programs.
d’universités intéressés par les
études canadiennes qui avaient créé
en 1973 l’Association d’études
canadiennes, une organisation
interdisciplinaire qui se voua à la
promotion de l’enseignement, des
publications et des recherches sur le
Canada au niveau postsecondaire.
All of these changes at the national
level created a new interest at the
international level for the study of
Canada. The Department of Foreign
Affairs and International Trade
played, and still plays today, an
important role in the development of
this interest. For its part, the
International Council for Canadian
Studies was created in 1981. It had,
among other objectives, to provide
different means for exchanging and
disseminating knowledge about
Canada at the international level, but
it clearly also had considerable
impact in Canada. Finally, the IJCS
was launched in 1990. The current
issue is in honour of all the
researchers, in the last thirty years,
who, at the international level
particularly, have undertaken the
dynamic field of Canadian studies.
Ces différentes initiatives sur le plan
national stimulèrent un intérêt accru
pour l’étude du Canada sur le plan
international. Le ministère des
Affaires étrangères et du Commerce
international joua alors, et joue
encore, un rôle important dans le
développement de cet intérêt. Pour
sa part, le Conseil international
d’études canadiennes fut donc créé
en 1981. Il eut, entre autres, pour
objectif de fournir différents moyens
d’échange et de diffusion du savoir
sur le Canada au niveau international
mais eut aussi, de toute évidence, un
impact considérable au Canada.
Finalement, la RIÉC fut lancée en
1990. Le présent numéro se veut ni
plus ni moins un hommage à tous ces
chercheurs internationaux qui depuis
trente ans ont fait des études
canadiennes sur la plan international
un domaine de recherche dynamique.
Claude Couture
Editor-in-Chief
Claude Couture
Rédacteur en chef
Notes
Notes
1.
2.
8
Maria Teresa Gutiérrez-Haces was 1.
present at a second meeting during
which this item was discussed. Since
her name was on the initial list of
authors, she did not participate in the
final selection of the works
published in this issue of the IJCS.
David Cameron, Taking Stock:
Canadian Studies in the Nineties. 2.
Montreal: ACS, 1996.
Maria Teresa Gutiérrez-Haces fut
présente lors d’une seconde réunion
au cours de laquelle ce point était à
l’ordre du jour, mais comme son nom
figurait sur une liste initiale d’auteurs,
elle n’a pas participé au choix final
des ouvrages retenus pour une
publication dans la RIEC.
David Cameron, Le point sur les
études canadiennes. Les années
1990. Montréal, AEC, 1996.
Introduction
Présentation
30 Notable books in Canadian Studies/
30 livres notables en études canadiennnes
Discipline
Country/
Pays
Language/
Langue
Year/
Année
Jean-Claude Le Saint-Laurent,
Lasserre
grande porte de
l’Amérique
Géographie/
Geography
France
Français/
French
(80)
Cedric May Breaking the
Silence: The
Literature of Québec
Literature/
Littérature
UK
English/
Anglais
(81)
History/Histoire
USA
English/
Anglais
(71)
Author/
Auteur
Title/Titre
Robin
Winks
Blacks in Canada:
A History
Charles
Doran
Forgotten
Partnership
Political Science/
Science politique
USA
English/
Anglais
(84)
Coral Ann
Howells
Private and
Fictional Words:
Canadian Women
Novelists of the
1970s and 1980s
Literature/
Littérature
UK
English/
Anglais
(87)
Seymour
Lipset
Continental Divide Political Science/
Science politique
USA
English/
Anglais
(89)
Jósef
Kwaterko
Le Roman
québécois de 1960
à 1975 : idéologie
et représentation
littéraire
Littérature/
Literature
Pologne
Français/
French
(89)
Karen
Gould
Writing in the
Feminine:
Feminism and
Experimental
Writing in Quebec
Literature/
Littérature
USA
English/
Anglais
(90)
Marc
Levine
The Reconquest of
Montreal
Urban Studies/
History/
Études urbaines/
Histoire
USA
English/
Anglais
(90)
Masako
Iino
A History of
Japanese
Canadians
History/Histoire
Japan
Japanese/
Japonais
(97)
Luca
Codignola/
Luigi Bruti
Liberati
Storia Del Canada History/Histoire
Italy
Italian/
Italien
(99)
Béatrice
Collignon
Les Inuit. Ce qu’ils Études
savent du territoire autochtones/
Native Studies
France
Français/
French
(96)
9
Leslie P.
Choquette
Frenchmen into
History/Histoire
Peasants:
Modernity and
Tradition in the
Peopling of French
Canada
USA
English/
Anglais
(97)
Colin M. Coates
The
Metamorphoses of
Landscape and
Community in
Early Québec
UK
English/
Anglais
(00)
Valerie Alia
Un/Covering the
Native Studies/
North: News,
Communications/
Media, and
Études autochtones
Aboriginal People
USA
English/
Anglais
(97)
Anthony M.
Sayers
Parties,
Candidates, and
Constituency
Campaigns in
Canadian
Elections
Political Science/
Science politique
Australia
English/
Anglais
(99)
Marta Dvorak
Ernest Buckler:
Rediscovery and
Reassessment
Literature/
Littérature
France
English/
Anglais
(01)
Matteo
Sanfilippo
L’Affermazione
History/Histoire
Del Cattolicesimo
Nel Nord America
Italy
Italian/
Italien
(03)
Ged Martin
Past Futures: The
Impossible
Necessity of
History
UK
English/
Anglais
(04)
Maria Teresa
Gutiérrez-Haces
Procesos de
Economy/
integración
Économie
económica en
México y Canadá :
una perspectiva
histórica
comparada
Mexico
Spanish/
Espagnol
(02)
Bill Marshall
Quebec National
Cinema
Film Studies/
Études
cinématographiques
UK
English/
Anglais
(01)
Nubia Hanciau
Afeiticeira, No
Imaginário
Ficcional Das
Américas
Literature/
Littérature
Brésil
Portuguese/ (04)
Portugais
Ursula Moser
Mathis
Dany Laferrière.
La dérive
américaine
Littérature/
Literature
Austria
Français/
French
10
History/Histoire
History/Histoire
(04)
Introduction
Présentation
UK
English/
Anglais
(02)
Sociology/
Sociologie
UK
English/
Anglais
(01)
Reading Nelligan
Literature/
Littérature
USA
English/
Anglais
(02)
Karen R.
Jones
Wolf Mountains: A
History of Wolves
Along the Great Divide
Environment
Studies/
Études de
l’environnement
UK
English/
Anglais
(02)
Mary Jean
Green
Women & Narrative
Identity: Rewriting the
Quebec National Text
Literature/
Littérature
USA
English/
Anglais
(01)
Archana B.
Verma
The Making of Little
Punjab in Canada:
Patterns of
Immigration
Political Science/ India
Science politique
English/
Anglais
(02)
Eva DariasBeautell
Division, Language
and Doubleness in the
Writings of Joy
Kogawa
Literature/
Littérature
Spanish/
Espagnol
(98)
Steve
Hewitt
Spying 101: The
RCMP’s Secret
Activities at Canadian
Universities,
1917-1997
Annis May
Timpson
Driven Apart:
Women’s Employment
Equality and Child
Care in Canadian
Public Policy
Émile J.
Talbot
History/
Histoire
Spain
11
Robin Winks
The Blacks in Canada: A History
Abstract
Recognized as the most comprehensive history of African-Canadians ever
written when it was first published by McGill-Queen’s University Press and
Yale University Press in 1971, The Blacks in Canada remains the only
historical survey that covers all aspects of the Black experience in Canada,
from the introduction of slavery in 1628 under the French Regime to the more
recent wave of Caribbean immigration in the 1950s and 1960s. Using a wide
range of primary and secondary materials, Robin Winks detailed the diverse
experiences of Black immigrants to Canada: Black slaves brought to Nova
Scotia and the Canadas by Loyalists at the end of the American Revolution,
Black refugees who fled to Nova Scotia following the War of 1812, Jamaican
Maroons, and fugitive slaves who fled to British North America. He also
studied the impact of Black West Coast businessmen who helped found British
Columbia, particularly Victoria, and Black settlement in the prairie
provinces. Throughout the study, Winks explores efforts by AfricanCanadians to establish and maintain a meaningful and accepted presence in
Canada. It also investigates in meticulous detail the French and English
periods of slavery, the abolitionist movement in Canada, and the role played
by Canadians in the broader continental antislavery crusade. The excerpt we
are reproducing here is taken from chapter 1 on slavery in New France and
from chapter 15. In the first chapter, the author recalls the practice of slavery
in New France. Using date from Marcel Trudel’s work, Robin Winks notes
that in 1759, New France had 3,604 slaves including 1,132 Blacks. Despite
this early practice of slavery, Blacks in Canada were always seen as “alien”,
while in the U.S., despite being an early object of discrimination, slavery and
hatred, Blacks were “a natural part of the new American landscape”.
Résumé
Reconnu dès sa publication par les presses de McGill-Queen’s et de Yale
comme un ouvrage incomparable d’érudition, The Blacks in Canada est
toujours considéré aujourd’hui comme un chef-d’œuvre d’histoire sociale.
Robin Winks étudia minutieusement les différents aspects de l’expérience des
Noirs au Canada depuis la pratique de l’esclavage en Nouvelle-France
jusqu’aux vagues plus récentes d’immigration en provenance des Caraïbes.
L’érudition déployée dans cette étude est remarquable que ce soit aussi bien
pour l’étude des Noirs au Canada après la Guerre d’Indépendance
américaine ou la Guerre de 1812, l’immigration jamaïcaine, les réfugiés des
années 1850 et 1860 en provenance des États-Unis, la contribution des Noirs
au développement de la Colombie-Britannique au 19e siècle, etc. Dans
l’extrait que nous publions, Robin Winks rappelle les débuts de l’esclavage en
33-34, 2006
Nouvelle-France et montre, à partir des données de l’historien Marcel
Trudel, que cette pratique précoce de l’esclavage sous le Régime français n’a
pas empêché les Noirs au Canada d’être toujours traités en “étrangers” alors
qu’aux États-Unis, malgré la pratique plus systémique de l’esclavage, de
même que la discrimination et la haine qui en découla, les Noirs ont été
néanmoins reconnus comme faisant partie de l’expérience américaine.
Slavery in New France, 1628-1760
“You say that by baptism I shall be like you: I am black and you are white, I
must have my skin taken off then in order to be like you.” Thus in 1632 did
“un petit nègre” rebuke the Jesuit missionary Paul Le Jeune for claiming
that all men were one when united in Christianity.1 Father Le Jeune had
spoken of an all-embracing truth that he presumed lay behind his ritual; but
the Negro boy, the first slave to be sold in New France, already had
recognized that, whatever he might be in the eyes of God, in the eyes of man
he was different. He was black, and he was a slave.
Olivier Le Jeune,2 as he was to die, was neither the first slave nor the first
Negro in New France, but he was the first of whom there is any adequate
record. The Portuguese explorer, Gaspar Corte-Real, had enslaved fifty
Indian men and women in 1501 when he put ashore from an inlet in
Labrador or Newfoundland;3 and in 1607 Baron Jean de Biencourt de
Poutrincourt, Lieutenant-Governor of Acadia, may have tried to enslave
Indians to run his gristmill near Port Royal.4 An anonymous Negro had died
of scurvy at Port Royal the preceding winter, and the Governor, the Sieur Du
Gua de Monts, is said to have had a Negro servant, Mathieu de Coste,
working in Acadia in 1608.5 But Olivier Le Jeune is not only the first Negro
to whom we can give more than a name, he is the first to have been
transported directly from Africa, to have been sold as a slave in New France,
and apparently to have died a free man.
The petit nègre had been brought to New France from Madagascar6 by
the English and given to one of the three Kirke brothers, most probably
David. The Kirkes had taken Tadoussac in 1628 and, following a quick
voyage to England, had returned to capture Quebec the following year,
Champlain surrendering in the summer of 1629. The Kirkes then sold their
slave, a child of perhaps six, for fifty écus to a French clerk who had agreed
to collaborate with them.7 In July 1632, when the Kirkes abandoned Quebec
and, under the terms of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, restored
Champlain to power, the clerk wisely chose to sail for England with them.
He gave the Negro to Guillaume Couillard, a friend of Champlain who had
remained in Quebec throughout the occupation and who already had shown
his humanity by adopting two young Indian girls.8
Couillard needed help, for he had ten children, a hundred acres of land
(twenty under cultivation), and plans to open a flour mill. He appears to
14
have been a benevolent taskmaster. Father Le Jeune, a hard-working and
equally benevolent convert from Calvinism who had just arrived to be the
superior of the Jesuits in Quebec, began to teach the Negro and an Indian
boy; and while the Negro did not learn to read—in later life he signed his
name with a cross—he learned his catechism well. In 1633 he was baptized
and, as Christianized natives were permitted to do, took the Christian name
Olivier (from Olivier le Tardif, the head clerk), and later added Le Jeune in
recognition of his teacher. Apparently Couillard set Olivier Le Jeune free,
for at the latter’s death in 1654 the burial register listed him as a domestique;
even so, he probably was not free in 1638 when he was put in chains for a
day for slandering one of the settlers.9 When he died he was little more than
thirty, and there appears to have been no Negro slave in New France
thereafter until the last decades of the century, although panis (or Indian)
slaves were reported in Montreal in 1670, and Indians on the northwest
coast also kept slaves of their own.10
To the small extent that slavery existed in seventeenth-century New
France, it was without legal foundation. This was true in the English
Colonies to the south too, for there the first mention of laws to regulate
slavery does not occur until after 1660, and not until the 1720s did English
law codes fully confirm that the slave, usually a Negro, was a chattel. For
New France each of the steps toward the creation of a legal concept of
slavery came roughly half a generation later, and throughout the process
there were far more panis slaves than Negro, so that the system did not
become so inexorably and so quickly intertwined with a single race. French
slavery arose from a patchwork of jurisprudence, and eventually it declined
in the same way, not under open attack but from the withering effects of
unobserved laws, hostile jurists, and disadvantageous political, economic,
and social conditions.
Slavery was given its legal foundation in New France between 1689 and
1709, and had the timing been different, the institution might well have
taken a firmer hold than it did. Prior to 1663 New France had been a
seigneury of the Compagnie des Cent-Associés, administered by the
company with an eye to quick profits from the fur trade and fitfully aided by
the Society of Jesus as a mission colony. Colonization had been
subordinated, and economic rather than social ends had shaped the
conventional wisdom of the time. The fur trade required no skilled labor; it
required no gang labor either. A full-blown slave system had not been
needed, and although the Indians enslaved many of their captives, on
occasion selling a pani to work as a field hand or as a domestic servant for
the French, there had been no economic base upon which slavery could
profitably be built and little demand for either slave or engagé
(“indentured”) labour.
When New France was transferred from company to royal control in
1663, this conventional wisdom was broken temporarily and Louis XIV set
15
about building a new colony. Upon the wilderness he imposed an effective
form of administration, with a governor who was responsible for external
affairs and the military and an intendant who was to maintain law and order,
to provide a secure financial basis for the colony and to take charge of
internal development. The following year the Coutume de Paris was
introduced by a newly created Conseil Souverain, thus bringing local laws
into conformity with those of the metropole. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the
Minister of the Marine, encouraged intermarriage between French and
Indians so that a new people of one blood might emerge, with their loyalties
and their future pinned to the revitalized colony. And for years Jean Talon,
“The Great Intendant,” laboured to diversify the economy of New France.
Under Talon and his immediate successors the colony was a projection
into the New World of a growing, centralized society near the height of its
power. Religious orthodoxy was mandatory after the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes in 1685. A local militia began training in Montreal. Talon
brought in purebred livestock, tested seed grain, encouraged the
development of industry, investigated the fisheries, tapped the filling
reservoir of skilled workers, and endeavoured to begin trade with the
French West Indies. More seigniories were granted, and in order to increase
population the state brought in les filles du roi, gave dowries to the needy
and grants to those who went forth and multiplied, and forced bachelors into
marriage. Careful censuses were taken to measure the colony’s growth in
manpower, to gauge the proper use of the skilled immigrants, and to
forecast possibilities for new industries and new channels of trade.
During this period of imaginative and expansive thinking, slavery
appeared to be one means of increasing manpower. In 1677 Jean-Baptiste
de Lagny, Sieur des Bringandières, obtained royal permission to exploit the
mines of New France. He soon found that there was too much to do and too
few to do it: the fisheries, the mines, and agriculture all offered potential
wealth too great for only nine thousand colonists to tap. Consequently,
sometime in 1688 apparently, he communicated his conviction to the
governor, Jacques-Réné de Brisay, Marquis de Denonville, who in turn and
together with the intendant, Jean Bochart de Champigny, that year appealed
to France for Negro slaves. “Workers and servants are so rare and
extraordinarily expensive,” they wrote, “… as to ruin all those who attempt
to be enterprising. We believe that the best means to remedy this is to have
Negro slaves here. The Attorney General of the Council, who is in Paris,
assures us that if His Majesty agrees to this proposition, some of the
principal inhabitants will have some [slaves] bought for them in the Islands
as vessels arrive from Guinée, and he will do so as well.”11
Denonville was an aggressive governor who already had shown little
regard for other races and who was determined to build the economy of New
France, at least in some measure, along the lines laid down by Talon. Two
years earlier he bad sought diligently for two Negro slaves who had escaped
16
from New York, and in 1687 he had seized forty Iroquois whom he had
invited to a peace conference and had shipped them to France as slaves.
Now he was in the midst of a war precipitated by his duplicity. By the end of
the year he was to be defeated and, in 1689, recalled by Louis XIV. In 1685
the Code Noir had been promulgated for the West Indies, and Denonville
reasoned that the Code, as well as the slaves, might be brought from the
islands to help solve New France‘s chronic shortage of unskilled labor. In
this wish he was helped by the Attorney General, Charles-François-Marie
Ruette d’Auteuil, who early in 1689 sent a memorandum to the King in
which he argued that slavery would be profitable for New France, since
even the expense of clothing the slaves might be turned to advantage: the
Negroes could, as the Algonquins did, wear dry beaver skins which,
through use, would become castor gras of doubled value.12
Whether moved by a vision of more productive mines or of prime pelts
from black backs, Louis XIV assented on May 1, 1689.13 In doing so, he
rather carelessly limited his remarks to the importation of Negro slaves to
help with agriculture, and he cautioned that since these expensive
purchases would be coming from a radically different climate, the entire
project might well fail should the sudden contrast in environment prove too
much for the Negroes. Almost immediately thereafter, the outbreak of King
William’s War, and Denonville’s recall, virtually nullified the royal assent.
The King gave a second authorization in 1701,14 four years after the Treaty
of Ryswick. Queen Anne’s War, or the War of the Spanish Succession,
broke out during the following year, however, once again making sea routes
dangerous and transport scarce. Thereafter, the colony was left to its own
devices for obtaining slaves, and when, in 1704, Paris declared that colonies
existed solely to serve the mother country and should not compete for
industry, commerce, or population, New France reverted to an economy
based in part upon the declining fur trade, effectively ending any likely need
for a large number of slaves.
Nonetheless, slavery continued to grow slowly, for domestic servants
and field hands were wanted by the wealthier families, and local authorities
tried to give to it a more secure legal base when they could. The word
esclave itself had not been used in the civil registers of New France before
1694,15 but thereafter it became increasingly common. Clearly, confusion
as to the formal status of the slave and how to give him his freedom lay back
of the final step by which slavery acquired its tenuous footing in New
France. On April 13, 1709, the intendant, Jacques Raudot, disturbed by the
presence of a number of Indians who, despite the widespread assumption
that they were slaves by law, were claiming to be free men, read a lengthy
ordonnance16 in which he declared that “all the panis and Negroes who have
been purchased and who will be purchased, shall be the property of those
who have purchased them and will be their slaves.” Anyone who induced a
slave to run away from his master was to be fined fifty livres.17
17
But if Raudot were to provide an official statement in support of slavery,
official action also was necessary to ensure that those panis and Negroes
whom their masters genuinely wished to set free might enjoy that freedom.
Between 1706 and 1736 the number of slaves who had been given their
freedom—or claimed they had—increased rapidly, leading to confusion
(especially among the unchristianized who shared the same or similar
names) about who was slave and who was free. Accordingly, in the latter
year the intendant, Gilles Hocquart, issued a new ordonnance that provided
for a uniform means of manumission. Verbal agreements were no longer
sufficient: to free a slave by gift or by purchase, the owner or purchaser was
to obtain a notary’s certificate, and all such transactions were to be
registered immediately with a royal registry office. Previous manumissions
were valid, but none could depart from this procedure after the first of
September. Clearly, slavery had grown sufficiently to require records as
well as regulation; equally clearly, there was a body of opinion that wished
to extend freedom to the slaves, since we may presume that Hocquart’s
ordonnance was in response to a petition, although the initiative may have
come not from owners but from freed Negroes and panis.18
The status of slaves in New France also was regulated by the Code Noir,
which though never proclaimed in the colony19 appears to have been used as
customary law. There were, in fact, two codes: the first, of 1685, was limited
specifically to the West Indies; a revised code of 1724 applied to the new
colony of Louisiana as well. The second code did not depart from the first in
any significant way except to forbid intermarriage. The original Code was
drafted to protect the white man from forms of slave violence: theft, revolt,
and escape. Since slaves were not numerous in New France, little attention
was given to specific regulations covering such eventualities until a specific
case arose, which then was dealt with on its merits and within the spirit of
the code. Because gang labour was virtually impossible, and since most
Negro slaves in particular were domestic servants, less attention needed to
be given to safeguards—either for owner or for slave—with respect to
clothing, housing, and working conditions. The memory of Colbert and
Talon appears to have lingered, for no steps were taken to prevent
intermarriage in New France, and if a white man took a Negro slave wife,
she was freed by the act of marriage. Further, by the Coutume de Paris,
Negro slaves were chattels (meubles), and as personal property they were
not attached to the land as serfs but solely to their owners.
Hocquart issued his ordinance partially because, as he said, slaves were
deserting their masters almost daily under the mistaken belief that there
could be no slavery in France or in her dominions. There had been slaves in
France, in fact, from early in the seventeenth century. Slavery, it was true,
never had been expressly recognized in France: in 1571, when a cargo of
Negroes was landed at Bordeaux for sale, the parlement ordered their
release because slavery did not exist there; and in 1691 the Minister of the
18
Marine declared that Negroes who were brought into the country would be
free upon arrival. But his order did not touch upon the legality of slavery in
the colonies. In any case, regulations of this sort were seldom enforced, and
slaves did serve government officials, ship captains, soldiers, and planters
throughout the century. That de facto slavery existed is proven by the suits
for freedom undertaken in the eighteenth century.20
King and colony were by no means in agreement about slavery, adding to
the confusion created by having one set of regulations in France,
another—the Code Noir—in the Antilles, and a third for New France. A
concert of opinion between governor and intendant in 1688 and 1701 had
elicited formal approvals of slavery from the King, but by 1716 such a bond
of opinion was broken. In October the intendant, Michel Bégon, repeated
Champigny’s plea: as there were only twenty thousand inhabitants in New
France, he wrote, labour was expensive and scarce. If the colony were
encouraged to enter into the slave trade, local industry, agriculture, and
commerce would improve much as they had in the English colonies to the
south. Boston supported a thriving economy partially on slaves, and in New
York the land was cultivated by Negroes so that white energies could be
directed to trade. In New France, the intendant suggested, Negroes could till
the soil, fish for cod, saw timber, build ships, and exploit the iron mines “out
of which the King and the colony could derive the greatest advantages” if
there were but workers to develop them.
Apparently Bégon anticipated the major objection at its source, for the
governor, Philippe de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, later wrote in the
margin of Bégon’s mémoire that the climate was too cold and the expense of
clothing slaves too great. In prior refutation Bégon pointed out that the
climate of Boston and New York was not markedly different and that those
Negroes already in New France were in good health. Further, the expense
need not be lasting, for the free trade in beaver skins, fresh letters of
exchange, and the normal royal funds spent on the colony would provide
sufficient revenue. Since in 1716 the slave-trading monopolies enjoyed by
the Compagnie de Guinée and the Compagnie du Sénégal were broken by
opening the trade to the Guinea Coast to all, Bégon may also have hoped to
create in New France a small center for building slave ships. In this he
would have been frustrated, however, for the King required that vessels
engaged in the Guinea trade should be fitted out exclusively at Bordeaux,
Nantes, Rochelle, or Rouen.21
Although persistent, without Vaudreuil’s support Bégon could
accomplish very little. In 1720, one month after the Compagnie des Indes
was given a new monopoly over the Guinea trade, Bégon asked the King to
send Negroes to work in the hemp market, and he forwarded a memorial in
which the inhabitants of New France undertook to buy one hundred and one
Negroes from the company at six hundred livres each. In June 1721, the
Navy Board informed Bégon that it would have the company carry a cargo
19
of Africans to Quebec, but, no action appears to have been taken after the
Board learned that the Negroes of Sénégal, who might be sent, were worth
one thousand livres each in the West Indies.22
Other evidence that the intendants, and on occasion the governors,
wished to push slavery while the King was reluctant to do so may be found
in the circumstances of Hocquart’s ordonnance in 1736. The intendant
apparently had wished to be more sweeping than his statement reveals, for
the King told both him and the governor, Charles, Marquis de Beauharnois,
that he did not approve of their proposal to decide on the status of panis and
other slaves by an explicit law, and it was he who ordered that the colony’s
judges should be content to follow the custom that considered panis to be
slaves until those masters who wished to do so granted them freedom by
notarial deed.23 Any move to advance the assumption that all Negroes were
slaves—as was occurring for Negroes in the English colonies at this
time—and thus to formalize their condition along purely racial lines, was
thereby blocked.
What, then, were the conditions of the Negro slave in New France? How
many slaves were there, and where? An exhaustive inquiry by Professor
Marcel Trudel of l’Université d’Ottawa provides us with a remarkably full
picture.24 No exact census of the slave population is possible, of course, but
Professor Trudel reached a number of useful conclusions: local records
reveal 3,604 separate slaves by 1759; of these, 1,132 were Negroes. In all,
there probably were some four thousand slaves in New France; French
settlers preferred panis but English settlers chose, and after 1759 brought
in, substantial numbers of Negroes. Panis became a synonym for slave and
was occasionally applied to Negroes as well; for the majority of Indian
slaves were, in fact, either Pawnees or from closely related tribes. Most of
the slaves lived in or near Montreal, where 52.3 percent of the known total
were found; 77.2 percent of all slaves lived in towns. Thus few slaves
worked in the fields or mines, even though the intendants emphasized
agriculture in their requests for Negroes: 22.8 percent of the slaves were
field laborers, but only 192 of these were Negroes, since the black man most
often was a servant.25 Perhaps for this reason Negro slaves lived
longer—but not long. The average age at death for the panis was 17.7 years,
for the Negro 25.2 years. Several Negroes lived to be over eighty, while no
Indian male reached seventy. Negroes, moreover, were less susceptible to
the white man’s ills, and especially to smallpox. In 1733, fifty-eight Indians
were carried away by the disease but only two Negroes; in 1755, smallpox
took fifty-six Indians but only six Negroes; and in the epidemic of 1757
fifty-one Indians and only four Negroes died. But though relatively fewer
Negroes died of the pox, many must have borne its marks, for it was a
special note of aesthetic quality to advertise that a domestic “has never had
the small-pox.”
20
Even under English rule considerably more Frenchmen than Englishmen
owned slaves as domestics and wharf laborers: 96.7 percent of the owners
were French. Trudel traced 1,509 owners, representing 962 different
families, of which only 181 were English. More than a quarter of the slaves
(1,068) belonged to members of the merchant class, especially among the
French; the gentry, the governors, notaries, doctors, and the military also
owned slaves, and so too did members of the clergy. On the whole, few
possessed more than two or three slaves; only twenty-nine owners held as
many as ten slaves each. Interestingly, the Campeau family, who were
small-scale traders only, held fifty-seven slaves, more than the far wealthier
Lacorne and Lemoyne de Longueuil families.
Generally, these slaves of New France, and especially the Negro slaves,
seem not to have been treated badly. They were, after all, expensive and
intimately connected to the household as domestics.26 The protection that
was extended to slaves in the Antilles by the Code Noir was applied in New
France even if the code was not law. Further, the slave, and in particular
Negro slaves, enjoyed certain privileges normally reserved to free men.
They could serve as witnesses at religious ceremonies, and apparently they
could petition against free persons, as one did in 1727. Slaves who claimed
their liberty before the courts had recourse to all the customary processes
and, after the English arrived, slaves secured the rights of habeas corpus and
trial by jury. Punishment was no more severe for a slave than for a free man.
Murder, crimes with violence, and arson could lead to hanging for both, but
not invariably so: when a Negress belonging to Mme François Poulin de
Francheville set fire to her mistress’s house in April 1734, thereby
destroying a portion of Montreal, she was tried and hanged; but in 1781
when a Negro slave assaulted his master, he was imprisoned, not
executed.27
Mulattoes acquired no legal status of their own, contrary to the growing
practice in the Antilles, and they were seldom referred to as such.28
Although panis and Negro slaves lived in the same households, there is little
evidence of cohabitation between them. On occasion the French did marry
their slaves: Trudel found records attesting to thirty-four marriages with
panis (usually female, who were preferred for indoor work, and who were
said to be especially docile, proximity and temperament thus encouraging
interracial sexual relations) and to eleven marriages with Negroes (usually
white women with black men). At least 103 children were born from these
unions: 84 half-breeds and 19 mulattoes. These children married and in turn
had their descendants, and through the generations must have “passed”
over to white. Apparently concerned with the thought that Indian and
Negro blood was mixed with French Canadian, the historian Benjamin
Sulte remarked in 1911 that by such marriages not more than a single drop
of the Missouri River had been added to the greatness of the St. Lawrence.
But he seems to have neglected those liaisons undertaken without the
sanction of the church. Of 573 children of slaves for whom there is adequate
21
record, 59.5 percent were born outside any form of marriage, and while in
many cases the parents may have been of the same race, the entry in the
registers—père inconnu—no doubt covers many white men too. The
French settlers especially were attracted to Indian women, and 75.9 percent
of all panis children were bâtards, while only 32.1 percent of Negro
children were born out of wedlock.29 That the figure is low may, in part, be
attributed to the moral influence of the church.
As in other Roman Catholic colonies, the church tended to soften the
effects of slavery even as it condoned it. Neither the church nor the state in
French territories faced the reality of slavery so readily as in some Spanish
and Portuguese lands, but neither did slavery emerge in so hardened and
harsh a form as in the English colonies. In Latin areas the Roman-based law
codes and a long acquaintance with racial differences served to modify the
slave–master relationship and to give it something of the nature of a
contract. Slave status was not thought to be inherent in man but was a
temporary condition arising from the accident of events. Although
Hocquart’s ordonnance of 1736 implied that proof of his freedom lay with
the Negro, the ruling was directed to an immediate administrative problem.
In the English colonies, on the other hand, neither the church nor the law
codes tempered the conditions of servitude. The colonies placed legal
obstacles in the way of manumission in contrast to Hocquart’s simple
procedure, and the presumption of the law was in favor of slavery as the
Negro’s natural condition. In most Latin colonies the influence of the
Roman Catholic church-which held that the spiritual nature of the slave
transcended his temporary status, that he retained a moral personality even
in servitude, and that to give a man his freedom was to please God—was
added to the moderating effects of long experience and more humane laws
and regulations.30
Nonetheless, in New France the church appears not to have been active in
opposing slavery as such, perhaps because there was less to oppose than in
the West Indies and South America. The Jesuits, Dominicans, and
Franciscans treated their slaves well and often encouraged manumission,
but in New France the Jesuit missionaries were displaced by other
bodies—by the Sulpicians in 1657 at Montreal and by the Recollets in 1670
at Trois-Rivières—while Quebec passed into the hands of the secular
clergy. While Quebec‘s able first bishop, the Jesuit François de
Montmorency-Laval, owned no slaves, he was replaced in 1688 by
Jean-de-la-Croix St. Vallier, who did, as did Bishops Pierre-Herman
Dosquet and Henri Marie Pontbriand. Secular priests, religious
communities (including the Jesuits), the Ursulines in Louisiana (which was
within the diocese of Quebec), the Brothers of Charity at Louisbourg, and
the benevolent Mother Marie d’Youville, who ran the Hôpital-Général, all
owned slaves. In 1720 religious communities were among those who
22
promised to purchase a hundred Negroes through the intendant, then
Bégon. In all the clergy held at least forty-three slaves.31
Only Bishop St. Vallier addressed himself specifically to slavery. In his
Catéchisme of 1702, in which he listed the conditions for admission to the
clergy, he excluded slaves and thus, seven years before Raudot’s
ordonnance, indirectly supported slavery. Further, if one married a pani or
Negro in ignorance of his enslaved condition, this ignorance was sufficient
to cancel the marriage. The following year, in France, St. Vallier’s Rituel
reaffirmed the Catéchisme but, with reference to marriage, added that the
interdiction did not apply in “this Kingdom, where all people are free.”
Apparently not realizing that the Rituel was published in France and that
this phrase applied only to the mother country, some students of the church
quite erroneously have thought that St. Vallier held slavery to be illegal in
the colony.32 In short, in New France the clergy did not actively promote
slavery, as the Protestant sects of the English colonies were to do, but
neither did the church actively oppose the institution, and there is no record
of any clergyman having spoken out against it.
However, the clergy were scarcely in a position to lead an attack on
slavery. The power of the church declined after the retirement of Bishop
Laval and it was increasingly submissive to the state in temporal matters.
After 1760, with slavery specifically protected by the terms of the treaty of
capitulation between Britain and France, and with Canada under the same
control as the more prosperous, slaveholding colonies to the south, priests
had less opportunity to turn to the attack even had they wished to do so.
Further, they were as susceptible as other men to the racial thought of the
times—thought that even in nonslaveholding France led in 1763 to a
prohibition upon all Negroes, slave or free, who would sail from the
colonies to France, in order to prevent any mixing of blood and the debasing
of French culture. Slavery was a social reality, and as such the church
accepted it.33
Certainly the fact that the church admitted the slave to equality in some of
the sacraments,—baptism, communion, and burial—must have
encouraged owners to think of their property in more humane terms than in
those few colonies where slaves no more than horses could fully qualify for
the Christian life. No law required that slaves be baptized, but the influence
of Christian thought was pervasive and, while owners often waited many
years, ultimately four-fifths of all slaves were baptized—largely as Roman
Catholics, although 223 were Protestants. (They did not always remain so,
as the records of abjurations in Quebec show.) Roman Catholic baptisms
were frequently social occasions for the blacks, and in French society the
owner often claimed for himself the honour of serving as godfather to his
slave, a custom seldom found among the Protestant English. Forty eight
slaves (including sixteen Negroes) also received the sacrament of
confirmation, and at least twenty slaves were given the sacrament of the
23
Eucharist.34 When the Christian slave died, he was buried as a Christian.
French owners (in contrast to English) often witnessed the act of burial.
Marriage was permitted with the master’s permission. On occasion the act
of consent was accompanied by a clause requiring of each owner that he free
his slave.35 Children born of slave marriages belonged to the mother’s
master. Neither slave nor free Negroes could take Holy Orders or become a
priest.
Custom as well as the church further humanized the master—slave
relationship. In many French households slaves took their master’s family
name after baptism. At least one hundred and ten Negroes acquired
Christian names in this way. Given names also were taken from the
family—Marie, Joseph, Jean-Baptiste, and Pierre were especially
common—while in other slave societies classical names such as Caesar,
Pompey, and Jupiter were more common. When seriously ill, slaves were
taken to the hospital: the registers of l’Hôtel-Dieu de Montreal show that
from 1690 to 1800 at least 525 slaves were hospitalized.
Despite these “humane and familial traits”36 found in slavery as
practiced in New France, the slaves themselves cannot have thought the
system so agreeable, for there were numerous attempts to escape, especially
by Negroes. Fugitives, and the growing willingness of some of the colonists
to connive with them, led intendant Hocquart to issue an ordonnance in
1734 directing all captains and officers of militia to help an owner find a
missing Carib slave and imposing penalties on any who aided his escape.
Thereafter advertisements for runaways normally were accompanied by
warnings to ship captains against carrying them out of the province and to
the public against employing them.37
In the period from the summer of 1769 to the summer of 1794, for
example, advertisements for missing slaves were scattered through the
Québec Gazette. One may presume that there were also many unsuccessful
attempts at escape or short-termed flights that did not receive public notice.
In 1769, Joseph, a Negro who spoke French and English, ran away from
Montreal. Slaves escaped in 1771 and 1778, four times in 1779, in 1781,
three times in 1783, in 1785, three times in 1788, in 1789, 1790, and 1794. In
all but one instance they were Negroes who spoke English, French, or
Dutch, rather than panis. One Ishmael ran away from his owner, John
Turner, twice on occasions nine years apart. Indeed, advertisements for
runaway slaves were more frequent during this time than were those for the
sale of slaves.38
Nonetheless, slaves were sold, of course, often side by side with
livestock, since no public market was set apart expressly for their sale. Few
were disposed of by lot—the largest sale was of five slaves in 1743—and
families seldom can have been divided. Most slaves were purchased before
they were twenty years old and remained with one family, to be willed to the
24
next generation if they survived. In one thirty-year period, only 137 slaves
were announced for sale in the newspapers. Under the French, the average
pani cost four hundred livres while the Negro brought nine hundred livres;
again, the latter’s greater expense helped to protect him against abuse.39
While slaves were bought and sold internally, there was no international
or intercolonial market of substance. Raudot pointed out that his
ordonnance applied only to New France and did not grant any authorization
for an export trade. On occasion, panis were sent to the West Indies as
punishment, but no trade developed with the other French colonies, and for
most of the duration of legalized slavery in New France, trade with the
nearer British colonists was prevented by war. Slaves from New York
escaped to New France in sufficient numbers prior to Raudot’s clarification
of 1709 to provoke from the assembly in Albany, in the midst of Queen
Anne’s War in August 1705, an “Act to prevent the running away of Negro
slaves out of the City and County of Albany to the French at Canada.” The
English naturally resented the loss of their property to an enemy, and they
feared that the runaway slaves carried military information to Quebec. The
act held that any slave found more than forty miles above Albany in the
direction of the French frontier would die for a felony. The assembly passed
a similar act in May 1745, during King George’s War, to be in force during
the conflict with France and no longer. When the two nations technically
were at peace, the French sought to prevent English goods from being
smuggled into New France by prosecuting a number of young men for
having relations with Albany through an intermediary in Montreal; such
controls applied, of course, to slaves.40
Although the settlers preferred Negro to panis slaves, the number of
Negroes did not grow proportionately. Slaves could neither be bought from
nor sold to the West Indies in large numbers because of war and the scarcity
of transport, and slaves seldom could be purchased from the British because
of war and the suspicion of war. An édit of 1727, registered in Quebec the
following year, forbade selling to the British in any case. Most Indian
traders dealt only in panis slaves. One additional source of Negro supply lay
open: the spoils of war. On July 23, 1745, the King decreed that slaves from
enemy colonies who fled into French territory could be sold and that the
proceeds were to belong to his Majesty, as though they were derived from
enemy ships or from goods wrecked upon his shores.41 But such a source
was neither dependable nor, when the slaves were carried away during raids
into English territory, legal. Since many of the abuses of slavery were
associated with the auction block, slaves in New France thus further
benefited from these limitations on the trade.
If slavery in New France was among the most benevolent expressions of
the institution in North America, nonetheless it was slavery, with
accompanying potentialities toward the dominance of one man, and of one
race, over another. That these potentialities were limited in comparison to
25
the English colonies by the lack of trade, the Code Noir, customs that grew
independently in New France, and to some extent by the church, is clear.
The chief limitations on slavery, however, arose less from specific
conditions than from the overall nature of French society in the New World
and from the unique circumstances of the French experience in Quebec.
*********
The general Canadian response to environmental,42 to immigration, and to
cultural pluralism has differed, then, in two important respects from
response in the United States; and as a result the Canadian Negro has come
to occupy a rather different position in Canadian society than the Negro
does in American society. The first difference arose from the tendency of
many white Canadians, especially in the nineteenth century, to think of
themselves as transplanted Europeans. While the Americans had consistently asked Crèvecoeur’s question—“What then is the American, this new
man?”—assuming that the American had become, in fact, a new man
(although, to be sure, obscuring Crèvecoeur’s original meaning), many
Canadians continued to assert with equal vigor that they were
representatives of European man and of European civilization. Given this
feeling, the Negro in their midst was related by them to his origins, as the
MacGregors, the O’Sullivans, or the Thomases related themselves to their
Scots, Irish, and Welsh origins. To white Canadians the Negro was and is an
African, even more to the degree than they are Europeans; and as such he is a
sport, an exotic in a commonly shared and mutually alien environment. In
short, although in the United States the Negro became an object of
enslavement, discrimination, and even hatred, he came to be viewed
(colonizationists aside) as a natural part of the new American landscape;
while in Canada the Negro who achieved a measure of equality nonetheless
was deemed foreign to the landscape, equal but alien.
Related to the tendency of many Canadians to seek no new man in the
New World was a second cultural response of white Canadians to their
environment that influenced the Negro as well. One goal of newly arrived
immigrants to the United States was to shed the old world and its ethnic
badges of identity as quickly as possible. Immigrants to Canada were far
less eager to be assimilated into some amorphous, anonymous North
Americanism or even Canadianism. A bicultural society of English- and
French-speaking settlers encouraged what was to become a plural society,
in which each group (and most strikingly the French Canadian, Ukrainian,
and Doukhober) fought to guard its separate identity. Since most Canadians
retained a justifiable pride in their own ethnic and past national heritages,
they assumed that the Canadian Negro should do so too; it was natural that
he should be left alone, a foreigner self-segregated to his own communities,
a black tile in the mosaic of Canada. But while the white British North
American should take pride in his national heritage, march as an
26
Orangeman, thrill to the skirl of the pipes or to tales of Dollard des Ormeaux
at the Long Sault, and read of Casimir Gzowski, the Canadian Negro had no
national heritage to fall back on for self-identification. He was alone.
While the enslaved American Negro was, in a very real sense, also alone,
he at least had the common unity of a shared North American experience,
and following the Civil War this common unity was carried forward into
new expressions of self-awareness, ethnic identification, and eventually of
militant pride. The Canadian Negro, on the other hand, was divided,
withdrawn, without a substantial body of shared historical experiences; and
until the late 1960s Canadian Negroes remained stratified within by class
lines virtually of their own creation. The descendants of the Negro slaves
brought to Nova Scotia and the Canadas by the Loyalists at the end of the
American Revolution thought of themselves as among the founders of the
nation, and they felt they had relatively little in common with the
descendants of the Black Refugees of the War of 1812 or the few true
descendants of the Jamaican Maroons. The descendants of the fugitive
slaves who fled to British North America during the ferment of
abolitionism were viewed by the line of Loyalist blacks, free or slave, as
outlanders; the fugitive line in Ontario, in turn, looked down upon the Nova
Scotian Negroes who were aided in their escape by the British government,
not having to fear the breath of pursuit from Simon Legree and Mrs. Stowe’s
mythical hounds, when Eliza carried the Negro race northward with her to
freedom. The subsequent Negro migrations to Canada—those West Coast
Negro businessmen who entered British Columbia, the dry land Negro
farmers from Okloahoma who moved onto the Canadian plains in 1909–12,
the Harlem Negroes who sought out the gayer lights of Montreal during the
period of America’s experiment with prohibition, and the renewed
post-World War II migration of West Indians–-had even less in common
with these earlier groups. Except, of course, for the color of their skins, and
the common mistake of whites—liberals as well as conservatives—of
viewing blacks as a monolith.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels
and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791 …
(Cleveland, 1897), vol. 5, Quebec: 1632-1633, pp. 62-65. A copy of the original
Relation, published in Paris in 1632, is in the John Carter Brown Library, Brown
University, Providence. The quotation appears on pp. 58-60.
Ida Greaves, “The Negro in Canada,” McGill University Economic Studies, no.
16 (Orillia, Ont., 1930), p. 9, says the slave’s name was Louis, but this appears to
be mistaken, as is the date of sale.
See H. P. Biggar, ed., The Precursors of Jacques Cartier, 1497-1534: A
Collection of Documents relating to the Early History of the Dominion of Canada
(Ottawa, 1911). Biggar says there were sixty Indian slaves (p. xiv); the source
itself refers to fifty (p. 64).
27
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
28
Benjamin Sulte, Histoire des canadiens-français, 1608-1880 (Montreal, 1882),
1, 66, tells this story, but it is open to considerable doubt and is not confirmed by
Adrien Huguet in his Jean de Poutrincourt, fondateur de Port-Royal en Acadie,
vice-roi du Canada, 1557-1615 … (Paris, 1932), vol. 44 of Société des
Antiquaries de Picardie, Mémoires.
Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 1 (Toronto, 1966), 452; hereafter cited as
DCB.
Father Le Jeune said Madagascar, while a document in the Archives du Séminaire
de Québec dated August 20, 1638, suggests the Guinée (Ghana) coast: see Marcel
Trudel, L’esclavage au Canada français: Histoire et conditions de 1’esclavage
(Quebec, 1960), p. 3.
Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 5, 196-99; or the original Relation … (Paris, 1633),
pp. 121-[22], in the John Carter Brown Library, Providence, R.I.
On Couillard, see DCB, 1, 236-37.
Trudel, L’esclavage, pp. 4-5, 19, 214, 230, 248; Pierre-Georges Roy, Les petites
choses de notre histoire (Lévis, 1923), 5, 42-44.
Mémoires de la Société Historique de Montréal 4 (1869), 200; Iuliia Pavlovna
Averkieva, Slavery among the Indians of North America, trans. G. R. Elliott, rev.
ed. (Victoria, B.C., 1966), p. 11.
On Lagny, see Benjamin Sulte, “L’esclavage en Canada,” La Revue Canadienne,
n.s., 8 (1911), 318, who gives more prominence to Lagny’s letter than do other
authors. Extracts from the letters of Denonville and Champigny, dated August 10,
October 31, and November 6, 1688, are printed in [Jacques Viger and Louis
Hippolyte Lafontaine, eds.], “De 1’esclavage en Canada,” in La Société
Historique de Montréal, Mémoires et documents relatifs à l’histoire du Canada 1
(1859), 1-2. The translation is my own. Francis Parkman, while engaged in
research for The Old Regime in Canada (1874) and A Half-Century of Conflict
(1892), had extracts copied from these and other pertinent documents; the copies
are in the Parkman Papers in the MHS. Viger kept his notes in books that he called
Ma Saberdache, from which he quotes; when Viger died in 1858, Lafontaine
carried the work forward. Lafontaine’s copies of the documents are in the PAC,
Lafontaine Papers, 14, file 64, fols. 5552-65; the originals are in the Laval
University library.
Viger and Lafontaine, “L’esclavage,” pp. 2-3; Trudel, pp. 20-21; Parkman
Papers, 25, 294, on d’Auteuil; A. Judd Northrup, “Slavery in New York: A
Historical Sketch,” 83d Annual Report 1900, New York State Library, Appendix
6: State Library Bulletin History No. 4 (Albany), pp. 258-59, 275.
Several brief summaries of slavery erroneously state that it was authorized in
New France by the rescript of 1688, a mistake apparently perpetuated from
Hubert Neilson, “Slavery in Old Canada Before and After the Conquest,”
Transactions of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, ser. 2, no. 26
(1906), p. 21. It was Louis’s reply of 1689 that legalized slavery.
Archives de la Province de Québec, Quebec, Ordres du Roi, ser. B, 22: King to
Louis Hector de Callière, governor of New France, and to Champigny, May 31,
1701. On October 5, the governor and intendant reported that they permitted
colonists to hold Negro slaves (Parkman Papers, 6, 238).
Trudel, p. 315.
Presumably Raudot acted upon a petition or remonstrance from slave-owners, for
an ordonnance normally arose from a petition addressed to the King or to his
representative.
Printed in Viger and Lafontaine, pp. 4-5.
18. Arrêts et Règlements du Conseil Supérieur de Québec, et Ordonnances et
Jugements des Intendants du Canada (Quebec, 1955), p. 371.
19. There is some disagreement on this point. William Renwick Riddell, in “Le Code
Noir,” JNH, 10 (1925), 321, n. 1, feels there is “no sufficient ground” for
doubting that the code was applied to New France, but the only evidence he gives
is dubious. While Neilson (“Slavery in Old Canada,” p. 26) asserts that, since the
code of 1685 was incorporated in the Coutume de Paris, which received royal
sanction as being applicable to all colonies in the New World, it did apply, he
appears to confuse the code itself with the Coutume’s regulation concerning
meubles. Trudel (pp. 27, 163, 213, 316) points out that he could find no evidence
that the code was promulgated formally.
20. On slavery and attitudes toward slavery in France, see Gaston Martin, Histoire de
l’esclavage dans les colonies françaises (Paris, 1948); Paul Trayer, Etude
historique sur la condition légale des esclaves dans les colonies françaises (Paris,
1887); Charles de la Roncière, Nègres et négriers, 9th ed. (Paris, 1933); and
Shelby T. McCloy, The Negro in France (Lexington, Ky., 1961), especially pp.
5-6, 12-14, 22-51. Hilda M. Neatby, The Administration of Justice under the
Quebec Act (Minneapolis, 1937), pp. 9-11, discusses the validity of the Coutume
de Paris in New France.
21. Collection de manuscrits contenant lettres, mémoires et autres documents
historiques relatifs à la Nouvelle-France … (Quebec, 1884), 3, 21.
22. See Ordres du Roi, 44, fols. 3, 528 1/2; 47, fol. 1242. These are summarized by
Edouard Richard in Report concerning Canadian Archives for the Year 1904
(Ottawa, 1905), App. K, 21, 28, 54. See also Joseph-Noël Fauteux, Essai sur
l’industrie au Canada sous le régime français, (Quebec, 1927), 1, 476-77.
23. Ordres du Roi, 63, fol. 642 1/2, as printed by Richard in Canadian Archives
Report 1904, p. 211.
24. I wish to thank Professor Trudel, and l‘Archives de la Province de Qubec, for
giving me access to both volumes of his L’esclavage au Canada français while it
was still in typescript. The first volume was published in 1960; it is based on
thorough research in all pertinent local archives, and the following paragraphs are
based closely on Professor Trudel’s findings. The second volume, “Dictionnaire
des esclaves et de leurs propriétaires,” has not been published, but its conclusions
were incorporated into the first. The major study that I cite, L’esclavage au
Canada français. Histoire et conditions de l’esclavage (Quebec, 1960), is not to
be confused with the condensed edition of the book, L’esclavage au Canada
français (Montreal, 1963).
25. Trudel, pp. 86, 95, 126-92, 232-56, 264, 284, 317-27. On the mines, see La
Société historique de Montreal, Mémoires et documents, 2 (1859), Addenda. The
first scholarly attempt at constructing a list of slaves was Cyprien Tanguay’s in
1887 in his Dictionnaire Généalogique des Familles Canadiennes … (Montreal),
3, 603-07, which lists 152 slaves by name. In the typescript version of his study,
Trudel himself gives figures other than those contained in his book, for he refers
to 3,689 slaves—1,183 of them Negro—and 1,434 proprietors.
26. There are three known pictorial evidences of Negro slavery in New France, and
all show domestic servants. Edwin Holgate’s oil panel, “Jeune indienne de la
Jamaïque,” actually a Creole girl, hangs in the Quebec Provincial Museum in
Quebec city. In the McCord Museum of Canadian History in Montreal there is a
watercolor by G[eorge] Heriot, ca. 1806, of a minstrel and two Negro servants.
The McCord also has an oil by François-Maleport de Beaucourt, the first
native-born Canadian artist of repute, “L’esclave noire,” painted in 1786.
29
27. William Renwick Riddell, “The Slave in Canada,” JNH, 5 (1920), 267; J.
Douglas Borthwick, History and Biographical Gazetteer of Montreal to the Year
1892 (Montreal, 1892), p. 27.
28. On interracial sex and the status of mulattoes, see Winthrop D. Jordan,
“American Chiaroscuro: The Status and Definition of Mulattoes in the British
Colonies,” The William and Mary Quarterly, ser. 3, 19 (1962), 182-200.
29. Sulte, “L’esclavage en Canada,” p. 324; Trudel, pp. 290-327.
30. See Frank Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas (New
York: Vintage ed., 1963), p. 65, n. 153; Tannenbaum, “The Destiny of the Negro
in the Western Hemisphere,” Political Science Quarterly, 61 (1946), 1-41; and in
partial contradiction, Charles R. Boxer, “The Colour Question in the Portuguese
Empire, 1415-1825,” Proceedings of the British Academy, 1961 (London, 1962),
pp.113-38.
31. See Marcel Trudel, “L’attitude de l‘Eglise catholique vis-à-vis 1’esclavage au
Canada français,” CHA, Report, 1961, of the Annual Meeting .... pp. 28-34. Also
see Trudel, L’esclavage, pp. 38-39, 193-212, 322-23.
32. Cathécisme du diocèse de Québec (Paris, 1702), p. 298, and Rituel du diocèse de
Québec publié par l’ordre de Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier … (Paris, 1703), p.
326. Trudel, L’esclavage, pp. 38-39, comments on the confusion caused by
Saint-Vallier’s words.
33. See “The Attitude of the Roman Catholic Church toward the Negro during
Slavery,” in W. D. Weatherford, American Churches and the Negro (Boston,
1957), pp. 222-45, and John K. A. Farrell, “Some Opinions of Christian
Europeans regarding Negro Slavery in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth
Centuries,” The Canadian Catholic Historical Association, Report (1958), pp.
13-22.
34. Register of Christ Church, William Henry (Sorel), the original of which is in the
office of the Protonotaire for Richelieu County, Sorel, P.Q., a copy being in PAC;
the book of marriages, baptisms, and burials for Christ Church, Montreal,
1766-95, in the Archives du Palais de Justice de Montréal; PAC, Miscellaneous
Documents [hereafter, Misc. Docs.], 16, no. 124; PAC photostats, “Adjurations
of Heresy, Ville de Quebec, 1662-1759,” Nov. 8, 1750, p. 16. At least one Jew
owned a slave. See Arthur D. Hart, ed., The Jew in Canada: A Complete Record
of Canadian Jewry from the Days of the French Regime to the Present Time
(Toronto, 1926), p. 18.
35. Note, for example, the marriage of Jacques César and Marie, a marriage which
was delayed for two years until Marie’s owner, Mme Baron de Longueuil (Marie
Catherine Deschambeault), gave her consent to the condition made by the owner
of the former, Ignace Gamelin, that the Negroes be freed (Neilson, pp. 29-31).
36. Trudel, L’esclavage, pp. 325-26; Hector Berthelot and E.-Z. Massicotte,
Montréal, le bon vieux temps (Montreal, 1916), p. 35.
37. Lafontaine Papers, fol. 5559; Sulte, “L’esclavage en Canada,” p. 325.
38. Gazette, July 20, 1769, May 3, 1770, Aug. 15, 1771, Sept. 8, 1774, Feb. 12, Aug.
20, 1778, July 29, Sept. 23, Nov. 4, 1779, Oct. 4, 18, Dec. 20, 1781, June 12, July
17, Aug. 14, Nov. 6, 1783, March 4, 25, May 13, Sept. 2, 1784, June 9, 1785, May
8, June 26, 1788, April 1, Sept. 3, Oct. 1, 1789, April 22, Oct. 28, 1790, Oct. 17,
1793, and May 22, 1794. The whole of this sample falls within the period of the
British administration, after the number of slaves had increased and when public
opinion was turning against slavery, but we have no adequate record of escapes
for the earlier period. Bills of sale for Montreal Negroes are found in the record
books of E. W. Gray, notary, for 1765-76, 1775-85, and 1783-1801, and in the
30
39.
40.
41.
42.
répertoire et index of J.-G. Beeck, notary, 1781-1821 (2 vols.) in the Archives du
Palais de Justice de Montréal. I should like to thank M. Jean-Jacques Lefebvre,
the archivist, for bringing these records to my attention.
Seventeen notarial acts preserved in les Archives de la Province de Québec, all
relating to sales, are printed in Rapport de rarchiviste de la province de Québec
pour 1921-1922 (Quebec, 1922), pp. 110-23. These are paraphrased, with some
errors of fact, by William Renwick Riddell in “Notes on the Slave in NouvelleFrance,” JNH, 8 (1923), 318-25, to which he adds material taken from court
proceedings, PAC, pp. 325-30.
Northrup, “Slavery in New York,” pp. 262-64; William Kingsford, The History of
Canada (Toronto, 1888), 2, 507; Lulu M. Johnson, “The Negro in Canada, Slave
and Free” (M.A. thesis, Univ. of Iowa, 1930), p. 4.
Viger and Lafontaine, pp. 6-8. The decree was registered in Quebec in 1748.
The following four paragraphs are taken, with minor changes, from the author’s
essay, “Abolitionism in Canada,” in Duberman, Anti-Slavery Vanguard, pp.
339-42.
31
Jean-Claude Lasserre
L’organisation linéaire laurentienne :
un corridor et une ville-seuil
Résumé
Cette étude constitue le dernier chapitre du livre Le Saint-Laurent, grande
porte de l’Amérique, publié en 1980 chez Hurtubise HMH à Montréal, dans la
série Cahiers du Québec, Collection Géographie. Ce livre a obtenu le Grand
Prix littéraire de la Communauté urbaine de Montréal en 1981, et le Prix du
Livre 1940-1990 de la Fédération canadienne des sciences sociales, en 1990.
Dans les parties précédentes, l’auteur décrit cette porte continentale, montre
son rôle dans le peuplement du continent, analyse les métamorphoses de la
voie d’eau du Saint-Laurent et des Grands Lacs pour répondre aux besoins de
transport sans cesse croissants, et présente l’énorme conflit d’intérêts que le
projet de Voie maritime du Saint-Laurent a fait naître, puis l’organisation
actuelle de la voie d’eau : les conditions de la navigation, les batelleries, les
ports et les trafics. Ce chapitre fait partie de la cinquième et dernière partie,
Le Saint-Laurent et l’organisation de l’espace. Il correspond à un
changement d’échelle, restreinte à la porte elle-même et à ses structures
particulières. Il a été écrit dans les années 1970, à un moment où les
géographes commençaient à élaborer des modèles, puis à s’en servir pour
mieux cerner les caractéristiques spatiales de leur objet d’étude. Ce texte en
est un exemple.
Abstract
This study constitutes the last chapter of the book Le Saint-Laurent, grande
porte de l’Amérique, published in 1980 as part of the series Cahiers du
Québec, Collection Géographie by Hurtubise HMH in Montréal. Awarded
the Grand Prix littéraire de la Communauté urbaine de Montréal in 1981, the
book also received the Prix du Livre 1940-1990 from the Canadian
Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences in 1990. In preceding
sections, the author describes the continental gateway, shows the role it
played in populating the continent, analyzes the metamorphoses of the Saint
Lawrence waterway and the Great Lakes for responding to ever increasing
transport needs, and presents the enormous conflicts of interest that arose
from the St. Lawrence Seaway project and the waterway’s current
organization: navigational conditions, river shipping, ports and traffic. This
chapter is part of the fifth and last section, Le Saint-Laurent et l’organisation
de l’espace. It corresponds to a change of scale—restrained at the gateway
itself and its particular structures. It was written in the 1970s, at a time when
geographers were beginning to work out models that could be used to better
define the spatial characteristics of their objects of study and of which this text
is an example.
33-34, 2006
Dans l’organisation régionale, et plus particulièrement dans le dessin de
l’armature urbaine et l’orientation des principaux flux de circulation, n’y
a-t-il pas des structures spatiales qui soulignent la réalité de l’axe fluvial?
Certes, la question a déjà été abordée par M. Yeates dans son livre La
grand-rue : Québec à Windsor, mais à une échelle différente, ce qui lui
permet d’opposer les parties ontarienne et québécoise de ce couloir majeur
du Canada, qui va de la rivière Détroit à l’estuaire du Saint-Laurent, et de
souligner le rôle décisif qu’un tel couloir joue dans le devenir du pays tout
entier. Cependant, sans perdre de vue l’importance de son prolongement
ontarien, 1’axe laurentien proprement dit ne mérite-t-il pas une attention
particulière?
LES ORIGINALITÉS DU CORRIDOR LAURENTIEN
Si un corridor selon C. Whebell est un système linéaire de villes reliées
entre elles par des moyens de transport de surface (1969, p. 1), à première
vue, 1’axe du Saint-Laurent paraît se ranger dans cette catégorie : le long de
son parcours, ne trouve-t-on pas toute une série de villes qui sont en même
temps des ports, et qui sont unies les unes aux autres non seulement par la
voie navigable, mais aussi par le rail et la route, voire 1’autoroute? Mais il
faudrait qu’une analyse plus approfondie confirme ces impressions; et on
peut se demander si les dimensions de ce fleuve nord-américain, et en
particulier sa largeur, ne créent pas dans l’espace une coupure telle qu’il en
résulte un dédoublement de l’éventuel corridor, et des rapports
exceptionnels entre les circulations longitudinale et transversale.
Les faiblesses de l’armature urbaine
1. Le rôle de l’axe fluvial dans la distribution spatiale des villes
Que l’on envisage les agglomérations de plus de 50 000 habitants, ou celles
qui ont 25 000 habitants et plus (fig. 67 et 68), un contraste extrêmement
violent apparaît, de part et d’autre de l’île d’Orléans. À 1’aval, l’armature
urbaine est encore embryonnaire, et seuls deux pôles rassemblent entre
25 000 et 29 000 habitants chacun au recensement de 1971 : Rimouski sur la
rive droite, Baie-Comeau-Hauterive sur la rive gauche. Certes, Sept-Îles est
à la veille d’entrer dans cette catégorie, puisqu’elle a 24 320 habitants en
1971, mais il n’en reste pas moins que sur plus de la moitié de son parcours
total, le Saint-Laurent ne peut absolument pas être présenté comme un axe
d’urbanisation, ce qui n’a rien d’étonnant d’ailleurs, quand on se souvient
des faiblesses du peuplement le long des rives de 1’estuaire.
À 1’amont de ce bras de mer, au contraire, on trouve sur les bords du
fleuve et de son principal affluent trois grandes villes, Québec, Montréal et
Ottawa, dont les tailles sont dans l’ensemble comparables à celles des aires
voisines, en Ontario et dans l’État de New York, la grande métropole de
l’Hudson mise a part (fig. 67). En outre, l’axe fluvial localise également
34
Figure 67.
Armature urbaine
trois centres de 50 000 à 100 000 habitants (Kingston, Cornwall et TroisRivières), tout en traversant un semis assez dense de petites villes qui se
distribuent presque toutes de façon sensiblement uniforme à l’intérieur
d’un triangle dont les sommets correspondraient aux sites de Cornwall,
Shawinigan / Grand’Mère et Sherbrooke (fig. 68). C’est pourquoi, parmi
les 19 agglomérations de plus de 25 000 habitants recensées en 1970 et
1971, entre l’île d’Orléans et le lac Ontario, on n’en compte que sept sur les
bords du fleuve : de l’amont vers 1’aval, Kingston, Cornwall, Valleyfield,
Montréal, Sorel, Trois-Rivières et Québec; mais il est vrai que ces dernières
concentrent 76,8 p. 100 de la population de l’ensemble (3 531 085 habitants,
sur un total de 4 596 103 personnes). Par conséquent, ne pourrait-on pas
parler d’un axe d’urbanisation laurentien? Et dans l’affirmative, quelles en
seraient les caractéristiques?
Parmi ces pôles riverains, les deux plus petits sont les plus proches de
Montréal : Valleyfield (37 430 hab. en 1971) est à 60 km à l’amont de la
grande métropole, Sorel (34 479 hab.) à 75 km à l’aval. Tous deux sur la rive
droite, à la différence des cinq autres, ce sont des centres industriels
rassemblant près de la moitié de leur population active dans le secteur
secondaire. Ils appartiennent à une couronne de petites villes qui gravitent
35
Figure 68.
Axe laurentien
autour de Montréal, et qui comprennent aussi, parmi les agglomérations de
plus de 25 000 habitants, Saint-Jean-Iberville, Saint-Hyacinthe, Joliette et
Saint-Jérôme (fig. 68).
De l’estuaire au lac Ontario, les cinq autres agglomérations des bords du
fleuve ont toutes plus de 50 000 habitants en 1971. Des distances à peu près
égales les séparent les unes des autres : 130 km de Québec à Trois-Rivières,
135 km de Trois-Rivières à Montréal, 120 km de Montréal à Cornwall,
mais175 km de Cornwall à Kingston. Pourtant, aucune n’est localisée au
hasard le long du fleuve : Montréal et Cornwall sont au pied de rapides, et la
première est aussi, comme Trois-Rivières, sur un confluent important.
Kingston est au contact du lac Ontario, Québec à la tête de l’estuaire. De
façon plus générale, nous avons déjà eu l’occasion de constater (chap. XIII)
que, sur l’ensemble du système hydrographique, les têtes et les pieds des
lacs, c’est-à-dire chaque rétrécissement marque du plan d’eau, et chacun de
ses élargissements importants, sont des sites privilégiés des pôles
portuaires, industriels et urbains; ces cinq villes — de même que Valleyfield
et Sorel — en constituent les exemples laurentiens.
De part et d’autre de Montréal, les principales agglomérations riveraines
s’ordonnent selon une certaine symétrie, en ce sens que Cornwall et
Trois-Rivières ont des vocations industrielles bien affirmées, tandis que
Kingston et Québec s’imposent comme centres de commerce et de service.
36
Par rapport au pôle montréalais, cette distribution symétrique des
principales agglomérations se renforce quand on y ajoute les deux petits
centres industriels de Valleyfield et de Sorel, et surtout les deux seules villes
importantes qui ne sont pas localisées sur les bords du fleuve : Ottawa et
Sherbrooke. La première est à 200 km de la grande métropole, et la seconde
à 150 km, et toutes deux se situent sur un axe secondaire Ouest-Est
recoupant celui du Saint-Laurent à Montréal. Il est vrai qu’au niveau des
dimensions comme sur le plan des activités dominantes, cette symétrie
s’estompe quelque peu, non seulement parce que l’une de ces
agglomérations est six fois plus populeuse que 1’autre, mais aussi parce que
la ville d’Ottawa, en tant que capitale fédérale, rassemble les trois quarts de
sa population active dans le secteur tertiaire, tandis que Sherbrooke a une
fonction industrielle proportionnellement plus importante.
Mais il n’en reste pas moins que dans l’ensemble, les agglomérations de
plus de 50 000 habitants se distribuent dans 1’espace de façon telle qu’elles
soulignent deux phénomènes importants :
·
·
d’une part, la position centrale de Montréal, qui dans cette
perspective apparaît comme une véritable métropole (et nous allons
revenir sur ce point);
d’autre part, 1’étirement de ce réseau urbain le long de l’axe fluvial,
et particulièrement sur sa rive gauche, qui accueille sans exception
toutes les agglomérations des bords du fleuve comptant plus de 50
000 habitants.
2. Deux rives fort contrastées quant à l’urbanisation
De prime abord, ce déséquilibre entre les deux rives ne paraît-il pas
surprenant? En effet, sur la berge méridionale, les principales
concentrations de population résultent du débordement des deux plus
grandes agglomérations qui ont grandi de l’autre côté du fleuve : 50 000
habitants autour de Lévis et de Lauzon, en face de Québec, et plus de
200 000 habitants aux débouchés des ponts de Montréal. Viennent ensuite
quelques petites villes industrielles, comme Ogdensburg et Massena1, qui
en 1970 n’atteignent ni l’une ni l’autre 15 000 habitants, ou Valleyfield et
Sorel. Au total, rien de comparable à l’alignement urbain de la rive gauche.
Un tel contraste peut-il s’expliquer de façon rationnelle, ou n’est-il que
1’effet du hasard? Certes, dans plusieurs cas, il se trouve que la rive gauche
offre des sites nettement plus intéressants que la rive droite, et c’est ce que
les Français ont reconnu dès le départ en fondant leurs chefs-lieux sur les
bords du Saint-Laurent. À Québec, c’est une colline facile à défendre tout
en permettant une surveillance aisée de la circulation sur le fleuve; à ses
pieds, des espaces suffisants pour les entrepôts, et une rive bien abritée des
vents dominants, et nettement moins encombrée de glaces que la rive
droite. À Trois-Rivières, le Platon situé immédiatement à l’amont du
37
confluent du Saint-Maurice correspond en même temps à de grandes
profondeurs naturelles, toutes proches de la rive gauche, comme à Québec.
Enfin, au pied des premiers rapides, les terrasses du Mont-Royal sont à
l’abri des inondations, à la différence de la rive droite, longtemps exposée à
ce fléau; en outre, le chemin de portage vers le lac Saint-Louis est beaucoup
plus court et direct sur l’île de Montréal qu’en contournant le bassin de La
Prairie sur la berge méridionale.
Si l’on peut se plaire à considérer ces sites favorables comme la part du
hasard, il ne faut pas non plus négliger des explications d’ordre plus
rationnel. Depuis les débuts de la Nouvelle-France en effet, « l’arrièrepays » du Saint-Laurent s’est toujours situé essentiellement sur la rive
gauche. Ceci tient d’abord à la répartition des masses continentales de part
et d’autre du fleuve. Avec son orientation du SO au NE, celui-ci donne accès
à des espaces beaucoup plus étendus sur sa rive gauche que sur sa rive
droite, et ce contraste se retrouve dans la délimitation du bassin
hydrographique. Surtout, depuis les débuts de la colonisation, les richesses
que l’on a exploitées et évacuées par la voie du Saint-Laurent, qu’il s’agisse
des fourrures, du bois, des céréales, ou des ressources minières, se situent
pour 1’essentiel au nord et à l’ouest du fleuve. Enfin, des facteurs
historiques et politiques ne sont pas à sous-estimer. À l’arrivée des premiers
colons, et aux moments décisifs de la fondation des chefs-lieux, la présence
hostile des Iroquois sur la rive droite a certainement milité contre toute
installation permanente au sud du Saint-Laurent. Par la suite, la progression
des Anglais puis des Américains vers l’intérieur, à partir de leurs positions
du littoral atlantique, a conduit, on l’a vu (chap. VI et VII), à
1’établissement d’une frontière sur le Saint-Laurent supérieur, ce qui a
forcé les autorités britanniques à établir leurs voies de communication vers
le Haut-Canada sur la rive gauche (canaux, puis chemins de fer). La
croissance des pôles-relais tels que ceux de Cornwall et de Kingston en a été
vivement stimulée, tandis que l’axe urbain de la berge septentrionale s’est
prolongé jusqu’au lac Ontario.
C’est pourquoi le Saint-Laurent peut être considéré dans une certaine
mesure comme une sorte de seconde façade maritime, 400 km en arrière de
la première, non seulement par ses possibilités sur le plan de la navigation,
et par son orientation générale parallèle au littoral atlantique, mais aussi
parce que, au-delà des Appalaches, il donne accès à un immense
arrière-pays du côté de l’intérieur, ce qui s’est traduit par la localisation des
pôles urbains et portuaires les plus importants sur la rive gauche, alors qu’au
contraire la berge méridionale, qui n’ouvre que sur des territoires assez
limités, a été relativement délaissée par l’urbanisation.
3. Les insuffisances de ce chapelet de villes
Cantonné pour l’essentiel sur une seule rive, ce chapelet de villes est-il à la
hauteur de la porte continentale qui lui correspond? En fait, une simple
38
comparaison cartographique avec l’Ontario et l’État de New York permet
d’en saisir immédiatement le handicap principal : une faible densité (fig.
67). En effet, les huit agglomérations de plus de 50 000 habitants situées
entre le lac Ontario et 1’estuaire (Ottawa-Hull et Sherbrooke comprises)
totalisent, en 1971, 4 203 502 habitants à l’intérieur d’une aire longitudinale
de plus de 500 km, alors qu’a l’ouest du lac Ontario, de Guelph à St.
Catharines et de London à Oshawa, dans un espace qui a moins de 250 km
de longueur, on trouve également huit agglomérations de plus de 50 000
habitants, rassemblant à la même date 4 206 120 personnes. De plus, les
premières sont relativement isolées entre de vastes espaces peu occupés,
alors que les secondes sont entourées par trois autres agglomérations
ontariennes de plus de 50 000 habitants chacune (Windsor, Sarnia et
Peterborough), et par toutes les villes américaines de la région des Grands
Lacs et de l’État de New York.
De même, une comparaison entre les deux grands couloirs menant des
lacs Ontario et Erié à l’Atlantique n’est pas favorable à l’axe laurentien : en
1971, celui-ci rassemble, rappelons-le, 4 203 502 habitants dans ses huit
agglomérations de plus de 50 000 personnes, alors que de Buffalo à New
York, les seules Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas strictement
localisées sur la route de 1’Hudson et de la Mohawk (Binghampton exclue)
concentrent, en 1970, 15 502 864 habitants2.
Certes, si l’on prend également en considération les agglomérations de
25 000 a 50 000 habitants (fig. 68), l’allure du réseau urbain de l’axe
laurentien change radicalement, en faisant surgir toute une série de petites
villes de la plaine de Montréal et de ses bordures. Pour 1’essentiel, il s’agit
de centres industriels, dont la croissance remonte au début du XXe siècle,
lorsque les usines se sont multipliées à la suite de la mise en valeur des
ressources hydro-électriques de la province, et de la politique d’industrialisation systématique pratiquée par certaines compagnies d’électricité
(chapitre XV). Mais le retard du développement urbain québécois, déjà
relevé par Raoul Blanchard (1960, 254) et Albert Faucher (1973, 113-116),
se confirme lors du recensement de 1971 : on dénombre alors dans la plaine
de Montréal et ses bordures 10 agglomérations de 25 000 à 50 000 habitants,
alors que dans le Sud de l’Ontario, de London à Oshawa, et de Guelph à St.
Catharines, cette catégorie n’existe pas : on y compte 2 unités de 50 000 à
100 000 habitants, et 6 de plus de 100 000 habitants.
Ce contraste est souligné par une carte isodémographique du Canada3,
qui montre à la fois l’énorme importance relative que prend la péninsule
ontarienne en termes de population, et la très grande faiblesse de l’armature
urbaine sur l’axe laurentien : comme le disent les auteurs, la proximité de
Montréal et de Toronto sur cette carte révèle l’absence de population et de
villes dans 1’espace qui les sépare, et prouve qu’en réalité, en termes
démographiques, et du point de vue de l’urbanisation, le corridor
Montréal-Toronto est un mythe de la géographie canadienne4; et à la
39
lumière de ce document cartographique, une telle constatation doit
évidemment être étendue à 1’ensemble du couloir laurentien. En outre,
même si on lui ajoute son prolongement ontarien, celui-ci ne peut
absolument pas soutenir une comparaison avec quelques grands corridors
urbains mondiaux (Boston-Washington, Tokyo-Osaka, Leeds-LiverpoolLondon). Non seulement il est plus long que les autres mais, quand bien
même on se limiterait à la section Montréal-Toronto, il souffre d’un très net
sous-peuplement (Canadian Transport Commission, 1; Yeates, 32-36).
Toutes localisées à moins de 100 km des rives du fleuve — la seule
exception étant celle de Sherbrooke, à 110 km du lac Saint-Pierre — les
villes du couloir laurentien constituent donc un ensemble urbain assez
isolé, peu évolué, et d’une faible densité. Ce n’est guère dans un contexte
mondial, mais uniquement dans le cadre canadien, qu’elles méritent le
terme de corridor; une telle constatation devrait-elle s’appliquer également à l’organisation de la circulation?
Une circulation longitudinale dominante
1. L’axe laurentien : un corridor de circulation complet
La voie navigable du Saint-Laurent a été doublée par le chemin de fer dans
la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle (chapitre VIII), et par l’autoroute depuis
1950. À l’amont de Montréal, ces infrastructures de transport sont établies
sur la rive gauche du fleuve : l’autoroute 401 et l’axe ferroviaire du
Canadien National suivent la berge d’assez près et desservent toutes les
agglomérations du bord de l’eau, tandis que le chemin de fer du Canadien
Pacifique passe à l’intérieur des terres. À l’aval de la métropole au
contraire, si le Canadien Pacifique et la célèbre Route du Roi suivent la rive
gauche, les infrastructures les plus importantes vers Québec et l’estuaire se
trouvent sur la rive droite, où le Canadien National et surtout l’autoroute
20, qui fait partie de la « Transcanadienne », empruntent un itinéraire assez
rectiligne de Montréal à Québec et à Rivière-du-Loup.
Ce sont ces axes de circulation parallèles au fleuve qui, dans l’ensemble,
acheminent les trafics les plus intenses, et M. Yeates a démontré cartographiquement la réalité de ce phénomène, non seulement pour les transports
routiers et ferroviaires (chapitre 7), mais aussi pour les flux aériens et
téléphoniques (chapitre 6). En outre, les cartes du réseaux de transport
d’Hydro-Québec montrent que les acheminements d’électricité obéissent
au même schéma.
2. Le Saint-Laurent, obstacle considérable pour la circulation
transversale
On peut se demander si cette orientation longitudinale des principaux flux
de transport terrestre n’est pas due au moins en partie à l’extraordinaire
coupure que le fleuve crée dans l’espace. C’est presque un paradoxe de
40
constater que le Saint-Laurent constitue à bien des égards la « rue
principale » du Québec, mais qu’en même temps, il coupe la province en
deux, en offrant un obstacle géographique considérable à la circulation
transversale.
Certes, aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, on pouvait passer d’une rive a l’autre en
canot, encore que cela ait comporté certains risques (Cahiers de
Géographie du Québec, 251). Mais c’est en hiver que, grâce aux ponts de
glace, le passage était le plus facile. Les relations Est-Ouest se trouvaient
alors interrompues, et au contraire, la circulation Nord-Sud atteignait son
maximum d’intensité : c’est l’époque privilégiée pendant laquelle les
habitants pouvaient se rendre visite d’une rive à l’autre. Pendant le reste de
l’année, d’après Jean Hamelin et Jean Provencher, ils étaient souvent
réduits à s’annoncer par signaux nocturnes une naissance, ou la mort d’un
être cher. C’est pourquoi ces deux historiens notent que la barrière naturelle
du Saint-Laurent a été si réelle qu’elle a contribué « à façonner une
mentalité nordiste et une mentalité sudiste qui sera (sic) à l’origine de
nombreuses rivalités au XIXe siècle » (CGQ, 252; Hamelin et Roby,
126-128).
Aujourd’hui, la barrière n’est pas moins forte. À l’aval de Montréal, les
impératifs de la navigation d’hiver font que l’on empêche la formation du
pont de glace, et à l’amont de l’estuaire, on a construit quelques ouvrages
d’art, mais à un coût très élevé. En effet, même là où le fleuve est le moins
large, par exemple à Québec, ou à la tête des rapides de Lachine, établir un
passage transversal permanent est une énorme affaire, non seulement à
cause de la longueur de la structure à construire, mais aussi parce qu’il faut
laisser un tirant d’air d’au moins 36 mètres pour le passage des navires.
C’est pourquoi, sur tout le parcours fluvial, on ne trouve en 1974 que 15
passages transversaux permanents, dont trois exclusivement ferroviaires
(deux ponts, et un tunnel de métro), tous localisés entre Québec et Kingston
(fig. 69), ce qui souligne la coupure particulièrement forte de l’estuaire5.
Près de la moitié de ces ouvrages (7 sur 15) se trouvent à Montréal, et ils
acheminent les trafics de très loin les plus considérables (pour ce qui est du
trafic routier, 273 000 véhicules par jour dans les deux directions en 1972,
alors que tous les autres ponts réunis ne voient pas passer l’équivalent de ce
qui transite par le seul pont-tunnel Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine!). En
termes d’infrastructures, il s’agit aussi des ouvrages les plus imposants.
Ainsi, le pont Champlain offre six voies routières sur cinq kilomètres de
longueur totale.
Cette concentration de la circulation transversale à Montréal ne
s’expliquerait-elle que par la taille de la métropole et le débordement d’une
partie de sa banlieue sur la Rive Sud? Certes, l’importance des pulsations du
début de la matinée et de la fin de l’après-midi témoignent de l’ampleur des
mouvements pendulaires, et dans cette perspective, la technique a ici
41
Figure 69.
Ponts, tunnels et traversiers du Saint-Laurent
permis d’atténuer la coupure que représente le fleuve. Mais d’autres
facteurs interviennent dans cette circulation transversale très concentrée, et
ils se situent dans l’espace bien au-delà des limites de la zone
métropolitaine. Les premiers concernent la nécessité de relations continues
vers le Sud et New York d’une part, vers les Cantons de l’Est et les
Provinces Maritimes d’autre part, et au XIXe siècle, l’émergence de
Montréal comme métropole est déjà assez nette pour que ces liaisons
convergent vers elle (Hamelin et Roby, 121-129). Les autres tiennent au
tracé de la frontière internationale et à l’organisation de la circulation
transcanadienne, et ils ont pour caractéristiques d’établir des liens
originaux entre les transports longitudinaux et transversaux, tout en
contribuant aux déséquilibres qui existent entre les deux rives fluviales.
3. Les déséquilibres entre les deux rives : le rôle de la frontière
internationale, et du lac Ontario (Lasserre, 1972)
En étudiant la mise en place du peuplement le long des rives du
Saint-Laurent supérieur, nous avons vu comment la présence d’une
frontière établie sur le fleuve et sur le 45e parallèle a conduit les deux rives à
connaître des destins tout-à-fait différents : celle du nord accueille depuis la
fin du XVIIIe siècle des moyens de communication vitaux entre la
péninsule de l’Ontario et Montréal, et elle s’est donc organisée à partir du
fleuve, tandis qu’au sud, on est en présence d’un finisterre qui s’est
développé en tournant le dos au Saint-Laurent.
42
Aussi ne faut-il pas s’étonner de constater que la géographie de la
circulation actuelle se caractérise par une violente opposition : sur la rive
ontarienne, la route no 2, le chemin de fer du Grand Tronc (Canadien
National) à double voie, l’autoroute 401, et même un oléoduc et un gazoduc
constituent l’infrastructure d’un axe de transport national entre Montréal et
Toronto; tandis que du côté de l’État de New York, il n’y a qu’une
circulation locale et régionale : tous les flux de transit entre Buffalo et
Syracuse d’une part, Albany et New York d’autre part, empruntent le
couloir de la Mohawk.
Certes, sur cette rive droite, du point de vue des infrastructures, qui sont
essentiellement routières, on trouve en fait deux axes longitudinaux : la
route 11 suit l’itinéraire de l’ancien St. Lawrence Turnpike, au pied des
Adirondacks, et en passant par Potsdam; alors qu’à partir de Massena, la
route 37 longe le fleuve vers le sud-ouest. Mais ceci permet de constater
que, des dédoublements historiques de l’axe fluvial engendrés par la
frontière vers 1835 (fig. 11), du côté canadien, l’axe intérieur du canal
Rideau n’a pu s’imposer, et d’ailleurs les canaux du Saint-Laurent se sont
vite substitués à lui, tandis que, du côté américain, et à la faveur d’une
orientation générale de la circulation vers le Sud, en tournant le dos au
fleuve, l’axe intérieur du St. Lawrence Turnpike a subsisté.
À l’ouest toutefois, ce tableau doit être quelque peu nuancé : à partir du
Pont des Mille-Îles, l’autoroute 81 des États-Unis se dirige droit vers le sud
et le couloir de la Mohawk. Cette direction, sécante par rapport au
Saint-Laurent, mais parallèle à la rive orientale du lac Ontario, souligne
davantage quelques-unes des grandes différences entre les deux rives du
fleuve, du point de vue de la géographie de la circulation. En effet, du côté
canadien, la rive Nord du lac Ontario est dans le prolongement du SaintLaurent, de sorte que Kingston n’est qu’une étape sur un grand axe de
transport quasi rectiligne qui a une importance continentale, se poursuivant
au NE jusqu’à la mer, et au SO jusqu’à Chicago. Ceci signifie que, par
rapport à cet axe, toute la largeur du lac Ontario est prise en quelque sorte
aux dépens de l’État de New York, si bien que la façade laurentienne et
lacustre de ce dernier, à la différence de celle de l’Ontario, comprend
plusieurs angles et détours qui lui enlèvent tout intérêt du point de vue de la
circulation générale. Dans cette perspective, Cap Vincent en face de
Kingston, est fort excentrique par rapport à un axe Ogdensburg-Watertown,
et ce n’est qu’un petit « bout du monde »; surtout, même sans la frontière, la
rive gauche est plus favorable pour la circulation continentale que la rive
droite.
Cette concentration des transports parallèles au fleuve sur la rive gauche
entraîne de chaque côté des déséquilibres inverses entre circulation
longitudinale et circulation transversale. Ainsi, ne retient-on pas généralement d’Ogdensburg que son rôle — surtout passé — de porte transversale
de l’État de New York vers le Canada, alors que du côté ontarien, cette
43
même fonction exercée par Prescott a été masquée par son rôle d’étape sur
un grand axe de circulation longitudinal?
Ces contrastes au niveau de la circulation ne sont certainement pas
étrangers aux oppositions que l’on enregistre également dans
l’organisation des réseaux urbains locaux. Du côté ontarien, en effet, on
rencontre un réseau strictement linéaire et riverain : Cornwall, Morrisburg,
Prescott, Brockville, Gananoque et Kingston ne forment-ils pas les
maillons d’une chaîne d’arpenteur tendue entre Montréal et Toronto? La
situation de ces villes comme relais, étapes d’un axe national de circulation
se retrouve dans leur configuration géographique : toutes, sauf Gananoque
et Kingston, sont des « villes-sandwiches » dont le développement a été
longtemps comprimé entre la rive fluviale et le chemin de fer du Grand
Tronc (McArthur, chap. V à VIII; Lasserre 1967, 319-324). Du côté de
l’État de New York, par contre, les centres se repartissent sur deux
alignements différents qui correspondent aux routes 11 et 37 déjà
mentionnées. Compte tenu de l’espace disponible entre le fleuve et les
Adirondacks, la disposition de ces petites villes en quinconce n’est pas sans
évoquer le schéma de Christaller.
N’est-il pas intéressant de noter au passage que ce contraste entre une
organisation linéaire et un réseau en quinconce est exactement le contraire
de ce qu’appelleraient les conditions naturelles? Car dans cette section de la
vallée du Saint-Laurent, la dissymétrie transversale est particulièrement
forte, si bien qu’à partir du fleuve, les Basses Terres ont une largeur deux
fois plus grande sur la rive gauche que sur la rive droite. Peut-être une
première explication réside-t-elle dans le fait que du côté de l’État de New
York, il y a un vide humain relatif en arrière des Basses Terres, sous la forme
du massif des Adirondacks; alors que sur l’autre rive, l’essor d’Ottawa, à 70
km du Saint-Laurent, a « gelé » le dévelop- pement de tout centre situé sur
l’interfleuve de la Mésopotamie ontarienne? Mais il est bien certain que la
géographie de la circulation, telle qu’elle vient d’être esquissée, a joué un
rôle déterminant dans la genèse de cette antinomie.
4. Les déséquilibres entre les deux rives : circulation longitudinale et
circulation transcanadienne
Cependant, le rôle de la frontière ne se limite pas au Saint-Laurent
supérieur : dans la mesure où, à partir du Nord du New Hampshire, cette
ligne de démarcation se redresse vers le nord-est jusqu’à 50 km de
Rivière-du-Loup, elle crée des problèmes dans les relations entre la vallée
du Saint-Laurent et les Provinces atlantiques. Si l’Ontario s’enfonce en
coin dans le territoire des États-Unis, le Maine fait de même aux dépens du
Canada. C’est pourquoi, mis à part le « court-circuit » que représente
l’itinéraire ferroviaire du Canadien Pacifique entre Montréal, Sherbrooke
et Saint-Jean (Nouveau-Brunswick) à travers le Maine, une grande partie
de la circulation transcanadienne se confond avec la circulation
44
longitudinale, de Montréal à Rivière-du-Loup, et ceci est souligné par l’axe
ferroviaire du Canadien National comme par l’autoroute 20, sur la rive
droite du fleuve.
Cette combinaison des flux longitudinaux et transcanadiens, en grande
partie réunis dans la section centrale de l’axe laurentien, se traduit dans
1’espace par plusieurs phénomènes :
a) Dans la mesure où elle est sécante par rapport au fleuve, c’est-àdire Est-Ouest, la circulation transcanadienne se manifeste par un
corridor secondaire Ottawa-Sherbrooke dont on peut noter la
réalité dans le réseau urbain comme dans les infrastructures de
circulation et dans les cartes de flux (Yeates, 211, 242, 247, 248,
253).
b) Le long de l’axe laurentien proprement dit, un corridor constitué
par un système linéaire de villes et par des moyens de transport de
surface les liant les unes aux autres existe bel et bien à l’amont de
Montréal, sur la rive gauche et, d’une façon embryonnaire, à
l’aval de Québec, sur la rive droite, où la faiblesse du peuplement
n’a pas empêché la croissance de petites villes-étapes telles que
Montmagny, Rivière-du-Loup et Rimouski. Mais, entre Montréal
et Québec, on assiste à un véritable dédoublement du corridor :
une branche est établie sur la rive gauche, tandis que l’autre
emprunte un itinéraire plus rectiligne passant à l’intérieur des
terres à la faveur d’un léger arc de cercle vers le nord-ouest
dessiné par le fleuve entre ces deux villes. Ainsi, un centre du bord
de l’eau comme Sorel est totalement à l’écart des principaux flux,
un autre comme Trois-Rivières ne voit passer qu’une partie des
transports longitudinaux, mais par contre de petites villes non
riveraines comme Saint-Hyacinthe et Drummondville ont la
chance d’être situées sur le principal corridor de circulation
québécois et transcanadien. Celui-ci ne s’est-il pas développé là
non seulement parce qu’il représente la distance la plus courte,
mais aussi parce qu’il constitue l’axe central de l’œkoumène
dense de la province, qui s’épanouit justement entre Montréal et
Québec, mais pour plus des trois quarts au sud du fleuve?
Au droit du lac Saint-Pierre et de Drummondville, l’écart qui existe entre
les infrastructures de circulation de la rive nord et celle de « l’axe central »
atteint 60 km. C’est donc beaucoup plus qu’un simple dédoublement des
voies de transport continentales sur chaque berge, comme cela existe le
long du Rhin à l’aval de Bâle, ou le long du Rhône au sud de Lyon. Le
déséquilibre entre les deux rives proprement dites du Saint-Laurent moyen
n’en est que plus grand.
c) Enfin, dans une très large mesure, ces flux longitudinaux et
transcanadiens passent de la rive gauche à la rive droite du fleuve à
45
Montréal. Ils ne permettent pas seulement de mieux comprendre
l’énorme concentration de la circulation transversale sur les ponts
de cette ville; ils constituent un élément non négligeable dans la
position de la métropole.
LA PUISSANCE DE LA VILLE-SEUIL MONTRÉALAISE
Un nœud de circulation de premier ordre
L’intersection à Montréal des axes laurentien et transcanadien constitue en
effet un atout exceptionnel. Plus à l’ouest, Toronto ne jouit pas d’une
position comparable, dans la mesure où sa situation relativement
méridionale, si elle favorise l’établissement de liens étroits avec le
Nord-Est des États-Unis, la place relativement à l’écart de l’axe transcontinental canadien. Au contraire, Montréal est une étape indispensable
de ce dernier : entre la frontière américaine et la masse du Bouclier, elle
contrôle le seul passage Est-Ouest de l’Est du Canada. C’est pourquoi la
métropole montréalaise est un nœud absolu du réseau de transport de ce
pays : toute la circulation ferroviaire et routière, de même que les
mouvements des navires sur la voie d’eau laurentienne, passent
obligatoirement par cette ville.
Ceci en dépit de ce que suggère l’examen d’une carte des réseaux. De
Berthierville à Lachute par Joliette, la route 158, qui souligne la limite
méridionale des Laurentides, n’est pas très attrayante pour le transit de
longue distance, compte tenu des possibilités offertes par les autoroutes.
Dans le domaine ferroviaire, tous les convois de marchandises passent
nécessairement par les gares de triage de Montréal, et les rares trains-blocs
qui font exception transitent néanmoins sur les lignes de la métropole
laurentienne. Quant à la voie ferrée du Canadien National qui, à partir de
Québec, se dirige vers le Nord de l’Ontario et la Prairie, elle ne fonctionne
plus en tant que route transcontinentale : elle est utilisée exclusivement
pour la desserte locale et régionale, et notamment pour les transports entre
le Nord de l’Ontario, l’Abitibi et la vallée du Saint-Laurent.6
Dans l’organisation des réseaux de circulation canadiens, Montréal est
donc un nœud vital qui paraît encore plus important que celui de Winnipeg.
Replacés dans un tel contexte, les ponts de Montréal acquièrent même une
valeur stratégique primordiale : ne sont-ils pas aussi indispensables à
l’unité canadienne que le pont de Wuhan sur le Yang-Tse-Kiang, entre le
Nord et le Sud de la Chine?
Ce statut de nœud absolu de la circulation canadienne, Montréal le doit
essentiellement à la géographie : non seulement aux rapides de Lachine, qui
ont imposé la création d’une tête de portage et de transbordement, et un lieu
de contact entre deux types de navigation, mais aussi à une position de
carrefour exceptionnelle, soulignée par la confluence des rivières que les
46
hommes ont doublées de voies de circulation continentales, et à cette
« trouée » entre les Laurentides et les Adirondacks dont le Canada n’a pas
d’équivalent sur le même méridien. Certes, une position assez centrale par
rapport à la plaine la plus fertile du Québec n’est pas non plus étrangère au
développement de la ville (Blanchard 1953, 173-203). Mais, depuis le
début, le moteur essentiel de la croissance montréalaise ne procède-t-il pas
de l’existence d’un lieu de passage obligé? À la fois ville-porte et ville-pont,
Montréal ne constitue-t-elle pas une ville-seuil telle que l’a définie A.F.
Burghardt (1971)?
Une ville-seuil à horizon d’influence renversé
En fait, cet auteur ne définit pas seulement une ville-seuil par rapport à la
géographie de la circulation, et en termes de lieu de passage obligé, mais
aussi par rapport à un espace de desserte, auquel elle peut apporter, par
exemple, les immigrants, les innovations techniques, ou des articles
manufacturés, tout en y collectant une production forestière, agricole ou
minière. Dans cette perspective, elle se situe comme un intermédiaire
indispensable entre deux aires séparées par un fort gradient démographique, culturel ou économique; elle est à la fois un nœud de connexion
dans le cadre d’un système de flux de circulation, et un instrument de liaison
entre une aire de desserte ou de mise en valeur d’une part, la métropole d’un
empire colonial ou le centre de gravité du continent d’autre part.
Pour rendre compte de l’essor et du rôle actuel de Montréal, ne faut-il pas
faire appel à un tel modèle? Effectivement, grâce à la voie d’eau
laurentienne, cette cité se développe d’abord comme un grand emporium
des fourrures collectées dans un vaste espace s’étendant jusqu’aux
Rocheuses. Puis au XIXe siècle, les canaux et les chemins de fer, qui
améliorent et prolongent la route du Saint-Laurent, lui permettent de
peupler et de mettre en valeur le Haut-Canada, et la Prairie canadienne.
Cependant, Montréal ne peut garder longtemps son influence sur une zone
de desserte aussi étendue. Winnipeg grandit rapidement en tant que
ville-seuil de la Prairie, et à son tour, elle voit son horizon d’influence se
rétrécir au fur et à mesure de la croissance de places centrales telles que
Calgary et Edmonton — celle-ci devenant d’ailleurs la ville-seuil du
Nord-Ouest canadien (Burghardt, 273-276). À l’Est des Grands Lacs, l’aire
d’influence de Montréal est également mise en question par le
développement d’une autre grande place centrale, Toronto, dont la zone
d’influence s’étend sur la presque totalité de la province de l’Ontario, pour
ne laisser à la métropole laurentienne que le Québec.
Ici encore, les frontières jouent à cet égard un rôle non négligeable. On a
vu comment, dès la première moitié du XIXe siècle, et pour des raisons
politiques et nationales, le pays du Nord de l’État de New York a été
soustrait à l’aire de desserte de Montréal, tout en voyant sans cesse
renforcées ses connexions avec les grandes villes du Sud, Syracuse et Utica
47
d’une part, Albany et New York d’autre part (chapitre III). C’est pourquoi,
au sein de la vallée du Saint-Laurent, c’est un monde à part, un finisterre
dont les liens avec le reste des Basses Terres sont relativement ténus.
De même, à l’intérieur du Canada, la frontière entre les deux provinces
du Québec et de l’Ontario contribue à limiter vers l’Ouest l’extension de la
zone d’influence de Montréal, et on peut en relever plusieurs indices. Ainsi,
les journaux d’Ottawa — français et anglais — limitent considérablement
l’aire de distribution de la presse quotidienne montréalaise dans la
Mésopotamie ontarienne. Par ailleurs, sur l’autoroute « transcanadienne »
entre Montréal et Québec, le minimum de circulation recensé se situe aux
deux tiers de la distance à partir de la métropole, mais du côté de l’Ouest, sur
l’autoroute de Montréal à Toronto, ce minimum est enregistré dès le
premier quart de la distance totale, sur la section entre Morrisburg et
Iroquois. Enfin, dans la mesure où les flux téléphoniques sont considérés
comme un indice assez sûr de l’organisation spatiale des zones d’influence
urbaines, ils confirment ce diagnostic.
En effet, grâce aux études effectuées dans ce domaine (CTC 1970, 45-47;
Yeates, 209- 213), on obtient non seulement une hiérarchie des principaux
flux téléphoniques, mais aussi un schéma de l’organisation du réseau
urbain, et on constate que si Toronto domine nettement l’espace de toute la
péninsule ontarienne, directement au Nord et à l’Est, et par le moyen d’une
couronne de villes-relais telles que Kitchener, London, Hamilton et St.
Catharines au Sud et à l’Ouest, par contre la zone d’influence directe de
Montréal se limite au semis de petites agglomérations du Sud du Québec,
tandis qu’au Nord-Est et à l’Ouest, elle ne se poursuit que par l’intermédiaire des villes-relais de Québec et d’Ottawa.
Toutefois, les positions de ces deux villes moyennes par rapport à la
métropole laurentienne ne sont pas du tout comparables. En tant que
capitale provinciale, la première exerce d’importantes fonctions
administratives qui sont inséparables des activités de gestion économique
de Montréal. Elle a donc développé des liens extrêmement étroits et quasi
exclusifs avec cette dernière. Au contraire, Ottawa, grâce à son statut de
capitale fédérale, et à sa position géographique entre les deux métropoles
canadiennes, entretient des relations privilégiées avec chacune d’entre
elles, et elle peut d’autant moins être présentée comme une simple
ville-relais de Montréal que dans beaucoup de domaines, qui vont de
l’Éducation à la Voirie, en passant par les Affaires municipales et
l’aménagement du territoire, elle dépend du gouvernement provincial de
Toronto, avec tout l’Est ontarien.
C’est pourquoi, dans une très large mesure, la Mésopotamie ontarienne
échappe à la zone d’influence de Montréal, qui se trouve donc rejetée pour
l’essentiel à l’aval de la métropole. C’est ce qui nous conduit à suggérer
qu’en réalité, Montréal est aujourd’hui une ville-seuil à horizon
48
d’influence renversé ; au niveau de sa dominance sur une hiérarchie
urbaine, les transformations géoéconomiques du continent nord-américain
l’ont privée de son aire d’influence originelle, située à l’Ouest, et l’ont
amenée à se tourner vers l’Est, c’est-à-dire pour l’essentiel vers le Québec,
qui représente un marché de six millions d’habitants. Ainsi, la grande cité
laurentienne demeure une ville-seuil, mais pour assurer les relations de ce
marché québécois avec le cœur économique du continent, c’est-à-dire
l’Ontario et le Nord-Est des États-Unis. Une telle évolution est donc liée au
fait que la métropole coloniale, et de façon plus générale, l’Europe, ont
perdu tout rôle significatif dans la mise en valeur de l’Amérique du Nord :
désormais, ce sont le Nord-Est des États-Unis et la région des Grands Lacs
qui organisent toute la partie orientale du continent en fonction de leurs
besoins.
Ce rôle d’intermédiaire entre le marché québécois et le cœur économique
du continent est d’autant plus important que la ville-seuil de Montréal
s’individualise comme lieu de rencontre de deux langues et de deux
cultures, et les cartes illustrant ce phénomène ne manquent pas (Canada,
117-118; Yeates, 30-31). Un tel contact s’effectue même à l’intérieur de
l’agglomération, le long d’un « front » correspondant en gros au boulevard
Saint-Laurent et au canal de Lachine7. L’une des fonctions de Montréal
n’est-elle pas en effet d’« interpréter » le Canada français auprès de
l’Amérique anglo-saxonne, et d’assurer la présence de celle-ci au Québec?
Peut-être cette dimension linguistique et culturelle permet-elle de mieux
comprendre le phénomène de rotation de l’horizon d’influence de la
ville-seuil de Montréal? Mais il faut noter aussi qu’en dépit de l’extrême
originalité qu’assure ce contact entre francophones et anglophones, un tel
retournement n’est pas un cas isolé : A.F. Burghardt l’avait déjà noté pour
Winnipeg, Cincinnati, et Cluj (275-276, 278, 282). De plus, le phénomène
n’entraîne pas une rupture complète avec le passé, et comme cet auteur
l’avait remarqué de façon théorique (272), la métropole n’en garde pas
moins son caractère de nœud du système de circulation canadien. Ceci est
souligné par le fait que beaucoup de grandes compagnies de transport
canadiennes, publiques ou privées, ont toujours leurs sièges sociaux au pied
du Mont-Royal, notamment le Canadien National et le Canadien Pacifique,
Air Canada et les Canada Steamship Lines. À cet héritage, la métropole
laurentienne ajoute même des restes non négligeables de ses anciennes
fonctions, puisque son port transborde encore une partie des céréales de
l’intérieur du continent, tout en demeurant une importance porte du Canada
sur le monde extérieur.
Ceci nous amène à constater qu’au moins dans le cas de Montréal, le
modèle proposé par A.F. Burghardt n’est pas suffisamment élaboré. Car cet
auteur ne situe les rapports de la ville et de l’espace qu’en termes d’aire de
desserte : tributary area, service area, hinterland sont les termes qu’il
utilise de façon synonyme. Or, en fait, de tels rapports s’établissent sur deux
49
plans différents. II y a certes un horizon de desserte qui relève de la
géographie des transports, mais il y a aussi un horizon d’influence qui
permet de définir la place du centre considéré dans la hiérarchie urbaine, et
ces deux niveaux ne peuvent absolument pas être confondus. C’est pourtant
l’erreur que commet A.F. Burghardt au cœur de son hypothèse, lorsqu’il
envisage dans l’aire de desserte de la ville-seuil la croissance de places
centrales (269-270, 272-273).
Comme pour souligner l’importance de cette lacune conceptuelle, le cas
de Montréal montre que l’émergence d’une grande place centrale à l’Ouest
a eu pour conséquence, en partie grâce au tracé des frontières internationale
et interprovinciale, le renversement de l’horizon d’influence de cette ville,
qui s’est retourné vers le Québec, main non de son aire de desserte, qui s’est
maintenue jusqu’à nos jours, notamment par l’arrière-pays portuaire,
beaucoup plus profond vers l’Ouest que vers l’Est, au moins pour certains
types de produits tels que les céréales et les marchandises générales. C’est
pourquoi l’exemple montréalais nous paraît beaucoup plus riche que ceux
qu’a choisis A.F. Burghardt, car la métropole du Saint-Laurent est une
ville-seuil dans cinq dimensions différentes :
·
·
·
·
·
à titre de nœud absolu du système de transport canadien;
en tant que ville-pont, et lien indispensable entre les organisations
régionales de l’Est et celles de l’Ouest;
porte du Canada sur le monde atlantique, elle dispose d’un
arrière-pays portuaire d’envergure nationale, situé pour l’essentiel à
l’Ouest;
ville-seuil du Nord-Est, comme Edmonton est la ville-seuil du
Nord-Ouest, elle est devenue un intermédiaire obligé entre le cœur
économique du continent, et une zone d’influence localisée surtout à
l’Est, et qui comprend non seulement le marché québécois de six
millions d’habitants, mais aussi la « frontière » du Nouveau-Québec
et du Labrador.
enfin, lieu de rencontre de deux langues et de deux cultures, elle
acquiert à ce titre une place primordiale sur l’échiquier canadien.
Dans cette perspective, ne peut-on pas mieux comprendre la « dominance »
de Montréal au sein du couloir laurentien?
Ainsi, les deux concepts de corridor et de ville-seuil nous ont permis de
mieux saisir les caractéristiques géographiques fondamentales de l’axe
laurentien. Le corridor existe beaucoup plus en termes de géographie de la
circulation qu’au niveau du réseau urbain; il est pour l’essentiel le fruit
d’une construction géopolitique du XIXe siècle, bâtie dans le cadre de
l’Empire britannique, et dans le contexte d’une certaine compétition avec
les grandes voies de pénétration des États-Unis. Mais, en l’absence de
charbon et de minerai de fer, il n’a pu s’industrialiser et se développer aussi
rapidement que certaines régions voisines, qui ont attiré l’essentiel des
50
contingents d’immigrants, et une partie non négligeable de sa population,
jusqu’à ce que la mise en valeur des ressources hydro-électriques entraîne
— mais avec un retard difficile à rattraper — un certain démarrage
industriel. Aussi se présente-t-il aujourd’hui comme l’extrémité orientale,
mais bien fragile, d’un grand corridor Chicago-Detroit-TorontoMontréal-Québec dont la partie occidentale est considérée par C.A.
Doxiadis comme une seconde Mégalopolis8.
Toutefois, malgré les faiblesses du peuplement et de l’armature urbaine,
le corridor laurentien a connu les mêmes étapes de développement
énoncées par C. Whebell (1969) que les autres corridors nord-américains.
La dernière de ces étapes, la « métropolisation » (metropolitanism), est
soulignée par la construction d’un réseau d’autoroutes divergeant à partir
de Montréal dans toutes les directions.
Par ailleurs, le concept de ville-seuil permet de bien saisir comment la
métropole laurentienne a su tirer le parti maximum de sa position
exceptionnelle sur l’axe fluvial. Ayant réussi à éliminer la concurrence de
Québec en trouvant les moyens d’attirer jusqu’à elle la navigation
maritime, elle a cherché à se réserver pour elle seule tous les profits des
activités de transit croissantes du corridor laurentien. Certes, l’ouverture
de la Voie maritime et les progrès du port de Québec contribuent
aujourd’hui à une certaine remise en question d’un tel monopole, tandis que
la zone d’influence métropolitaine n’a pu s’étendre sur l’ensemble du
corridor. N’empêche que Montréal a pris une telle avance, qu’on peut se
demander si elle ne se développe pas aujourd’hui par un simple phénomène
de masse, en attirant sans cesse à elle ou près d’elle la population et
l’industrie — y compris les premières unités sidérurgiques intégrées du
Québec, dans la région de Sorel et de Contrecœur.
C’est pourquoi il ne faut pas s’étonner de constater le caractère à la fois
exceptionnel et solitaire de la métropole montréalaise, dont l’énorme taille
domine l’ensemble du couloir laurentien. Déjà en 1953, Raoul Blanchard
écrivait :
Accroupi au centre de sa plaine comme l’araignée au milieu de sa
toile, Montréal l’écrase de sa masse (171).
C’est encore plus vrai aujourd’hui, car la région métropolitaine approche
des trois millions d’habitants (2 743 000 au recensement de 1971), et elle
rassemblera bientôt la moitié de la population de la province de Québec
(plus de 45 p. 100 en 1971).
Cette « dominance » de Montréal n’a-t-elle pas contribué aux faiblesses
du reste de l’armature urbaine du corridor? D’autres facteurs sont
évidemment intervenus, entre autres le caractère tardif de l’industrialisation, et sa spécialisation dans une production légère, ainsi que la situation
périphérique de l’axe laurentien au sein de l’œkoumène nord-américain;
51
une situation périphérique dans un double sens, géographique, et culturel,
puisque le petit univers francophone des bords du fleuve a vécu trop
longtemps dans un certain repli sur lui-même, et dans un attachement trop
exclusif à l’agriculture9. Mais il n’en reste pas moins que la puissance de la
métropole montréalaise, et les faiblesses de l’armature urbaine du corridor
laurentien nous apparaissent comme deux aspects complémentaires d’une
organisation linéaire engendrée par des activités de transit.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Dans la mesure ou on peut considerer cette derniere comme une ville riveraine.
Les industries locales se trouvent en effet en bordure du fleuve, mais la ville
elle-memê a pour site les berges de la Grass River, à 4 km du Saint-Laurent.
Si, au lieu de considérer la Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area de la ville de
New York (11 571 899 habitants en 1970), on adopte la Standard Consolidated
Area englobant aussi le nord-est du New Jersey (16 178 700 habitants), le total
pour le couloir de l’Hudson-Mohawk passe à 20 109 665 habitants, c’est-à-dire à
peu près 1’équivalent de toute la population du Canada à la même date, dans les
seules zones métropolitaines du corridor.
Canada, Department of the Environment, Isodemographic Map of Canada,
Geographical Paper No. 50, by L. Skoda and J.C. Robertson, Ottawa, 1972,
VI11/34 p., 2 cartes h.-t.
Ibid., p. 25.
Ceci sans compter les ponts du canal de Beauharnois, les tunnels routiers sous
certaines écluses, et les ponts reliant certaines îles à la terre ferme : pont de la
Concorde à Montréal, ponts des Cent Îles du lac Saint-Pierre, pont de l’île
d’Orléans. Tous ces cas ont été exclus car ils n’assurent pas un passage complet
d’une rive à l’autre.
Charron, Pierre, Le réseau ferroviaire du Québec, Thèse de maîtrise non publiée,
Université de Montréal, 1971, p. 514.
Voir la carte des « Aires sociales » dans Greer-Wootten, « Le modèle urbain »,
dans Montréal, guide d’excursions, publié sous la direction de L. Beauregard
pour le 22e Congrès de l’U.G.I., Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1972, p. 28.
Doxiadis, C.A., « The Prospect of an International Megalopolis », dans Wade,
Mason, ed., The International Megalopolis, University of Toronto Press, 1969, p.
3-32.
Nous nous bornons ici à constater des réalités généralement reconnues, sans
vouloir entrer dans un débat devenu classique sur les origines et les causes de tels
phénomènes; ceci d’autant plus que nous avons abordé brièvement cette question
au début du chapitre VII, et que le problème a donné lieu à d’intéressantes études
(Creighton, Dales, Faucher, Hamelin et Roby, Ouellet). Voir aussi Durocher,
René et Linteau, Paul-André, Le « retard » du Québec, et l’infériorité
économique des Canadiens français, Collection d’Études d’histoire du Québec,
No 1, Éditions Boréal Express, Trois-Rivières, 1971, 132 p.
Références (pour ce chapitre)
Canada, Ministère de l’Energie, des Mines et des Ressources, Direction des levés et de
la cartographie, Atlas national du Canada, Première livraison, Ottawa, 1970, 33
planches ; Deuxième livraison, Ottawa, 1972, 30 planches.
52
Blanchard, R., L’Ouest du Canada français, « Province de Québec », tome I, Montréal
et sa région, Beauchemin, Montréal, 1953, 401 p.
Blanchard, R., Le Canada français, Fayard, Paris, 1960, 316 p.
Creighton, D.G., The Commercial Empire of the St.Lawrence, 1760-1850, Ryerson
Press, Toronto, 1937, 441 p.
Dales, J.H., Hydroelectricity and Industrial Development, Quebec, 1898-1940,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1957, 269 p.
Faucher, A., Québec en Amérique au XIXe siècle, Essai sur les caractères économiques
de la Laurentie, Fides, Montréal, 1973, XVIII/247 p.
Hamelin et Roby, Y., Histoire économique du Québec, 1851-1896, Fides, Montréal,
1971, XL/436 p.
Ouellet, F., Histoire économique et sociale du Québec, 1760-1850, Structures et
conjoncture, Fides, Montréal, 1966, XXXII/640 p.
McArthur, N.M., River to Seaway (St.Lawrence), Thèse de doctorat non publiée,
Université du Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1955, 166 p.
Cahiers de Géographie du Québec, N° spécial sur le Saint-Laurent, n°23, sept.1967,
p. 167-464 (10 articles, 4 notes, et une bibliographie par R. Leblond, p. 419-464).
Lasserre, J.-C., « Le rôle de l’aménagement du Saint-Laurent dans l’évolution de la cité
de Cornwall (Ontario) », Cahiers de Géographie du Québec, n°23, sept.1967,
p. 307-325.
Burghardt, A.F., « A Hypothesis about Gateway Cities », Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, Vol. 61, N°2, June 1971, p. 269-285.
Canadian Transport Commission, Research Branch, Intercity Passenger Transport
Study, A study of Passenger Transport in the urbanized corridor between
Windsor, Ontario, and Quebec City, P.Q., with a comparison of alternate
strategies in the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto portion of this corridor, Information
Canada, sept.1970, VIII/104 p.
Lasserre, J.-C., « Le rôle d’un fleuve-frontière : le cas des deux rives du Saint-Laurent
supérieur », Le Géographe Canadien/The Canadian Geographer, Vol.XVI, n° 3,
Automne 1972, p. 199-210.
Trotier, L., « Caractères de l’organisation urbaine de la Province de Québec », Revue de
Géographie de Montréal, vol. XVIII, 1964, N° 2, p. 279-285.
Trotier, L., « La genèse du réseau urbain du Québec », Recherches sociographiques
(Québec), vol. IX, 1968, n° 1, p. 23-32.
Trotier, L., « L’urbanisation » (du Québec), dans Trotier, L., éd., Etudes sur la
géographie du Canada, Québec, sous la direction de F. Grenier, Publications pour
le 22e Congrès de l’Union Géographique Internationale, Montréal, 1972,
University of Toronto Press, 1972, p. 47-73.
Whebell, C.F.J., « Corridors : A Theory of Urban Systems », Annals of the Association
of American Geographers, Vol. 59, n° 1, March 1969, p. 1-26.
Yeates, M, Main Street, Windsor to Quebec City, Macmillan, Toronto, 1975,
XIV/432 p.
53
Coral Ann Howells
Canadianness and Women’s Fiction
Abstract
This book, the first on Canadian women’s fiction to be published outside
Canada, was designed to introduce non-Canadian readers to the best known
Canadian women writers of the 1970s and 1980s. Feminist and postcolonial
in its approach, it explores parallels between the power politics of gender and
imperialism, which link these women’s fictions with the national search for a
distinctive identity. Among the writers discussed are: Margaret Laurence,
Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Joy Kogawa, and Anne Hébert. The main
emphases are on the significance of wilderness and women’s storytelling
strategies, constructing patterns which are both characteristically Canadian
and characteristically feminine.
Résumé
Premier livre publié à l’extérieur du Canada sur des œuvres de fiction de
Canadiennes, cet ouvrage visait à présenter aux lecteurs non canadiens les
écrivaines canadiennes les plus réputées des années 1970 et 1980. Axé sur le
féminisme et le postcolonialisme, il fait un parallèle entre la politique de la
coercition fondée sur le sexe, d’une part, et l’impérialisme, d’autre part, et
établit un lien entre ces œuvres de fiction de femmes et la recherche nationale
d’une identité distincte. Parmi les écrivaines qui y figurent, mentionnons
Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Joy Kogawa et Anne
Hébert. Le livre met surtout l’accent sur l’importance du milieu sauvage et les
stratégies qu’utilisent les femmes afin de raconter une histoire et de
construire des modèles qui soient à la fois typiquement canadiens et
typiquement féminins.
“Right, Jane,” said Professor Lotta Gutsa.
“Now, first of all we need a title … I’ve got it.
We’ll call it Wilderness Womb: The
Emergence of Canadian Women Writers –
that’s a no-loser. Women’s Studies, Canadian
Literature, the whole Bit.”
(Clara Thomas, “How Jane Got Tenure”)1
Canadian writing has always been pervaded by an awareness of the
wilderness, those vast areas of dark forests, endless prairies or trackless
wastes of snow, which are geographical facts, and written into the history of
33-34, 2006
Canada’s exploration and settlement. Throughout the Canadian literary
tradition wilderness has been and continues to be the dominant cultural
myth, encoding Canadians’ imaginative responses to their landscape and
history as an image of national distinctiveness. Professor Lotta Gutsa’s
comic suggestion of the fertility of the wilderness myth for Canadian
women writers points up the consistent feminization of a national myth
from its nineteenth-century occurrence in pioneer women’s tales to
contemporary women’s fiction, under-going some modifications in writing
which is responsive to specific historical and social circumstances but
retaining its original power as an image of female imaginative space in texts
which both mirror the outside world and transform it into the interior
landscape of the psyche. If we are looking for distinctive signs of
Canadianness in women’s novels of the 1970s and 1980s, I suggest that the
most important of these may be found in the wilderness which provides the
conditions of possibility for the emergence of Canadian women writers.
An important aspect of this study is the relationship of these
contemporary women to their literary and cultural inheritance, where the
historical resonance of wilderness cannot be neglected. All these stories
scrutinize “traditional cultural dependencies”, a phrase Canadian critic
Robert Kroetsch used to describe the efforts of the “best Canadian artists,”2
and which may be used equally well of the “best Canadian women writers”
for it points up the feminine analogy with the colonial mentality through
which Margaret Laurence described women’s condition when in 1978 she
said:
These developing feelings [re Third World cultures] related very
importantly to my growing awareness of the dilemma and
powerlessness of women, the tendency of women to accept male
definitions of ourselves, to be self-deprecating and uncertain, and
to rage inwardly. The quest for physical and spiritual freedom …
run[s] through my fiction.3
This colonial inheritance is there to be both recognized and resisted in
postcolonial Canadian literature, which registers change and slippage from
historical origins in its language and literary forms. Arguably this national
sense is exacerbated in women’s fiction by their sharpened gender sense of
marginality and cultural dispossession. As we might expect in a society like
Canada’s where there are no single origins but multiple European and
native inheritances, modern writers’ relationship to tradition is extremely
ambivalent, registering both awareness of displacement and the urge
towards the definition of an independent identity. All these stories are
crisscrossed by allusions to European and Canadian history, so signaling
the traditions within which they are written just as they all attempt to revise
these traditions to accommodate more adequately women’s experience and
knowledge. What we find are fictions that delight in the interplay of
multiple codes of cultural and literary reference. The stories are structured
through the interrelatedness of these different codes, not one of which may
56
be taken as authoritative but all of which have to be taken into account for a
more open reading of the complexity of reality.
Such multiplicity together with the refusal to privilege one kind of
discourse or set of cultural values over others is characteristic of women’s
narratives in their urge to shift the emphasis and so throw the storyline of
traditional structures of authority open to question. Shifts and questionings
involve disruption, which is a common characteristic of all these fictions
with their mixed genre codes as well as their chronological and narrative
dislocations. Most of them look like realistic fictions registering the surface
details of daily life, yet the conventions of realism are frequently disrupted
by shifts into fantasy or moments of vision so that they become split-level
discourses when alternative ways of seeing are contained within the same
fictional structure. They are fictions characterized by their indeterminacy, a
feature confirmed by their frequent open endings. The emphasis is on
process and revision so that truth is only provisional and writing is not
transparent but something to be decoded and reconstructed through the
reader’s collaborative efforts. As Margaret Atwood warns her readers:
The true story is vicious
and multiple and untrue
after all. Why do you
need it? Don’t ever
ask for the true story.4
Within this context of multiplicity and the rejection of fixed categories it
is worth considering further the historical and imaginative significance of
wilderness in the work of Canadian women writers. When the first
Europeans came to Canada in the sixteenth century they confronted an alien
landscape of silent forests in what is now Quebec and Ontario. Inevitably
those first European responses were male ones recorded through the
accounts of explorers and trappers, soldiers and missionaries. Canada was a
hostile terrain with an implacable climate and filled with hidden dangers
from indigenous Indians and wild beasts, where the European settlers felt
their existence to be a heroic struggle for survival against multiple natural
threats. The male response was either one of fear and recoil (which found its
expression in Northrop Frye’s famous “garrison mentality”) or an adventurous challenge to the unknown in journeys of exploration and later
colonial exploitation and settlement. Gaile McGregor’s recent book The
Wacousta Syndrome offers an analysis of the Canadian myth of wilderness
as alien and “other.”5 This is arguably the male myth of wilderness, but if we
look at women’s writing we find some important differences in female
versions of the wilderness reflecting their very different experiences of
colonization. Small numbers of European women came to Canada in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Frenchwomen as early as 1604 to
Acadia and 1617 to Quebec) and then they came as military wives, settlers,
57
temporary visitors or, in the case of some French women, as missionary
nuns. It is however only with the best-known nineteenth-century records of
English women’s pioneer experiences that I am concerned here and their
stories of settlement as they rewrite male pioneer myths from the woman’s
point of view. The differences in many respects conform to stereotype
gender differences, focusing on women’s domestic and private experiences
as they tried to establish homes for their families under harsh pioneer
conditions. Their letters, journals, fitions and emigrants’ guides written for
those “back home” record the facts of settlement with its privations and
dangers and their responses to the challenge of the wilderness. Certainly
terror of the unknown trackless forests is an important component in their
accounts, like the nineteenth century pioneer Susanna Moodie “surrounded
on all sides by the dark forest” which she sees as “the fitting abode of wolves
and bears” in Roughing It In The Bush.6 Yet there is also a surreptitious kind
of exhilaration, and we find in Mrs Moodie’s anxieties, as in other texts by
nineteenth-century women, an interesting doubleness of response to the
wilderness. For the vast Canadian solitudes provided precarious conditions
of existence where women were forced to redefine themselves and where
the self was discovered to be something far more problematical than
feminine stereotypes from “home” had allowed women to believe. The
wilderness of environment seems to have evoked a corresponding
awareness of unknown psychic territory within, so that the facts of
settlement provided the conditions of unsettlement as the wilderness
became a screen on to which women projected their silent fears and desires.
The wilderness was internalized as metaphor remarkably early as Marian
Fowler shows in her book The Embroidered Tent: Five Gentlewomen in
Early Canada:
These five women had to tramp through dense bush, travel by
canoe, sleep in tents and hovels, cope with sudden emergencies,
improvise and adapt in a hundred ways. On an imaginative level
the wilderness offered a mirror for the psyche, for all five
discovered images there reflecting repressed areas of consciousness … Their psyches began to run wild along with the forest
undergrowth and its furtive inhabitants. Now these women began
to identify with white water, forest fires, giant trees, and bald
eagles. These images crowd the pages of their journals.7
The wilderness as the pathless image beyond the enclosure of civilized
life was appropriated by women as the symbol of unmapped territory to be
transformed through writing into female imaginative space. It provides the
perfect image for the “wild zone,” the “mother country of liberated desire
and female authenticity” which Elaine Showalter projects as the repressed
area of women’s culture in her essay entitled “Feminist criticism in the
wilderness.”8 Showalter suggests Atwood’s Surfacing as one of the novels
which create a feminist mythology on matriarchal principles “at once
biological and ecological,” so directing attention towards this paradigmatic
58
wilderness text and pointing the way towards the transformations that
wilderness has undergone in twentieth-century Canadian women’s writing.
The wilderness is still there in contemporary urban and small-town
fiction as a feature of environment and available as metaphor or symbolic
space for the exploration of female difference. Surfacing with its transitions
between Toronto and the backwoods of Quebec exploits both the
environmental and mythic aspects of wilderness in its story of a female
psychic quest, and Marian Engel’s Bear as another quest narrative journeys
from a library in Toronto back to an island in northern Ontario where the
protagonist finds in her close contact with a wilderness creature the
necessary source for her own psychic renewal. In both these novels the
wilderness remains deeply symbolic, never becoming a literal alternative to
civilized living as it does in Joan Barfoot’s Gaining Ground, but a place of
refuge and rehabilitation, which the protagonists leave when they are ready
to return refreshed to the city. Both are feminized versions of the
authentically Canadian ambivalence to wards city living and survival in the
wilderness. Pockets of wilderness survive in many of Atwood’s urban
fictions, where Toronto’s ravines provide a wilder dimension to that city’s
neat lawns and ordered spaces in The Edible Woman, Lady Oracle and the
short story “Bluebeard’s Egg.” What is true of Toronto is even truer in
fictions about small towns like Margaret Laurence’s prairie town of
Manawaka or Alice Munro’s south-west Ontario towns of Jubilee and
Hanratty, where the enclosed community defines itself against the
surrounding wilderness and where the edges of town signalled by the spots
where the sidewalks and streetlights cease provide that wasteland occupied
by the more marginal members of the community and by the public rubbish
dump. Munro’s and Laurence’s heroines are brought up in such borderland
territory and they retain their doubleness of vision in their adult lives. Their
perceptions that the wilderness as place/state of mind is not something that
can be entirely shut out are written into their stories, resulting in those
moments of instability where cracks open in the realistic surface to reveal
dark secret places within social enclosures. Del Jordan in Lives of Girls and
Women knows that the memory of the wilderness lies beneath the solid brick
houses and neat streets of her town just as surely as it is still there underneath
the bridge or down beside the Wawanash river, so that her stories begin to
look like mosaics of secret alternative worlds that coexist with ordinariness
as everything presents a double image of itself. The same kind of doubleness exists for Morag Gunn in The Diviners, where coming to terms with the
past as an adult involves a journey through the wilderness of memory to a
homecoming in a log farmhouse in Ontario far from the prairie town where
she grew up. As she knows, wilderness living should be updated to fit the
needs of women in the late twentieth century. The updating of wilderness as
myth or metaphor includes the imaginative transformation of Toronto itself
into “unexplored and threatening wilderness” in Atwood’s Journals of
Susanna Moodie and Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women, of Montreal in
Marie-Claire Blais’s Nights in the Underground, and perhaps most
59
deviously in Anne Hébert’s Héloïse where the underground of Paris
becomes the world of the past which disrupts and destroys the world of the
living.
Continuities may be seen in the way that Janette Turner Hospital uses
wilderness in her Indian novel The Ivory Swing as symbolic space for the
exploration of unknown regions of the female self. Joy Kogawa’s Obasan
as the history of the dispossession of Japanese-Canadians uses a hostile
prairie wilderness as its setting so that this novel looks in many ways like a
revision of nineteenth-century Canadian immigrants’ experiences of
solitude and unbelonging in the New World. However, in both these novels,
as in Surfacing and Bear, wilderness is not presented as an alternative to
twentieth-century existence but rather as a place to be emerged from with
strength renewed. Such a variety of treatments not only illustrates the
transformations of the wilderness myth in women’s fiction but also signals
women’s appropriation of wilderness as feminized space, the excess term
which unsettles the boundaries of male power. These are not fictions which
aspire towards androgyny but rather towards the rehabilitation of the
feminine as an alternative source of power; wilderness provides the textual
space for such imaginative revision.
The rehabilitation of the feminine is an important feature of Canadian
women writers’ sense of their relation to literary tradition, and a quotation
from Marian Engel’s novel No Clouds of Glory aptly focuses these
concerns:
Those of us who operate from bastard territory, disinherited
countries and traditions, long always for our non-existent mothers.
For this reason I devilled five years – six? When did I start? how
many? – in the literature of Australians and Canadians, hoping to
be the one to track her down.9
Engel has feminized the whole question of inheritance in colonial and
postcolonial cultures by conflating mother country and literary tradition, so
focusing on the sense of unbelonging and the search for origins which is a
general characteristic of Commonwealth writing as well as a specific
characteristic of much women’s writing. Though my main interest is in the
feminine literary traditions within which contemporary Canadian women
are working, the question of literary inheritance relates to wider concerns of
Commonwealth and women writers’ perceptions of their relation to
history. It was Virginia Woolf writing within the English tradition who
said, “As a woman, I have no country,” a statement about unbelonging
which is strikingly elaborated in the 1970s Canadian context by Atwood:
We are all immigrants to this place even if we were born here: the
country is too big for anyone to inhabit completely, and in the parts
unknown to us we move in fear, exiles and invaders. This country
is something that must be chosen – it is so easy to leave – and if we
choose it we are still choosing a violent duality.10
60
This statement pushes beyond Woolf and Engel as it demonstrates
clearly how being a Commonwealth writer and a woman problematizes
one’s sense of cultural identity and demonstrates dilemmas of allegiance.
There is a complex of attitudes here relating to lack of historical depth and
continuity of tradition in a New World society, and much postcolonial
fiction is preoccupied with finding substitutes for this lack. The substitution
comes partly through a quest for the past or indeed the creation of a past in
legends of the new country and of the mother country (or “mother
countries” in Canada, where inheritance is multiple); partly it is achieved by
taking up the languages and literary traditions of the “lost” mother cultures
and modifying them into discourse more appropriate to a place outside the
original discourses.11 The aim of both these endeavours is to establish
possibilities for the coexistence of multiple cultures within oneself which
are perceived as different from one another. As is clear in a number of these
fictions, it is a process which involves rejection as well as acceptance and
the exercise of imaginative reason till the protagonists see themselves as
inheritors and finally come to feel at home in Canada.
Turning to the question of how contemporary Canadian women writers
recuperate their literary inheritance, the first thing we notice is that none of
them has an exclusive preoccupation with the traditions of a single country
or of a single gender or literary genre. As inheritors whose historical and
cultural situation is different from their predecessors they are eclectic in
their choices. Margaret Laurence in The Diviners acknowledges Virginia
Woolf and works within the inheritance of modernism at the same time as
her protagonist is holding imaginary conversations with the nineteenthcentury pioneer Catherine Parr Traill, producing within the fiction one
novel which is a feminist revision of Shakespeare’s Tempest and another
based on the legends of the prairie Métis. Canada’s multicultural
inheritance is written into many of these fictions with their mixture of
genres as well – female gothic, sentimental romance, spy stories, animal
stories, pastorals, science fiction – in the recognition that literary traditions
have to be transformed in a process of perpetual revision. Only through
story-telling can connections with the past be realized, for inheritance
comes to possess reality only when it is re-imagined and when history and
legend are so closely interwoven that no objective truth is possible.
The problems faced by Canadians are similar to those faced by any
colonial culture like Australia or New Zealand or, earlier, the United States
which has been up against the difficulty of inheriting a mother tongue
together with its traditions and without a powerful infusion of indigenous
culture as in Africa, India or the Caribbean – except that for Canadians the
problems are further complicated by having two mother cultures and two
national languages, English and French. How to find a distinctive voice for
such a mixed society or to have that voice listened to abroad has always been
a crucial difficulty. With Canada it seems to be resolving itself in division,
as English-Canadian fiction becomes more widely known in the English-
61
speaking Commonwealth and French-Canadian within the Francophone
tradition. D. H. Lawrence focused the dilemma for American fiction when
he wrote in 1923:
It is hard to hear a new voice, as hard as it is to listen to an unknown
language. We just don’t listen. There is a new voice in the old
American classics. The world has declined to hear it, or has
babbled about children’s stories.12
Though the invisibility of American literature has now become past
history, Canadian literature is currently confronting the same problems of
being heard as a “new voice” while maintaining its “difference,” with all the
instability that this word implies. Robert Kroetsch quoting Lawrence in
1978 suggested that paradigms of other literatures “patently and blatantly”
did not enable Canadians to respond to their own literature.13 While that is
true, it is also true that readers outside Canada come to its fiction with
exactly those other literary paradigms in their heads. The range of
intertextual references I have indicated signals the relatedness of Canadian
literature to British and European traditions, which is to be expected for
these are the traditions within which most Canadian writers have been
educated. Canadian distinctiveness may be seen to lie in efforts towards
autonomy through displacing the authority of other traditions in order to
give a place to what has been traditionally regarded as marginal. As a
process of decentralization it is characteristically Canadian. Such shifts of
emphasis involve a good deal of ambivalence, which finds its most
desperate and negative expression in the work of some Québécois writers
where the weight of European history is seen to lie like a dead hand on the
present, dispossessing the living and draining the life out of them, as in
Hébert’s vampire fable Héloïse where Paris itself becomes the site of the
curse of the past.
While the search for “lost mothers” abroad is an important aspect of
Canadian literary tradition, this is not to deny that Canadian women writers
have literary mothers of their own. Contemporary women’s writing in
Canada is the culmination of a strong feminine literary tradition and one of
which modern writers are very conscious as reassuring evidence of their
creative origins in their own country. Even that tradition is double, for while
pioneer women wrote about their responses to the wilderness and their
experiences as immigrants to Canada, there has also been since the late
nineteenth century a movement in the opposite direction with Canadian
women writing about cosmopolitan experiences, like Sara Jeanette Duncan
in the 1890s who worked in the United States and in England and
accompanied her husband to India; or more recently Elizabeth Smart (By
Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept), Mavis Gallant and Anne
Hébert, all of whom have lived as expatriates for long periods. Their
internationalism forms an important strand in the multivoiced tradition of
Canadian women’s writing, though it is the national tradition where women
62
have seen themselves in distinctively Canadian conditions to which I wish
to pay more attention here.
The narratives of nineteenth-century pioneer women like the sisters
Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Traill who came from England with
their husbands in 1832 to take up farming in the wilds of Upper Canada
express a very different imaginative response to the New World from what
we find in early American or Australian fiction. In both those traditions
masculine voices predominate in stories of the challenge of a wilderness of
bushland or open plains, and the cultural myths projected are of the
“frontier” in the case of the United States and of pioneering and male
mateship in the Australian tradition. Clearly the circumstances of
colonization and the crises of colonial history were major factors in each
country’s created image of itself. Australia had its beginnings as a penal
colony where the lives of men and women convicts were officially
separated, while the great American movement west with its convoys of
covered wagons and Indian Wars represented a massive exercise in
aggressive male confrontation with wilderness. Neither of these
phenomena has a parallel in Canadian history where patterns of
colonization were more sporadic, beginning in the late sixteenth century
with isolated French and English trading posts and military garrisons plus a
few scattered settlements mainly in the east. So the pattern continued
through the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth, when
two crucial events occurred: in 1759 the English defeated the French in
Quebec and Quebec was ceded to Britain, and in 1776 the American
Revolution sent an influx into Canada of those colonists who did not wish
for independence from Britain. As W. J. Keith says,
It was this nucleus of Loyalist immigrants and settlers … – that laid
the foundations at once social, political and psychological – for
what eventually cohered as the Canadian nation.14
Only in the nineteenth century did British and European settlers come to
Canada in large numbers and to this period belong Susanna Moodie and
Catherine Parr Traill, both of whom experienced the challenge of living in
the backwoods of Canada and wrote about it for readers back home in
England, especially prospective female settlers. Moodie’s Roughing It In
The Bush (1852) is as much aimed at educating her readers about conditions
in the new colony as Traill’s Female Emigrant’s Guide (1854) which was
reprinted as The Canadian Settlers’ Guide.
Neither Roughing It In The Bush nor The Female Emigrant’s Guide is
fiction,15 though both shape immigrant experiences in relation to existing
fictional models. Moodie with her responses to sublime scenery and her
sense of exile in dark forests writes in the female gothic mode, while Traill
takes a male model of survival in the wilderness likening herself to Defoe’s
Robinson Crusoe, for she possessed, as Marian Fowler argues, the same
combination of piety, practicality and determined optimism. Clara Thomas
63
points out that she was the “ideal coloniser” determined to name and order
and control “the maze of interminable forest” according to her own
imported cultural values.16 She is the personification of the Victorian
Protestant work ethic in its feminine form: “In case of emergency it is folly
to fold one’s hands … it is better to be up and doing,” a sentence of hers
which Margaret Laurence quotes with rueful admiration in The Diviners.
Both Moodie and Traill write in the genre of the female Bildungsroman
which Maggie Butcher perceives as a distinctive form in Commonwealth
literature, where women chronicle their emergence from the stereotype of
the proper lady into the Canadian pioneer of energetic initiative.17 Their
emphasis is on women’s strength in the absence of men or even in the
presence of husbands who are unfitted for life in the backwoods. While
Carol Shields points to a pattern of reversal of sexual roles in these pioneer
narratives,18 she neglects the doubleness of Victorian women’s awareness
where wifely duty counterbalances their sense of their own power, resulting
in strategies of obliqueness in their narratives of the split self which Atwood
perceives a hundred years later as so characteristic of Moodie’s feminine
consciousness.
The other remarkable nineteenth-century female narrative of wilderness
is Anna Jameson’s Winter Sketches and Summer Rambles (1838). She was
not a settler but a visitor to Canada; her husband was Attorney-General in
Upper Canada and her visit confirmed their plans for a separation, after
which she returned alone to England. As a widely travelled literary woman
who had already written books on the influence of women on “men of
genius” and one on Shakespeare’s heroines, she came to Canada in 1836
with the image of herself as a female hero in the Byronic mode and
undertook a two-month journey alone to northern Ontario. As she wrote to
her mother in triumph:
I am just returned from the wildest and most extraordinary tour you
can imagine, and am moreover the first English-woman – the first
European female – who ever accomplished this journey. I have
had such adventures and seen such strange things as never yet were
rehearsed in prose or verses.19
These things never yet rehearsed gave Anna Jameson the metaphorical
language to describe her inner quest so that, as Fowler claims, her narrative
stands as archetype for many later quests in Canadian women’s fiction.
Surfacing and Bear are the most recent though not the only examples, and
two earlier narratives should be included to mark the continuity of this
tradition. First come Emily Carr’s autobiographical accounts of her
journeys as a painter through the forests of British Columbia between 1898
and the 1930s. Here she traces the pattern of a visionary quest through the
wilderness recording as she passes signs of primitive female power in the
abandoned Indian totem figures on the West Coast.20 There is also Ethel
Wilson’s novel The Swamp Angel (1954) which begins as a woman’s flight
from the constraints of an unhappy marriage and becomes a journey of
64
self-discovery for the heroine in the mountain wilderness of British
Columbia. This Canadian female literary tradition gains its strength from
women’s recognition of their crucial importance in the history of
settlement, for while women’s work has been “largely taken for granted as
part of the natural backdrop against which important ‘man-made’ history
like railway construction or dominion-provincial relations occurs,”21
women have never taken it for granted and have redefined their relation to
the “natural backdrop.”22 Contemporary writers use the same rhetoric of
wilderness as their nineteenth-century predecessors, revising their
inheritance to accommodate modern versions of similar experiences, but
still multiplicity is the key in the multiple facets of the self and the multiple
stories contained within the maze of narrative reconstruction.
The awareness of such multiplicity problematizes the sense of one’s own
identity for instead of the self being solid and unified it becomes a more
shifting concept without fixed boundaries, something for which
“wilderness” would be an appropriate analogy. This feminine awareness
finds interesting parallels in the problematic concept of Canadian national
identity which has notoriously escaped definition, being variously
described as “negative,” “plural,” or “decentralized.”23 All of these
adjectives relate to historical problems of Canada’s double colonial
inheritance and its relationship to the United States, as well as reflecting the
internal tensions of a linguistically divided culture of great ethnic diversity
and conflicting regional interests. Canada evades any easy definition
geographically or culturally. It does not have a unified image of itself as a
nation, unlike the United States which has created and exported a myth of
Americanness which is as easily identifiable in its literary and filmic
images as in its political rhetoric. Of course there are historical reasons for
this positive self-definition of the US which go back to the Declaration of
Independence; Canadian national ideology has no such base. As has been
pointed out by David Staines,24 Canada’s history has been shaped in a
discontinuous pattern by imperial power politics: Quebec was ceded by
France to England in 1763, the Dominion of Canada was declared by
England in 1867; only in 1965 did Canada choose the maple-leaf flag as the
symbol of its nationhood, and its Constitution was repatriated from Britain
in 1982. It has always been easier to define “Canadian” negatively, as Mavis
Gallant’s young protagonist Linnet Muir does in one of the stories in Home
Truths: “I did not feel a scrap British or English, but I was not an American
either.”25 Two features of this statement are interesting: Linnet’s youth and
her refusal to be defined from outside. Like Linnet, Canada has refused the
monolithic stories of British or US imperialism and has been evolving from
its marginal position a self-definition based on an ideology of decentralization which recognizes both its difference from outside powers as well as
its differences within. The Canadian problem of identity may not be the
problem of having no identity but rather of having multiple identities, so
that any single national self-image is reductive and always open to revision.
65
This coincidence of similar problems of self-definition in nationalist and
feminist ideology would go some way to explain why so much attention is
being paid to women writers in Canada at the present time, for their stories
seem the natural expression of the insecurity and ambitions of their society
and in many ways they provide models for stories of Canadian national
identity. These are not the only models but I am suggesting that the affinities
help to explain the visibility of women’s writing in Canada, whereas
women’s voices are not so congruent with the nation’s story in Britain or the
United States. Women’s fiction in Canada as elsewhere insistently
challenges authority, paying attention to what has been traditionally
seen/unseen as marginal, questioning the stereotype images and narratives
of their culture together with the language of its value judgements. The
deconstructionist urge to displace traditional authority structures is a basic
feature of women’s writing and has been seen as a basic feature of Canadian
writing by Robert Kroetsch.26 These women’s fictions generate a double
sense not only of women’s difference but also of their complicity in
traditional power arrangements and an awareness of their strategies of
appeasement. In some, explicit connections are made between “colonized”
female perceptions and Canadianness, as with Atwood’s women and
Canadians and Americans in Surfacing or Kogawa’s delicate but insistent
analogy between women’s silence and that of the Japanese-Canadians in
World War II. If the narrative forms these stories take are often fragmented
or fantastic this should come as no surprise, for these are stories about
processes of discovery and recovery which are still incomplete, as the
tentative endings of so many of them suggest.
Canadianness remains a problematic category in women’s fiction, where
multiple voices and points of view indicate the differences between writers.
In Surfacing, The Diviners, Lives of Girls and Women, Bear, Obasan and
Nights in the Underground the geographical signals locate narratives in
specific Canadian places, yet the perspectives on Canadian social and
cultural values are unmistakably plural. In Latakia, The Ivory Swing and
some of the Gallant stories set abroad memories of Canada form a sub-text
only, while for intensely subjective or fantastic narratives like Dancing in
the Dark and Héloïse referentiality to any world outside the fiction is
unimportant. Héloïse and The Handmaid’s Tale only allude to Canada as
the impossible haven of escape, and for the narrator of Dancing in the Dark
to be anywhere else but “home” was “to be nowhere at all.” Though in some
of these novels signs of national identity may be difficult to decipher for
readers outside the culture, the signs of gender identity are plain and there is
no way any reader would not know that they were all written by women. The
question arises as to whether there are identifiable features in women’s
narratives which are gender specific (i.e. found only in women’s writing).27
I am not at all sure that there are, but there are habitual ways of looking at the
self and the world reflected in configurations of imagery and narrative
strategies which because of their frequent occurrence may be seen as gender
distinctive. As is to be expected on such an issue as gender, the question of
66
difference is one of dominant characteristics rather than mutually exclusive
categories, and arguably it is the overlap between feminine and masculine
gender characteristics which is most interesting in literature. All of which is
not to compromise the difference of women’s fiction but merely to
acknowledge that it is a matter of degree and not of kind – as again is to be
expected given that interrelatedness rather than separateness is the common
human condition. Women are deeply implicated in the existing structures
of the social world as mothers, daughters, lovers and wives, so that it is a
paradox of most women’s position that any search for new ways of
restructuring their lives and their stories has to acknowledge their genuine
need for affective relations and responsibilities at the same time as they
register resistance to such constraints.
Women’s fiction is insistently double in the recognition of contradictions
within the self and the perceptions of incongruity between social surfaces
and what is hidden beneath them. It is interesting to find gothic fantasy, that
old devious literature of female dread and desire, surviving in the fiction of
Atwood, Munro and Hébert, updated certainly but still retaining its original
charge of menace, mystery and malignancy. In all these stories there is an
intricate balance between the urge for self-discovery and women’s
self-doubts, between the celebration of new freedoms and a sense of
precariousness. Where such tensions form not only the material but also the
method of story-telling, women’s narratives are seen to share many of the
characteristic features of modernist and postmodernist writing as it has
developed since the 1920s. In these mixed fictions realism is often
disrupted by fantasy, and fragmentation and multiplicity coexist with
moments of vision and order. They all have their moments of unity where
the protagonist feels in serene possession of herself, though such unity
quickly disintegrates into ambiguity and contradiction. However, such
holistic moments are always written in, so generating the energy for the
protagonist to go on and celebrating the triumph of the female imagination
through art.
It is worth looking briefly at women’s attitudes to writing as presented in
these fictions, many of which have women writers as protagonists. As the
novelist Morag Gunn says in The Diviners,
A daft profession Weaving fabrications … Yet, with typical
ambiguity, convinced that fiction was more true than fact. Or that
fact was in fact fiction.28
Morag suggests the multiple functions of fiction writing for women as a
way of creating the illusion of order out of the random contingencies of
experience, as a way of restructuring the past, as a way of self-assertion out
of social or economic constraints. Audrey Thomas’s letter-writing heroine
in Latakia is most strongly aware of writing as order in the midst of disorder:
“Art is merely the organisation of that look at chaos.”29 Most of these novels
may be read as revisions of history told from a marginalized feminine
67
perspective, like the history of the Japanese-Canadians in World War II in
joy Kogawa’s Obasan or the story of one woman who has been dead (or
undead) for eight hundred years in Anne Hébert’s Héloïse where writing
becomes a fantastic resurrection. Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women
is a female Bildungsroman with distinct revisionist tendencies, for as the
chronicler of her own life Del Jordan also writes in the secret lives of earlier
generations of women in her family which support her from the past, so
creating through her fiction a mosaic of alternative female worlds that have
been hidden within the “living body” of social history. The implications for
women’s writing as dissent from existing structures of authority are
explored in Margaret Atwood’s Bodily Harm and The Handmaid’s Tale
both of which are forms of prison narrative where a woman’s only way of
defiance against abuses of political power is her ability to make things
visible through words. Paradoxically these fictions of confinement create
the textual space for the protagonists’ self-revisions as powerfully as those
fictions of wilderness like Surfacing and Bear where self-transformation
occurs within myths and legends of landscape.
Women’s writing often celebrates the power of the female imagination
yet such celebration is frequently accompanied by a deep unease about the
activity and the purposes of writing. There are obvious dissatisfactions with
the duplicitous nature of language and fiction-making for professional
writers like Morag Gunn, Del Jordan or Thomas’s Rachel who are aware of
the status of fiction and never mistake it for reality. Writing is a deliberate
displacement, a “fabrication” as Morag calls it, “an illusion” to use Rachel’s
words. Del Jordan registers the separation between the two in the epilogue
to Lives:
Such questions persist, in spite of novels. It is a shock, when you
have dealt so cunningly, powerfully, with reality, to come back and
find it still there.30
Perhaps the most serious doubts about the efficacy of writing are expressed
by the amateur narrator Edna Cormick who writes obsessionally in the
lunatic asylum of Joan Barfoot’s Dancing in the Dark:
What good are pages and pages of neat precise letters spiralling
into tidy words and paragraphs, if they only look good?
Underneath it is a mess.31
Fiction is always and only metaphor, a recognition signalled in the titles of
most of these novels and of which the protagonists, some of whom would
prefer to paint or to dance or to act on the stage rather than write, are aware.
This ambivalence towards writing comes from the double recognition of its
power as much as its limitations. For Alice Munro there lurks a possible
treachery in writing in her fears of the distortion of truth through language:
68
And even as I most feverishly practise it, I am a little afraid that the
work with words may turn out to be a questionable trick, an evasion
… an unavoidable lie.32
There is another kind of treachery of which Munro’s and Atwood’s
protagonists are sometimes conscious, that of writing as illegitimate
exposure when secret unseen things are made accessible to view. This
moral anxiety about fiction as scientific experiment finds its language in the
traditional image of the exposed heart which goes back to the glass hive of
eighteenth-century sentimental fiction, though there it expressed the
novelist’s desire for transparent access to the mysteries of the human
heart.33 Atwood and Munro write stories where the behaviour of the living
heart is displayed electronically, and in both primitive fear is the dominant
feeling conveyed:
He seemed so distant, absorbed in his machine, taking the measure
of her heart, which was beating over there all by itself, detached
from her, exposed and under his control.34
And:
It seemed to me that paying such close attention – in fact,
dramatizing what ought to be a most secret activity – was asking
for trouble.35
The novelist’s urge to make everything visible seems to be in conflict with
traditional feminine codes of decorum so that the activity of writing itself is
problematized in these fictions. Modern women’s ambitions are still
haunted by an older inhibiting tradition of femininity, and their efforts to
write new versions of old stories involve the double process of
disestablishment and redefinition of their feminine inheritance.
I shall end this chapter where Margaret Laurence ended The Diviners
with a homecoming and a new departure:
Morag returned to the house, to write the remaining private and
fictional words, and to set down her title.36
Margaret Laurence’s words have given me the title for this book as “private
and fictional” characterizes all these novels and short stories. They are
“private” because they are wrought out of personal and often unconscious
emotion and “fictional” because the experiences have been transformed
into the controlled multivoiced discourse of art. As invented worlds which
reinvent and reshape reality, they offer readers new possibilities and new
perspectives.
Notes
1.
Lecture given by Prof. Clara Thomas at conference on ‘Women’s studies in
Canada: researching, publishing and teaching’, York University (Downsview,
Ontario), 19-20 April, 1985.
69
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
70
Robert Kroetsch, ‘Death is a happy ending’ [1978] : reprinted in
Canadian Novelists and the Novel, eds D. Daymond and L. Monkman (Ottawa:
Borealis, 1981), 248
Margaret Laurence, ‘Ivory tower or grassroots? The novelist as socio-political
being’ [1978], reprinted in Daymond and Monkman (eds) Canadian Novelists
and the Novel, 258.
Margaret Atwood, True Stories [1981] (London: Cape, 1982), 11.
Gaile McGregor, The Wacousta Syndrome: Explorations in the Canadian
Landscape (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985).
Susanna Moodie, Roughing It In The Bush: or, Life in Canada [1852], (reprinted
London: Virago, 1986), 83, 467. I should point out that my view of Roughing It In
The Bush is problematized by recent Canadian scholarship which shows that this
text was a collaborative effort between Susanna Moodie, her husband and her
London publishers Bentley and Bruce. As a multivoiced narrative it assumes a
new importance in the Canadian literary tradition, exemplifying a pattern not
confined to women’s fiction. For this information I am indebted to John
Thurston’s paper, ‘Rewriting Roughing It,’ given at the symposium ‘Future
indicative: literary theory and Canadian literature’ at the University of Ottawa in
April, 1986. Neither the 1962 New Canadian Library edition nor the 1986 Virago
re-edition of the original 1852 text indicates its multiple authorship.
Marian Fowler, The Embroidered Tent: Five Gentlewomen in Early Canada
(Toronto: Anansi, 1982), 11.
Elaine Showalter, ‘Feminist criticism in the wilderness’, in Writing and Sexual
Difference, ed. Elizabeth Abel (Brighton: Harvester, 1982), 9-35.
Marian Engel, No Clouds of Glory (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1968),
8. Republished 1974 as Sarah Bastard’s Notebook.
Margaret Atwood, The Journals of Susanna Moodie, ‘Afterword’, 62.
See John Moss, ‘Invisible in the house of mirrors’ (London: Canada House
Lecture Series 21, November 1983).
D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (London: Heinemann,
1923), 7.
Robert Kroetsch, ‘Contemporary standards in the Canadian novel’, Taking Stock:
The Calgary Conference on the Canadian Novel, ed. C. Steele (Downsview:
ECW Press, 1982), 13.
W. J. Keith, Canadian Literature in English (London and New York: Longman,
1985), 2. I am much indebted to Prof. Keith’s first chapter for my summary of
Canadian colonization.
Both wrote novels. Moodie’s include Mark Hurdlestone [1853], Flora Lyndsay
[1854], Matrimonial Speculations [1854]; Traill’s output includes Canadian
Crusoes [1852] as well as her earlier letters The Backwoods of Canada [1846] and
several botany books.
Clara Thomas, ‘Commonwealth albums: family resemblance in Derek Walcott’s
Another Life and Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners, World Literature Written in
English, 21(2), Summer 1982,262-8.
Maggie Butcher, ‘From Maurice Guest to Martha Quest: the emergence of the
female Bildungsroman in Commonwealth Literature’, World Literature Written
in English, 21(2), Summer 1982,254-62.
Carol Shields, Susanna Moodie: Voices and Vision (Ottawa: Borealis, 1977),
quoted in Butcher, ‘From Maurice Guest’, 260.
Anna Jameson, quoted in Fowler, The Embroidered Tent, 171.
20. Emily Carr, ‘D’ Sonaqua’, Klee Wyck (Toronto: Oxford Univer sity Press,
1941).
21. V. Strong-Boag, ‘Discovering the home: the last 150 years of domestic work in
Canada’, Women’s Paid and Unpaid Work, ed. P. Bourne (Toronto: New
Hogtown Press, 1985, published for the Centre for Women’s Studies in
Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education), 36.
22. A similar pattern could be traced through prairie women’s fiction, moving from
the 1920s fiction of Laura Salverson and Martha Ostenso. A recent anthology of
modern prairie women’s stories is significantly titled Double Bond, ed. Caroline
Heath (Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1984).
23. See Keith, Canadian Literature in English, 209; Robert Kroetsch, ‘Beyond
nationalism: a prologue,’ Open Letter, Fifth Series, no. 4: Spring 1983, 83-9;
Northrop Frye, ‘Haunted by lack of ghosts,’ The Canadian Imagination, ed.
David Staines (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1977), 22-45;
W. H. New, `Beyond nationalism: on regionalism’, World Literature Written in
English, 23(1), Winter 1984, 12-18.
24. Staines, introductory essay to The Canadian Imagination, 1-21.
25. Mavis Gallant, `In Youth Is Pleasure’, quoted by Keith, Canadian Literature in
English, 159.
26. Robert Kroetsch, ‘Disunity as unity: a Canadian strategy,’ Canadian Story and
History 1885-1985, ed P. Easingwood and C. Nicholson (Edinburgh: Centre for
Canadian Studies, 1986), 1-11.
27. The question of gender difference is one that has obsessed feminist criticism and I
am writing within a critical context that includes Elaine Showalter, A Literature
of Their Own (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977) and her critical
essays like ‘Feminist criticism in the wilderness’ and ‘Towards a feminist
poetics,’ in Women Writing and Writing about Women, ed. M. Jacobus (London:
Croom Helm, 1979); Annette Kolodny, ‘Some notes on defining a feminist
criticism,’ Critical Inquiry, 2 (1975), 75-92, and ‘Dancing through the minefield:
some observations on the theory, practice and politics by feminist literary
criticism’, Feminist Studies, VI, i (1980), 1-25; Women Writing and Writing
about Women (1979); J. Culler’s chapter on feminist criticism in On
Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1983); K. K. Ruthven, Feminist Literary Studies (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984); Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics (London:
Methuen, 1985).
28. Margaret Laurence, The Diviners [1974] (Toronto: New Canadian Library,
1978), 25.
29. Audrey Thomas, Latakia (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1979), 118.
30. Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women [1971] (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1982), 247.
31. Joan Barfoot, Dancing in the Dark (London: Women’s Press, 1982), 67.
32. Alice Munro, ‘The Colonel’s Hash Resettled’, in The Narrative Voice ed. J.
Metcalf (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1972), 181-2.
33. 1 am indebted for this historical insight to Ann Van Sant’s paper on Samuel
Richardson, `Probing the heart: experiments in sensibility’, given at the Sixteenth
Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies,
Toronto, April 1985.
34. Margaret Atwood, ‘Bluebeard’s Egg’, Bluebeard’s Egg (Toronto: McClelland &
Stewart, 1983), 147.
71
35. Alice Munro, ‘The Moons of Jupiter’, The Moons of Jupiter (Toronto:
Macmillan, 1982), 216.
36. Margaret Laurence, The Diviners, 453.
72
Jósef Kwaterko
Le roman québécois de 1960 à 1975 :
idéologie et représentation littéraire
Résumé
Le roman québécois de la Révolution tranquille présente plusieurs similitudes
avec le dialogisme romanesque analysé par Mikhaïl Bakhtine, là où une
culture nationale commence à se défaire du poids de l’idéologie et des mythes
collectifs unitaires. Le principe dialogique qui régit dès lors le roman
québécois repose sur l’ambiguïté du rapport avec l’Histoire, l’autoreprésentation du récit, la construction des figures de l’écrivain ainsi que sur
l’apparition de l’autre dont la voix habite la conscience du personnagenarrateur québécois, ce qui permet à celui-ci de s’éprouver à travers une
autre pensée et sensibilité.
Abstract
The Québécois novel of the Quiet Revolution presents many similarities with
the novelistic dialogism analyzed by Mikhaïl Bakhtine, whereupon a national
culture begins to shed the weight of ideology and myths of collective unity.
From this moment, the dialogic principle to govern the Québécois novel rests
on the ambiguity of the connection with History, on narrative self-representation, on constructing personas of the writer as well as on the appearance of
the Other whose voice inhabits the conscience of the Québécois characternarrator, thereby allowing for self-experience through another thought and
sensibility.
Le dialogue de (avec) l’histoire
On peut soutenir que le Québec des années 1960-1975 présente, en tant que
contexte global de l’énonciation romanesque, un arrière-fond privilégié
pour la manifestation du plurilinguisme social que Bakhtine tient pour
origine explicative et condition indispensable de l’engendrement du
dialogisme dans le roman1. Compte tenu de la transmutation du système de
valeurs opérée par la Révolution tranquille, on pourrait observer au moins
trois é1éments constitutifs du plurilinguisme qui vont progressivement
investir le champ littéraire :
1.
La pluralité des discours idéologiques centrifuges (conservateur, libéral,
social-démocrate, socialistes, indépendantiste) qui se soustraient au
discours nationaliste relativement unitaire de la période précédente.
2.
La stratification sociolinguistique causée par le passage rapide d’une
formation sociale rurale (où 1’éducation est monopolisée par un clergé
33-34, 2006
conservateur) à une société laïque et moderne (technologique). I1 importe
ici de tenir compte du phénomène du bilinguisme, de la diglossie ainsi que
des parlers des métiers, des villes et des régions, qui deviennent
particulièrement actifs pour la représentation littéraire des langages dans
les limites de la même langue nationale (le français standard, le francoquébécois, le joual, des archaïsmes, des dialectes et des néologismes).
3.
Le processus de réappropriation culturelle amorcé par la Révolution
tranquille, en vertu duquel le Québec, sortant d’un régime basé sur
l’autarcie culturelle et la censure clérico-bourgeoise, ouvre sur une
diversité de filiations et d’interactions culturelles susceptibles d’investir
dans le champ des échanges symboliques et directement dans la pratique
littéraire.
De façon générale, on pourra soutenir qu’il s’agit pour le Québec d’une
période historique présentant de nombreuses similitudes avec celles
analysées par Bakhtine, où l’émergence du plurilinguisme dans la culture
nationale coïncide avec la décentralisation du pouvoir de la pensée
mythologique sur le langage (la « disjonction » du rapport trop étroit entre le
sens idéologique et la conscience linguistique2.
Ramenée au niveau du texte romanesque, cette ouverture socioidéologique et culturelle se laisse appréhender comme modélisant une
pluralité des discours dialogisés, installés dans 1’espace de l’intertextualité, comme l’a désigné Julia Kristeva à la suite des travaux de Bakhtine3.
Le mode de fonctionnement intertextuel, outre la corrélation aux textes des
auteurs différents (au point de vue de l’époque et des cultures) affleure
également aux rapports internes entre les textes du même auteur ainsi qu’à
la relation spéculaire qui s’établit entre les différents niveaux énonciatifs
d’un texte unique. D’autre part, le principe dialogique, associé à l’intertextualité, suppose la coexistence des contraires (des oppositions non
exclusives) et, par là même, peut se dérober autant à la logique
aristotélicienne (à l’axiome tertium non datum) qu’à la dialectique
hégélienne (à la triade). Selon Julia Kristeva, cette propriété l’apparente au
mode d’articulation propre à la « logique du rêve » qui ne vise pas un
dépassement ni une transgression absolue (fondée sur la pure négativité),
mais un état d’inachèvement, un jeu de rapports conflictuels non résolus
(affirmatifs et négatifs)4.
Ceci nous amène à observer que cette modélisation spécifique sous-tend
intensément le discours romanesque des récits québécois et qu’elle est à
même, pensons-nous, de donner à l’historicité qui le hante son plein relief.
Le dialogisme peut, en effet, se signaler comme le principe explicatif de la
coexistence, au plan littéraire global, de la pensée mythique (temporalité
nationale avec son unité du passé-présent-futur) avec la pensée
moderne/progressiste (temporalité historique linéaire). Au niveau du
roman même, le principe dialogique pourrait jeter un peu plus de clarté sur
l’ambivalence de la relation discursive Histoire ——— non-histoire
74
(désarticulation du récit), doublée simultanément de la relation
(dialogique) Non-Histoire ——— histoire (le désir d’articuler le récit, de
conter). Une telle ambiguïté structurant le récit traduit bien, nous
semble-t-il, la relativisation du national dans le roman ainsi que la réduction
du caractère véridique (fondé sur la causalité et la chronologie) de la
représentation littéraire. On pourrait la considérer également comme une
sorte de structure dialogique matricielle, susceptible de produire d’autres
supports du dialogisme romanesque dans l’espace (inter)textuel.
Nous serons disposés à lui apparenter en premier lieu la situation de
discours qui semble dominer dans le roman québécois après 19605. Elle
implique, de façon générale, la construction d’une figure auctoriale
endossée soit par un des personnages (comme dans Une saison dans la vie
d’Emmanuel de Marie-Claire Blais), soit par le personnage central du récit
devenu ainsi narrateur (comme cela a lieu dans certains romans de H.
Aquin, G. Bessette, R. Ducharme, J. Godbout et V.-L. Beaulieu). Prenons
garde toutefois, comme le signale A. Belleau, que « […] l’insistance porte
désormais non pas sur l’écrivain en situation dans le récit mais sur
1’écrivain en situation d’écriture (fictive elle aussi assurément) »6. C’est
dire que, devenu écrivain, le narrateur-personnage va maintenant découvrir
sa propre fonction ainsi que les rouages de son écriture; il sera individué
moins par rapport à un univers référentiel que par sa parole. Ainsi, le récit en
train de s’écrire va implicitement devenir le sujet et le thème de l’histoire, et
l’histoire va exhiber les conditions de sa propre production. À partir du
Libraire (1960) de Gérard Bessette jusqu’à French Kiss, étreinteexploration (1974) de Nicole Brossard et Don Quichotte de la démanche
(1974) de Victor-Lévy Beaulieu, cette structure de l’ « œuvre ouverte »,
basée sur les interférences entre narration et fiction, va marquer
l’originalité de la production romanesque au Québec par rapport à
1’esthétique traditionnelle7.
Cette propriété de l’autoreprésentation du récit (son aspect autoréflexif,
métatextuel) aura pour effet de transformer le statut de 1’écrivain dans le
texte : l’univocité qui le caractérisait en tant qu’instance narrative unique et
suprême, se verra forcément reléguée au profit d’une instance scindée, d’un
sujet (d’un « je ») divisé en sujet de l‘énonciation et en sujet de 1’énoncé. Au
fait, il s’agit non pas d’une coexistence rassurante et affirmative de cette
dualité, mais d’une polémique intérieure, d’une duplicité discursive
conflictuelle. Prochain épisode de Hubert Aquin en est 1’exemple extrême,
nous semble-t-il, dans la mesure où cette division primordiale du sujet entre
l’écrivain-narrateur et le héros-écrivain déclenche un tel conflit entre le
discours et l’histoire que le récit s’en trouve irrémédiablement arrêté.
On fera sans doute remarquer que dans les romans de Parti pris le
personnage de 1’écrivain et le récit autoréféré occupent également une
place importante (dans La Ville inhumaine de Girouard, dans Le Cabochon
de Major ou dans Le Cassé de Renaud). On doit noter cependant que ces
75
récits sont privés de ce chevauchement des « voix » et des « accents » de
l’autre, portés en filigrane et susceptibles de désintégrer la fixité du sujet et
son unité sémantique. De ce point de vue, le personnage-narrateur apparaît
comme privé de statut d’indépendance par rapport à l’auteur. La conception
du monde qu’exprime le discours du héros sur la réalité (la misère et
l’acculturation sociale) devient ainsi l’objet principal du discours de
l’auteur, et il n’y a pas, à proprement parler, de conception du monde du
héros. Par conséquent, même si le héros atteint à une conscience de soi
(comme dans Le Cabochon), celle-ci n’est pas dialogisée, c’est-à-dire ne
résulte pas d’une confrontation on d’une interaction des sens, des visions,
des conceptions « autres ». Elle est « déjà là », donnée à voir à partir d’une
position unique et idéologiquement programmée, pénétrée de ce que
Bakhtine considère comme principe monologique8.
I1 n’en demeure pas moins que le joual, qui dans certains récits de Parti
pris se pose comme loi esthétique et comme projet idéologique conscient,
parvient à se soustraire de sa fonction monologique dès qu’il s’insère dans
d’autres registres linguistiques et dès qu’il est véhiculable à travers une
pluralité des consciences. I1 est doué alors d’une élasticité stylistique et
peut résonner comme un langage « autre », socialement étranger, comme
une sorte de réplique dans un dialogue des cultures et des identités (ici, son
statut se révèle parfois ironiquement, comme « ni anglais, ni français, mais
québécois »). On peut en dire autant de tous ces personnages romanesques
qui s’en servent et qui, depuis La Bagarre de Bessette (1958) jusqu’aux
romans de Godbout (Salut Galarneaul! 1967, D’amour P.Q., 1972), et de
V.-L. Beaulieu (comme dans Jos Connaissant, 1970), revendiquent avec
difficulté et incertitude leur appartenance à l’ « ici ».
À ceci s’ajoute un autre é1ément s’indexant significativement au
caractère dialogique du roman, celui que l’on pourrait désigner comme le
discours de l’altérité. Il intervient dans le roman non seulement comme
vécu à l’intérieur de soi, telle la fissure du « je » narratif, mais se pose de
façon aiguë dans le rapport personnage-personnage qui n’est parfois
qu’une forme déguisée du rapport narrateur-personnage. On peut supposer
a fortiori que l’ambiguïté même de la situation historique et nationale, telle
qu’elle est réellement ressentie par le romancier, va doter ses personnages
(projections imaginaires de soi) de réactions incohérentes, voire
contradictoires, irréductibles à des comportements justiciables d’une
logique et d’une psychologie ordonnées. Il nous paraît intéressant à cet
égard de noter l’apparition relativement fréquente dans le roman de la
figure de l’étranger (le Canadien anglais, le Juif, l’Américain, le Noir), et
plus spécialement de la femme étrangère9. On ne saurait cependant assigner
à celui-ci une simple fonction emblématique qui se bornerait, selon un à
priori idéologique, à une représentation de différents tempéraments, à une
confrontation des cultures (de « deux solitudes »). I1 s’agit moins de la
connaissance de l’autrui que de la découverte de soi à travers l’altérité. I1 en
76
va pour le personnage romanesque d’une interrogation sur son propre
« moi » dont l’intimité est déjà cohabitée et co-éprouvée par la voix de
l‘autre, par cette autre pensée et sensibilité. Une telle dialogisation des
consciences fondée sur la situation (problématique) de l’altérité, peut aller
parfois à un tel degré d’intensité que 1’étranger devienne le double du
héros, comme cela arrive dans Prochain Épisode d’Aquin on dans La Nuit
de Ferron. Elle a ici certainement une signification thématique, car elle
permet au personnage de (re)saisir son identité québécoise (oniriquement
dans La Nuit, ironiquement dans Le Couteau sur la table). I1 arrive aussi
qu’elle le vide de sa propre substance (comme dans les romans d’Aquin).
Mais au même titre, elle possède dans le récit un sens proprement structural
dans la mesure où elle organise en un espace intertextuel interne une
pluralité (une « plurivocité » comme l’appelle Bakhtine) des discours qui se
font entendre dans leur concomitance : dans D’amour P.Q. (1972) de
Godbout et dans Trou de mémoire (1968) d’Aquin, plusieurs versions du
récit se font concurrence à mesure que les personnages-narrateurs
s’usurpent le droit d’intervenir, de corriger on de faire dévier une narration
(un « texte ») trop certaine de son devenir.
Chez Réjean Ducharme (Le Nez qui voque, 1967, L’Océantume, 1968),
les personnages-couples se confondent parfois dans un «on » bivocal qui se
tourne contre toute forme d’univocité institutionnalisée (la politique et le
« progrès », la liberté sexuelle et la religion, le nationalisme et la culture
officielle). Or cette contestation est ici avant toute chose affaire de langage;
une activité du texte qui se dépense et s’affiche dans les expérimentations
avec 1’écriture. C’est, le plus vraisemblablement, dans l’affirmation du
caractère matériel, palpable, « manipulable » du langage, dans la fonction
libératrice du jeu verbal, que réside 1’essentiel de l’ironie de Ducharme.
Une ironie qui, moins encore que chez tout autre romancer québécois, n’a
pas de statut idéologique précis. Elle est révélatrice plutôt d’un non-dit
idéologique dans la mesure ou la seule attitude idéologique décelable ici est
tournée exactement contre l’engagement social et idéologique de
1’écrivain et de l’artiste.
Dans L’Hiver de force (1973), l’hypertrophie du signe, l‘excès de
l‘expressivité du langage, vont jusqu’à transgresser le code littéraire pour
s’insinuer dans le discours des médias électroniques, celui de la publicité,
du sport, du cinéma, du show télévisé (cela arrive aussi dans Salut
Galarneau! de Godbout).
Jamais avant Ducharme la pulvérisation du langage romanesque n’avait
atteint un tel degré de violence. Et cependant, elle ne signifie pas pour autant
une pure dépense verbale, une auto-complaisance dans la destruction et
dans le non-sens, mais se veut également un questionnement (une mise à
l‘essai du discours narratif) qui passe par un lyrisme et par la recherche
d’une complicité amicale avec le lecteur.
77
Si la tendresse est cet espace premier depuis lequel les personnagesnarrateurs de Ducharme opèrent le démembrement de la parole, on constate
chez certains autres romanciers que leurs personnages sont d’emblée
plongés dans une situation excentrique, scandaleuse, « anormale » qui,
devenue matière du récit, débouche sur un discours incontrôlé, phantasmé.
Dans 1’espace apparemment monologique de certains romans (qui
prennent la forme de l‘autobiographie fictive, du journal intime, des
manuscrits, etc.), le dialogue semble se constituer en un paradigme
identifiable comme thème même de la texture romanesque. Une telle parole
est d’habitude proférée à partir d’une situation de réclusion (prison,
chambre ou maison isolées, un autre pays), soit à partir d’un état
pathologique (le personnage est un drogué, assassin, terroriste; il est
dédoublé, obsédé par la poursuite, par le viol). Le personnage perd alors son
unité et son identité psychologique pour se lancer à la repossession de
soi-même, opérant ce que Bakhtine appelle l’ « approche dialogique de
soi-même »11. Ceci l’apparente parfois au statut de l’homme « au seuil »,
« en état d’allégorie », consubstantiel à deux formes universelles et
historiquement novatrices du dialogisme romanesque, à savoir la ménippée
et le dialogue socratique, dérivés de l’antiquité grecque12.
Dans Le Libraire de G. Bessette ou dans Salut Galarneau! de J. Godbout,
les personnages-narrateurs-écrivains s’inventent des masques comicosérieux (correspondant à la figure de « sot », de « sage stupide » ou de «
naïf »); confrontés à la communauté, ils se mettent dans une situation de
dialogue ambivalent, semée d’embûches, face à laquelle ils adoptent une
attitude prudente, quand ils ne la subvertissent par la distanciation ironique
ou sur le mode carnavalesque.
Signalons que le caractère carnavalesque de la représentation est
sous-jacent aussi à la vision du monde dans Une saison dans la vie
d’Emmanuel de Marie-Claire Blais : les é1éments traditionnels du régionalisme québécois – le terroir, son misérabilisme, son sacré insalubre, son
dogmatisme idéologique – y échappent à la négativité (comme relation
manifeste dans les romans de la terre naturalistes); cités, caricaturés sur un
mode grotesque et parodique, ils entrent en une interaction dialogique,
régénératrice et dynamique, avec le texte actuel qui les sollicite et les libère
ainsi de leur monologisme discursif et idéologique13.
Ce dialogue entre le passé et le présent, entre les valeurs anciennes et
l’image changeante du Québec, les romans de Jacques Ferron l’illustrent de
façon inusitée. Leur discours est construit selon les règles propres à l’art du
conte. Ainsi les thèmes les plus actuels (l’aliénation des Québécois, la
recherche de l’identité nationale), trouvent des articulations à même la
rhétorique et le mode de représentation mythique, parabolique les plus
anciens (Papa Boss, La Charrette, Les Confitures de coings). Par là même,
le récit du conte ferronien instaure un fond spécifique de l’organisation
dialogique des langages. Il se dérobe aux contraintes de la causalité et de la
78
chronologie (cautionné par le merveilleux et l’imaginaire), enchaîne avec
des énoncés anciens qui remontent à la tradition orale du langage, et se
soustrait à 1’emprise du langage littéraire dominant dans le champ culturel.
À ce titre, le conte possède une aptitude particulière à se situer dans,
l’intertextualité et dans la diachronie des styles (dans le texte social, culturel
et historique de la nation). En véhiculant la sagesse collective la plus
ancienne et un style sensible aux mutations du langage, les récits de Ferron
se greffent sur l’actualité historique du « pays incertain » tout en opérant
l’échange dialogique entre le plus ancien et le plus nouveau. C’est par quoi
ils témoignent de leur modernité, signalant l’écriture, comme l’observe
Jean Marcel, en tant qu’acte créatif, exigeant des compétences particulières
chez le lecteur :
Il y a certes l’archaïsme de tous les jours, fréquent dans la langue
parlée au Québec; il est en quelque sorte inconscient pour ne pas
dire qu’il passe inaperçu; mais l’archaïsme de Ferron naît d’une
intention d’art, il est mis en telle évidence dans la phrase qu’il est
impossible qu’il ne produise pas l’effet attendu; un effet d’art, de
charme, c’est à dire de signification. Non pas la « couleur locale »,
mais les couleurs du dépaysement propre à l’atmosphère du conte.
C’est un archaïsme parfois si ancien qu’il n’est plus compris,
même de la majorité des Québécois. […] Au fond, l’archaïsme en
art ne peut naître que d’un esprit très moderne, assez moderne pour
mesurer la distance entre une époque et une autre et faire de ce
décalage l’objet d’une signification particulière. Mesurant les
distances, l’archaïsme tient à distance les objets et les temps qu’il
invoque et permet qu’on n’en soit pas dupe. […] Le lecteur doit y
prendre garde, ne pas perdre pied, sans quoi il reste à la surface du
siècle, exclu de la profondeur des temps14.
En fait, si nous voulons faire ressortir certains aspects du dialogisme du
roman québécois après 1960, ce n’est pas qu’il paraisse spécifique de la
prose narrative qui s’écrit au Québec, mais plus précisément, parce que le
principe dialogique recèle une singulière aptitude à morceler le tissu
narratif le principe (idéologique) de l’identité du récit avec la structure
socio-historique qui l’a engendrée.
Ce que nous nous sommes efforcés de montrer nous autorise à poser que
le roman québécois, demeurant inscrit après 1960 dans une circonstance
éminemment historique (mais qui coïncide avec la stratification de
l’idéologie nationale), va vivre lui-même l’Histoire et le Réel comme doute
et comme incohérence, à travers une multiplicité de discours :
Monologues intérieurs en joual chez Renaud, libre création
verbale chez Bessette ou chez Ducharme, pulvérisation du récit
chez Godbout, polyphonies discordantes chez Aquin, autant de
phénomènes qui révèlent chez les écrivains canadiens-français le
besoin de serrer une réalité de plus près, de la dire en des formes
spécifiques, nécessaires, elles-mêmes signifiantes, mais
79
tâtonnantes comme la conscience de leurs créateurs. Le doute
semble vécu dans le roman québécois d’abord comme une
expérience collective localisé avant, on peut-être en même temps
qu’il est senti comme expérience universelle15.
Gardons toutefois à 1’esprit que l’idéologie nationale est là, encodée
dans le texte du roman, se signalant positivement pour mieux se remettre en
cause, jouant ainsi son propre psychodrame. Perturbée par les résistances
du texte, elle se découvre, en dernière instance, comme soustraite à
l’univocité du langage romanesque. Dès lors, il vaudrait sans doute mieux
parler, comme le propose F. Gaillard, d’une idéologie de l‘écriture
romanesque qui ne peut être que synonyme de la construction textuelle,
inscrite dans l’ontologie littéraire16. Un roman qui s’organise en une
polyphonie des « voix », un récit qui renvoie à l’altérité, à l’ailleurs, à
l’ancien, cadrent plutôt mal avec une seule idéologie. Plusieurs idéologies
s’y font (ré)entendre, et il est d’autant plus difficile de leur assigner une
position déterminée et un sens fixe qu’elles sont assumées par plusieurs
instances narratives (l’auteur, les narrateurs, les personnages), jouées
parfois les unes contre les autres, soumises au dialogue, à l’interrogation, à
l’affrontement.
Aussi, faut-il entendre au sens vraiment large, ce que Jacques Pelletier
écrit sur l’inévitable conjonction entre le nationalisme et le roman, ou le
propos de Jacques Godbout qui s’avise, en 1971, du « chantage du pays »
commandité par le « TEXTE NATIONAL »17. Le roman ne se contente pas
de reproduire ce rapport. Autrement dit, il ne le « reflète » pas dans sa
cohérence et dans son intelligibilité, mais il le déplace, le joue et le déjoue
sans cesse, le projette dans un champ fictionnel et imaginaire. Ainsi, le
nationalisme et « le pays » y fonctionnent moins comme message, concept
ou maxime idéologique, que comme dispositif, comme une relation en
continuel déplacement et comme fond dialogique de cette matière
pluriforme que Laurent Mailhot appelle le « roman de la parole ambiguë » :
En éclatant, par multiplication et division le roman québécois est
devenu de moins en moins roman – l’a-t-il jamais été? –, de plus en
plus récit, conte, discours, parole, essai en tous genres, histoires
(au pluriel). Le roman québécois vit de l’ambiguïté, de la précarité
du pays lui-même, « incertain », « équivoque », « invisible » (non
pas transparent), « démanché ». Inorganisé ou désorganisé? L’un
et l’autre simultanément. […] Il a ses langages et récuse tout
discours univoque. Son utopie n’est pas l’indépendance politique,
ni le socialisme marxiste, ni une religion orientale, mais l’insertion
actuelle, textuelle, dans le présent, le voisin, l’immédiat. Le roman
québécois cherche à se dépasser de proche en proche, mot à mot, fil
à fil. Le mot lui sert de parole, de mythe et l’imagination de
mémoire. Le pays est « à venir », à « faire venir », comme
l‘écriture, mais ailleurs. Le Québec n’est pas donné, il n’est pas là.
Il n’est pas une donnée objective de l’Histoire, mais un objectif à
80
viser, à déplacer. Le Québec est la figure essentielle, l’espace
ouvert du roman québécois18.
Il est vrai que l’informe et une sorte d’esthétique de la déconstruction ont
peut-être davantage trait à ce que le roman québécois est devenu
aujourd’hui. On ne saurait négliger ici le fait qu’après l’arrivée au pouvoir
en 1976 du Parti Québécois avec un programme souverainiste, les
changements survenus dans le champ politique ont provoqué et légitimé un
relatif dépassement de l’horizon national et de ses articulations au niveau de
l’écriture.
Il semble toutefois que la notion de « parole ambiguë » corresponde bien
à la période qui s’étend de 1960 à 1975, et qui traduit pour le récit
romanesque québécois une aventure des langages. C’est aussi à partir de la
complexité de la réalité nationale qui y est problématisée que le récit accède
au statut de modernité. Et le romancier semble pleinement conscient de la
portée sociologique de celle-ci, dans la mesure où il conçoit sa pratique
d’écriture comme fait littéraire et comme fait social : « L’écrivain québécois
a inventé un pays. C’est au pays maintenant de dire si l’écriture est un
mensonge ou le hall d’entrée de l’Histoire »19.
Il n’en reste pas moins qu’entre le début des années 60, où la pratique
littéraire est affectée par les écrivains de caractère québécois, et la moitié
des années 70, où l’on s’efforce de s’en dégager20, le roman demeure à
l’épreuve des aléas d’une conjoncture historique elle-même incertaine et
vacillante. Lieu spécifique des contradiction et des contraintes historique
du Québec, il est inapte à procurer à celui-ci une image rassurante, à en
rendre compte comme d’une vérité affirmée : il ne peut, tout au plus,
qu’adopter à son égard des attitudes ambivalentes, ce qui désigne en même
temps les conditions de sa propre lisibilité. C’est dire, en définitive, que
l’Histoire reste immanente au roman québécois, mais que cette historicité,
nécessairement mise à contribution, s’y donne en spectacle, à travers une
épiphanie des langages :
La nécessité de raconter, au Québec est d’autant plus pressante que
nos références à l’histoire sont devenues plus problématiques.
Notre roman rend compte, et de cette difficulté, et de cette
nécessité21.
Aussi, l’analyse des romans écrits au Québec de 1960 à 1975 que nous
proposons de poursuivre, va-t-elle choisir de s’en tenir à un corpus
(forcément limité) de textes qui prennent en charge cette intentionnalité et
qui articulent cette difficulté.
Notes
1.
Mikhaïl Bakhtine, Esthétique et théorie du roman, Paris, Gallimard, 1978, p.
86-98.
81
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
82
Ibid., p. 184-186. Comme nous l’avons vu ci-dessus, selon M. Zéraffa, il s’agit de
1’effort de dégagement du langage littéraire moderne de l’horizon mythique
englobant.
« Tout texte se construit comme mosaïque de citations, tout texte est absorption
d’un autre texte. À la place de la notion d’intersubjectivité s’installe celle
d’intertextualité, et le langage poétique se lit, au moins, comme double » (Julia
Kristeva, Sêmeiôtikè : recherches Pour une sémanalyse, Paris, Seuil, 1978, p. 85,
souligné dans le texte). Pour notre démarche, il s’agit d’un cas particulier du
dialogisme (s’indexant à l’intertextualité romanesque) qui intègre plusieurs
codes et discours mais la relation entre ceux-ci demeure ambivalente,
conflictuelle, et donne irréductible à la pure négation comme à la pure
affirmation. Cette distinction est opérée par Susan Suleiman dans son étude « Le
récit exemplaire », in Poétique, no 32, novembre 1977, pp. 480-481.
Julia Kristeva, op. cit., p. 82-112.
Cf. Jacques Michon, « Le discours du récit romanesque au Québec depuis 1940 »,
in Revue d’histoire littéraire du Québec et du Canada français, no 2, Montréal,
Bellarmin, 1982, p. 72.
André Belleau, Le Romancier fictif, Québec, Les Presses de l’Université du
Québec, 1980, p. 15.
Cf. Jacques Michon, « Fonctions et historicité des formes romanesques », in
Études littéraires, vol. 14, no 1, avril 1981, pp. 61-79, et « Aspects du roman
québécois des années soixante », in The French Review, vol. LIII, no 6, mai 1980,
p. 812-815.
Cf. Mikhaïl Bakhtine, La Poétique de Dostoïevski, Paris, Seuil, 1970, p. 122-123.
Nous songeons ici en particulier à Barbara de La Nuit de Ferron, à Patricia du
Couteau sur la table de Godbout, à Ethel de Ethel et le terroristes de Jasmin, à
Joan de Trou de mémoire de Aquin, et, d’un certain point de vue, à Nea de
L’Incubation de Bessette.
Mikhaïl Bakhtine, La Poétique de Dostoïevski, Paris, Seuil, 1970, p. 167.
Ibid., p. 145-236.
Voir 1’étude consacrée à Marie-Claire Blais, dans Gilles Marcotte, Le Roman à
l’imparfait, p. 93-138.
Jean Marcel, Jacques Ferron malgré lui, p. 93-94.
Roland Bourneuf, « Formes littéraires et réalités sociales… », p. 269.
Cf. Françoise Gaillard, « Code(s) littéraire(s) et idéologie », in Littérature, no 12,
décembre 1973, p. 33-35.
Cf. Jacques Pelletier, « Nationalisme et roman… », p. 71-81; Jacques Godbout,
Le Réformiste, p. 147-157.
Laurent Mailhot, « Le roman québécois et ses langages », p. 169-170.
Jacques Godbout, Le Réformiste, p. 167.
Cette volonté est aisément observable à travers les déclarations des écrivains et
des critiques littéraires. Cf. la revue Liberté, no 111/1977 et le collectif
Interventions Octobre, Montréal, Éd. Quinze, 1975.
Gilles Marcotte, Le Roman à l’imparfait, p. 190.
Seymour Lipset
The Canadian Identity
Abstract
Seymour Martin Lipset’s (deceased in 2006) Continental Divide is without a
doubt the most widely cited work of U.S.-Canada comparative analysis ever
published. As the title suggests, Lipset’s thesis is that there are important and
consistent differences between the values and institutions of these two North
American societies. He maintained that American observers who casually
assumed that Canadian society is a pale copy of American society are deeply
mistaken. Much of Lipset’s original contribution was to treat religion as an
important factor of differentiation between the two countries. He devoted an
entire chapter to the sociopolitical implications of religion and argued that
several of the cultural and political attributes that make the American polity
“exceptional”, notably by comparison to Canada and other advanced
industrial societies, are a result of American religious history and demography. Lipset’s America, by contrast to Canada and the Canadian identity
which is the object of the chapter we are reproducing in this anthology, is
characterized by individualism and competitiveness, a bourgeois economic
and political culture, utopian moralism and a crusading ethos, a populist and
anti-establishment tendency, finally a God-and-country nationalism and
intolerance for ideological nonconformity. Canada is none of the above.
Résumé
Continental Divide de Seymour Martin Lipset, décédé en 2006, est sans doute
l’ouvrage de politique comparée entre les États-Unis et le Canada le plus cité
depuis sa parution en 1990. Comme le titre le suggère, il existe une profonde
division entre le Canada et les États-Unis et l’idée selon laquelle le Canada
n’est qu’une pâle image des États-Unis est une erreur fréquemment reprise
aux États-Unis. L’apport très original de Lipset est d’avoir fait de la religion
un facteur de différentiation important entre les deux pays, voire entre les
États-Unis et les autres pays industrialisés. Le chapitre que nous
reproduisons ici porte sur l’identité canadienne et la thèse de Lipset est que le
Canada, étant donné des différences religieuses fondamentales, identifiables
notamment au niveau historique et démographique, n’a aucune des caractéristiques fondamentales des États-Unis, à savoir : un profond individualisme,
une culture bourgeoise compétitive, un nationalisme utopique, religieux et
militant, un populisme anti-establishment, enfin une profonde intolérance au
non-conformisme idéologique.
33-34, 2006
National identity is the quintessential Canadian issue. Almost alone among
modern developed countries, Canada has continued to debate its
self-conception to the present day. One of its leading historians notes that it
has suffered for more than a century from a somewhat more
orthodox and less titillating version of Portnoy’s complaint: the
inability to develop a secure and unique identity. And so …
intellectuals and politicians have attempted to play psychiatrist to
the Canadian Portnoy, hoping to discover a national identity.1
As if to illustrate his point, Margaret Atwood comments ironically, “[i]s
the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of
Canada is paranoid schizophrenia”2
The reasons for this uncertainty are clear. Canada is a residual country. It
is that part of British North America that did not support the Revolution.
Before 1776, Anglophone Canadians possessed the same traits that
distinguished other American colonists from the British. Then, as noted in
the preceding chapter, the new nation to the south developed a political
identity formulated around the values set out in the Declaration of
Independence. Americanism became and had remained a political
ideology.3 There is no ideology of Canadianism, although Canada has a
Tory tradition derived from Britain and is, like the United States, descended
from a North American settler and frontier society.
The country gradually evolved as a an independent nation, but the
unification of the provinces of British North America into the Dominion of
Canada in 1867 was not an act in defiance of the British Crown. Rather, it
reflected the fact that Britain has sought for some decades to give up much
of its responsibility for their own domestic governments while remaining
part of the British Empire. The provinces united after the American Civil
War, under Tory leadership, in large part because they feared they would be
easy targets for takeover or absorption by the massive, war-trained army of
the United States if they remained separate. Many people, especially in the
Maritime provinces, wanted to remain more closely linked to Britain, but
representatives of London urged them to join the new Confederation.
Opposing the democratic efforts of reformers within the autonomous
provinces, the Tories favored a strong federal state that could help develop
British North America economically by providing capital.4 “Canadian
confederation was expressive of Tory values”; it was designed to
“counteract democracy and ensure constitutional liberty” and was resisted
by the liberal and continentalist elements.5
The leaders of the Confederation movement were monarchists who
favored a strong state. During the Confederation debates of 1865,
“[w]henever one of the Fathers of Confederation called upon authority he
called upon the Crown, what was called the ‘monarchical principle.’
84
Devotion to the Crown was the one element that all the Fathers of
Confederation shared.”6 Consequently, as one of them, Thomas D’Arcy
McGee, declared.
Unlike our neighbours [the American Constitutional Fathers], we
had no questions of sovereignty to raise. We have been saved from
embarrassment on the subject of sovereignty by simply
recognizing it as it already exists, in the Queen of Great Britain and
Ireland.7
As the historian William Stahl emphasizes:
It is clear why the Fathers of Confederation spoke of “peace, order,
and good government” rather than “life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.” The virtues of monarchy subordinate the individual
the community. Instead of liberty and happiness, loyalty and
responsibility are stressed. Freedom may be a watchword, but
equality is not, and freedom is always tempered ways tempered
and circumscribed by obligations and the rights of others. But if
subordination is preached, subservience is not … The individual
curbs his or her egoism because not to do so would make life in
family and community intolerable. And over all is emphasized the
personal nature of social and political relationships. Monarchy is
but the family writ large.8
The emphasis on order in Canada and on liberty in the United States has
had consequences for each. As one Canadian popular writer, Pierre Berton,
points out:
The other side of the coin of order and security is authority. We’ve
always accepted more governmental control over our lives than …
[Americans] have – and fewer civil liberties … [But] the other side
of the coin of liberty is license, sometimes anarchy. It seems to us
that … Americans have been more willing to suffer violence in …
[their] lives than we have for the sake of individual freedom.9
Americans, from the days of the Revolution on, have resisted authority,
demanded their rights, and preferred weak government, while Canadians
have complained less, been less aggressive, and desired a strong
paternalistic government. Berton believes it significant that as a soldier he
“asked for ‘leave,’ a word that suggests permission. … [while American]
G.I.s were granted ‘liberty,’ a word that implies escape.”10 A summary of
Berton’s conclusions notes, Canadians “are law-abiding, deferential
toward authority, cautious, prudent, elitist, moralistic, tolerant (of ethnic
differences), cool, unemotional and solemn.”11
Similar statements have been made by literally hundreds of Canadian
writers, journalists, and social scientists in differentiating their country
from its neighbor. Many of their assumptions can be validated statistically,
as will be shown later. What is equally relevant is the extent to which
85
Canadians are steadily exposed to this self-image, the extent to which it
forms a set of organizing principles to which they are socialized.
The process was evident in the content of a television documentary
produced in 1986 by Marshall McLuhan’s daughter, Stephanie.12 It
included a variety of statements by leading Canadians, as well as
expatriates, elaborating on the characteristics of their people in terms
corresponding closely to the social science generalizations. They illustrate
how a society tells its people what they are supposed to be like. Novelist
Margaret Atwood commented, “Americans love success, worship success”
while “Canadians are suspicious of success.” Journalist Peter Newman
emphasized that “Canadians defer to authority,” that “we are more laid back
up here,” there is not the “push and drive you see down in the States.” Sidney
Gruson of the New York Times told the audience, “My Canadian
background made me look on crises with less heat than if I were an
American.” Sondra Gotlieb, wife of the then ambassador to the United
States, noted, “Canadians have an image of moderateness. … They are
solid, reliable, decent … [but] a little bit dull.” And, Pierre Berton said to the
viewers. “We don’t have the superpatriotism you see south of the border.
We don’t express ourselves emotionally. We are more phlegmatic than the
Americans.”
Canadians repeatedly remind themselves that they are at should be the
quiet North Americans. On April 7, 1989, Ottawa experienced a dramatic
hostage-taking event: a passenger-laden bus was seized on the highway and
the hijacker (whose motives remain unclear) had it driven to Parliament
Hill, where it remained for several hours until he was convinced to
surrender. A few days later, Charles Gordon, a leading journalist, devoted
page-long column in Maclean’s, the country’s largest-circulation weekly
newsmagazine, to a discussion of how the reaction to the occurrence “could
only have happened in Canada.” No one panicked, no guns were fired, no
business or government offices in the area were shut down. A press
conference for the president Costa Rica continued in a nearby building.
Evening social events were not postponed. Television news did not show
“what TV audiences the world over have come to expect whenever a crisis
occurs — fire trucks whizzing around with sirens blaring, helicopters
whirring overhead.” Gordon proudly told his fellow citizens how symbolic
of the country’s character it all was:
Pictures not showing helicopters were Canadian pictures, for
certain. It is difficult, in the modern world, to picture a similar
scene in any other world capital — and particularly Washington —
without helicopters. But we were helicopter-less.13
86
Canadian Independence
The continuing linkage of Canada to the mother country is strikingly
revealed by the most significant action a nation can take: the declaration of
war. It has been understood that when the British Parliament voted for war,
Canada would follow suit. Thus, Canada sent troops to fight at Britain’s
side during the Boer War. It entered both World War I and World War II on
the heels of the mother country (although Prime Minister Mackenzie King
postponed the 1939 vote in Parliament for a week, so as to emphasize
Canada’s independence).14
Until recently, the constitution of the Canadian confederation was the
British North America Act, proclaimed by Queen Victoria in 1867. Only in
1982 did Canada request the British Parliament to give up formal control
(something it had wanted to do since at least the early 1930s). Not until 1947
did Canadians even secure a separate status as citizens of their own country,
as distinct from British subjects. Before 1949, their ultimate court of appeal
was the Privy Council of Great Britain. Canadian lawyers had to go to
London to argue constitutional cases, as well as other kinds of appeals. Prior
to 1975, British citizens living in Canada could vote in national elections
without filing for Canadian citizenship, and they did not lose their
automatic right to enter Canada until the passage of the Immigration Act of
1978. The Maple Leaf became the national flag in 1965, and “O Canada”
was approved as the national anthem — replacing “God Save the Queen” —
only in 1967 and was not officially so designated until 1980. But, of course,
as one British magazine notes, unlike Americans, “Canadians do not chant
an oath of allegiance or salute the flag.”15
The Counterrevolution Continued
Although the content and extent of the differences between Canada and the
United States have changed in the course of time, many present-day
variations still reflect the impact of the American Revolution. Much of the
writing on comparative aspects of culture, politics, economy, religion, law,
and literature in North America emphasizes the causal importance of the
different origins of the two nations. As noted earlier, Canadian historians
point out that in their country the democratic or populist elements lost their
battle on many occasions. Some stress the significance of the failure of the
1837 rebellions, which, according to political scientist Philip Resnick,
might have “fostered a liberal state, possibly a cross between American
presidential and English parliamentary in form” and, more important,
“would have entailed, as revolutions have elsewhere, a politicization that
we rarely experience and seldom imagine in this country.”16 One of
Canada’s ablest historians, Frank Underhill, says of the long-term
conservatism and resistance to Americanism of his country’s history: “It
would be hard to overestimate the amount of energy we have devoted to this
cause.”17
87
The legitimation of conservatism in Canada flowed from the rejection of
the American and French revolutions, and from patterns of emigration and
immigration that reinforced right-wing trends. The latter, which began very
early, included the departure of bourgeois and rationalist elements from
Quebec in 1760 after the British conquest and, from 1789 on, the arrival
there of conservative priests from France, who had a “notable role in
developing the classical colleges and parish schools [and] … instilled a
horror of the French Revolution.”18 After 1783, most Congregational
pro-Revolution clergy moved from the English-speaking areas to New
England, and an estimated 50,000 Loyalists, including many Anglican
priests, crossed the new border in the opposite direction.
Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States remained
the extreme example of a classically liberal or Lockean society, rejecting
the assumptions of the alliance of throne and altar, of ascriptive elitism, of
mercantilism, of noblesse oblige, of communitarianism. Canada was
noticeably different. As we have seen, Friedrich Engels was among several
19th-century foreign visitors who noted that Canada preserved a more
European society than the “purely bourgeois” United States.19 More
recently, the Canadian Marxist sociologist Arthur Davis observed:
[The] American colonies broke their ties with England, and the
philosophy of laissez-faire Manchesterism could run wild until the
rise of new internal oppositions late in the nineteenth century. … In
England, on the other hand, elements of pre-industrial classes and
values survived industrialization. The first reforms in the
nineteenth century were sparked, not by the “new men of
Manchester,” but by Tories from the old landed classes motivated
by feudal norms like noblesse oblige. Something of these
restraining values seem to have carried over into English
Canada.20
Another Canadian left-wing social scientist elaborates on the way that
Toryism, which emphasizes “the need for more conscious control over the
processes of a … society,” took root, survived, and deeply influenced
Canadian culture and politics.
[I]n the transfer of cultural and political baggage to the British
North American colonies, Toryism found an environment in
which, rather paradoxically considering the absence of a feudal
past. it was to play a more important role as a legitimizing ideology
of capitalist development than it ever did in its English homeland.
In colonial Canada, both inherited Tory images and the learned
experience of development in the peculiar circumstances of that
time and place led to a domination of the Tory image of the state
over the more liberal laissez-faire concept. … he emphasis on
control of the processes of national development, the element of
the collective will of the dominant class expressed through the
public institutions of the state, while seemingly anachronistic in an
88
increasingly laissez-faire Britain, was crucially relevant to a thinly
settled frontier colony struggling on the fringes of a growing
economic and political power to the south.21
Ironically, other modern scholars who see Canada as a more British- or
European-type conservative society emphasize that the values inherent in
monarchically rooted Tory conservatism give rise in the modern world to
support for social democratic redistributive and welfare policies.22 The
historian of Canadian socialism, Gad Horowitz, notes that “socialism has
more in common with Toryism than with [classic] liberalism, for liberalism
is possessive individualism, while socialism and Toryism are variants of
collectivism.”23 Conversely, a dominant laissez-faire Lockean tradition is
antithetical to such programs. Northrop Frye calls attention to this alliance
of opposites: “The Canadian point of view is at once more conservative and
more radical than Whiggery [the liberal ideology of the American
Revolution], closer both to aristocracy and to democracy [equality].”24
These ideological differences in the two countries have been reinforced
by institutional factors, particularly religious and political ones.25 The
American tradition and law place more emphasis on separation of church
and state than do the Canadian. Since pre-Revolutionary times, a large
majority of Americans have adhered to the Protestant sects that opposed the
established state church in England. For most of the 19th century, the
majority of Canadians belonged to either the Roman Catholic or the
Anglican Church. Both are hierarchically organized and were
state-established in Europe. In this century, the Anglican Church has
declined greatly in relative strength in Canada; today the United Church, a
unification of a considerable majority of the Anglophone sectarians, is by
far the largest Protestant denomination, currently including close to
one-fifth of the population. Although efforts to sustain church
establishment ultimately failed in Canada, some state support of religious
institutions, particularly schools, exists today in all provinces.26 Hence
religion has contributed to anti-elitist and individualistic beliefs in the
United States and has countered them in Canada.
Analyzing Canadian politics in the 1980s, political scientists William
Christian and Colin Campbell emphasize the continuing impact of political
institutions that reflect Tory values. They call attention to the historically
conditioned greater role of government in Canadian society and the
economy, emphasizing that
political institutions themselves embody and reflect political
ideas, and perpetuate them as they accustom participants in the
institutions to the values that are implicit in the system they
represent. … The successful operation in Canada of a Tory/
collectivist constitution for well over a century gives us
considerable grounds for the belief that such values are acceptable
and legitimate to large numbers of Canadians.27
89
Structural Influences
As noted in Chapter 1, most analysts agree that Canadian values and
behavior are different from American, but some also point to the causal
impact of the variations in the government, ecology, demography, and
economy of the two nations. It can be argued that any one of a number of
factors would have produced similar results, particularly the greater
emphases on the state and communitarianism in the north and on
individualism and laissez faire in the south. Values derived from the
different founding ethoses helped to establish these, but they have been
reinforced by the contrasts in the political systems, geography, and
population base.
The most obvious difference between the countries is in their
governments: a parliamentary system with an executive (cabinet) that can
have its way with the House of Commons, and a presidential, dividedpowers system in which the executive does not control and must negotiate
with both houses of Congress. In Canada, the source of authority (the
Queen) and the agency of authority (the elected government) are separate:
they are one in the United States, where the president, a politician, is also the
head of state. The former makes for more deference and respect for
government and the state than the latter.
The American Constitution with its Bill of Rights emphasizes
due-process guarantees for the individual and limits on state power. Until
1982, there were few limits on the power of the Canadian Parliament and
cabinet, not even on their ability to suspend the rights of free speech and
assembly. The inclusion of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in
the constitution of 1982 has moved Canada a long way in the direction of
American due process, but the new constitution still maintains
parliamentary supremacy and does not offer many of the protections in the
Bill of Rights, as will be made evident in Chapter 6.
Demographics and the environment also differ between the two
countries. The harsh climate of the northern latitudes forced most Canadian
settlement as far south as possible. Even today, its relatively small
population (about one-tenth of the United States) is strung out in a belt
reaching only about 150 miles north of the border but with an east-west span
greater than the American. The results of developing and maintaining a
country in this huge, sparsely populated span have been many. As S.D.
Clark, the doyen of the cultural interpretation of North American
comparative sociology, notes:
[G]eography, which favoured individual enterprise and limited
political interference in the conduct of economic, social and
religious affairs over a large part of the continent [the United
States], favoured on this part of the continent [Canada] large-scale
90
bureaucratic forms of organization and widespread intervention
by the state.28
Moreover, the presence of a larger, more powerful neighbor to the south
has encouraged Canadians to call on the state to protect the nation’s
economic independence.
Other analysts, such as Richard Gwyn, a distinguished Canadian
journalist, stress other ecological factors, including Canada’s
“northernness” and its pattern of urbanization, which is more extensive
than that south of the border. He points to traits held in common with other
northern countries: “reticence, pragmatism, wariness of public display”
and social democratic liberalism.29
The urban factor may not appear unique, but, as Gwyn emphasizes, there
is nothing like … [Canadian cities] in the United States. Most
Canadians live in them, while the dominant American pattern is
the suburb. … Canadians have figured out how to make their cities
work for them; Americans work in their cities and live outside
them.30
This thesis has been elaborated and documented by two urbanologists,
Michael Goldberg and John Mercer, who stress the many differences
between cities north and south of the border — for example, crime rates, the
incidence of slums, and cleanliness — that reflect variations in national
“values and attitudes.”31
Comparison of the frontier experiences of the two countries encapsulates
the ways in which values and structural factors interact to produce different
outcomes. Inasmuch as Canada had to be on guard against the United
States’ expansionist tendencies, it could not leave its frontier communities
unprotected or autonomous. Moreover, “it was in the established tradition
of British North America that the power of the civil authority should operate
well in advance of the spread of settlement.”32
Law and order, in the form of the centrally controlled North-West
Mounted Police, moved into the Canadian west before and along with the
settlers. This contributed to a deeper respect for the institutions of law and
order on the Canadian frontier than on the American, thus undermining the
development of individualism and disrespect for authority that has been
more characteristic of the United States. (These phenomena are discussed
in more detail in Chapter 6.)
National Images
Given the contrasts between the Canadian historical experience and the
American one, it is not surprising that the peoples of the two countries have
formed their self-conceptions in disparate ways. The United States, as we
91
have seen, was organized around what Abraham Lincoln called a “political
religion.” As a result, as Sacvan Bercovitch notes, both left and right take
sustenance from the American creed. Canada never developed its own
universalistic ideology.33
Comparing political science textbooks north and south of the border,
Alan Cairns emphasizes:
There is no Canadian creed against which a Canadian text could
judge the system’s performance and find it lacking. Had Gunnar
Myrdal written of Canada he could not have contradicted
prevailing inequalities with an official creed of equality. The
Anglophone political scientists of a country endowed with a
counter-revolutionary tradition have felt minimal compulsion to
explore the meaning and development of Canadianism.34
Analysts of literature draw similar conclusions. Thus, A.J.M. Smith
suggests that the emphasis on a national creed has made American writing
“critical and profoundly subversive,” while in Canada, without an ideal to
contrast with the country’s reality, literature has been more conservative.35
Margaret Atwood notes that, unlike Canada, the United States “holds out a
hope, never fulfilled but always promised, of a Utopia, the perfect human
society.” She points out that most 20th-century American literature is about
the “gap between the promise and the actuality, between the imagined ideal.
… and the actual squalid materialistic dotty small town, nasty city, or
redneck-filled outback.”36
In an analysis of fiction in English Canada and the United States, the
literary critic Stanley Fogel emphasizes the same distinctions:
A comparison of contemporary literature in English Canada and
the United States reveals a startling disparity in the two
perceptions of here. Here for American writers is a monolith, often
named, which must be combatted, reviled, or exorcised. The
American here comes with a clearly formed set of characteristics
and an apparently universally grasped ideology. Canada’s here is
rarely named in the pages of contemporary Canadian writers; it
cannot be named. … The ideological baggage, which goes with the
United States, does not encumber Canada. The latter country,
therefore, is not the object of writers’ thrusts or assaults.37
As we have seen, the ideology of the American Revolution provides a
raison d’être for the Republic—it explains why the United States came into
being and what it means to be American. But Canada “arrived at freedom
through evolution in allegiance and not by revolutionary compact.” Hence,
its “final governing force … is tradition and convention.”38 The country
could not offer its citizens “the prospect of a fresh start … because (as the
Canadian poet Douglas Le Pan put it) Canada is ‘a country without a
mythology.’”39 To justify separate national existence, Canadians have
92
deprecated American values and institutions, mainly those seen as derived
from an excessive emphasis on competition, which they once identified as
an outgrowth of mass democracy and equalitarianism but which in recent
years are explained by their intellectuals as endemic in the hegemonic
capitalist values and institutions.
Canadians have tended to define themselves not in terms of their own
national history and traditions but by reference to what they are not:
Americans. Canadians are the world’s oldest and most continuing
un-Americans.40 “Without at least a touch of anti-Americanism, Canada
would have no reason to exist.”41 Evidence drawn from “popular fiction,
westerns, science and spy thrillers” documents “persistent … Canadian
fears” about the United States.42 Until fairly recently, the predominant form
that negation took was conservative, monarchical, and ecclesiastical.
Formative national events and images — revolution and counterrevolution, rebels and Loyalists — continued to affect the way the two
countries regarded themselves from the 19th century into the pre-World
War II era.43 A student of Canadian writings on America calls attention to
various comments in the 1920s by Canadian observers who “discern and
condemn an excessive egalitarian quality derived from notions of
independence and democracy which have been set free during the
Revolution.”44
In a comparative study of modern democracies published in the early
1920s, James Bryce also noted such persistent differences flowing from
divergent histories.45 Like many Canadian and British writers, Bryce
viewed most dissimilarities between the two North American democracies
as reflecting credit on Canada. It did not exhibit the “spirit of license, the
contempt of authority, the negligence in enforcing the laws” found in the
United States and other populist countries. He stressed the enduring
adherence of both Canadian language groups to prerevolutionary values.46
Their concern with “order and harmony” reflected “the ideals of authority
and natural hierarchy.”47
A summary of Canadians’ beliefs about Americans and themselves as
reported in sociological surveys taken among Anglophones in the 1930s
points up the way the northerners justified themselves:
The typical American, in Canadian eyes at least, was brash and
arrogant, with little respect for law and order and even less respect
for the sanctity of marriage. This tells us little of what Americans
were really like but it tells us a great deal of what Canadians
thought of themselves …
It is noteworthy that the qualities which seemed to distinguish
Canadians — and to reveal their superiority — were qualities
which clearly reflected conservative attitudes. The emphasis was
93
on respect for traditional institutions. … Rugged individualism
was not necessarily seen as a sin but it was closely tempered by the
values associated with … social conformity …
The subject matter in Canadian schools … suggested a respect for
inherited traditions... [T]he American myth of a new and
unfettered society in the new world never appeared in the
Canadian textbooks.48
Pre-World War II Canadians were not, of course, united in their view of
themselves or their neighbor. During the 1920s, judgments varied along
political lines Conservatives stressed the Tory emphasis on the use of the
state to foster noblesse-oblige objectives and were especially deprecating
about egalitarianism and democracy in the United States.49 They wished to
maintain the British tie and even to strengthen the link to the Empire. In
contrast, many Liberals were continentalists, adhering to traditions that
were closer to those of the Americans. At the same time, radicals tended to
be more nationalistic in their sentiments.
Canadian leftists, then as later, worried about an American takeover of
their country.
Whatever the motives of different groups, the conception Canadians had
of what was good about Canada and bad about the United States influenced
their values and behavior. Those who said that Canadians — by not being as
materialistic, achievement-oriented and competitive as Americans — were
morally superior taught their children not to be as competitive or
aggressive. The stress in Canadian schooling on the value of high culture, as
distinct from functionally practical subjects, both described and influenced
the content of education.
Values and structures change. Canada and the United States have both
followed the general tendencies of most western nations toward greater
acceptance of communitarian welfare and egalitarian objectives, a decline
in religious commitment, smaller nuclear families, an increase in
educational attainment, a greater role for government, continued economic
growth, a higher standard of living, more leisure, increased longevity,
growing urbanization, and a shift in the composition of the economy from
primary and secondary industries toward tertiary and high-tech and
information-based ones. With these developments has come the decline of
many cultural traits associated with pre-industrial society, particularly with
respect to emphasis on stratification differences associated with religion
and inherited social status, gender, race, or ethnicity. These changes have
not, however, led to a falloff in national or group consciousness,
particularly among ethnic or linguistic minorities, whose self-awareness
and political organization have frequently increased; the behavior of the
Quebecois in Canada and the blacks and Hispanics in the United States
provides examples (which will be dealt with in subsequent chapters).
94
The cultural and structural differences among western countries
generally and between Canada and the United States in particular have
declined in some respects. The diffusion of values, the comparable
economic changes, and the development of rapid transportation and almost
instantaneous communication seem to be producing a common western
culture. Yet, many traditional national differences persist, some in weaker
form, and new ones emerge (an example is the rate of unionization, which is
now much higher in Canada than in the United States). As Gwyn notes,
Canadians have become
a quite distinct kind of North American … utterly unlike [those in
the United States] in their political cultures so that they are as
distinct from each other as are the Germans from the French, say,
even though both are European just as Canadians and Americans
are both North Americans.50
Meanwhile, in Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s words, “if some
countries have too much history, [Canada] has too much geography.”51
Unlike the United States, it finds little to celebrate: no revolution, no
declaration of independence, no civil war to free the slaves. Its first (1867)
constitution was drawn up by conservatives who did not express
themselves “in popular language. They did not speak the language of the
Rights of Man or of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” That
constitution, argues Philip Resnick, was the legitimating “document of the
Canadian counter-revolution.”52
This discussion continues in the next chapter with an analysis of the way
the content and style of creative culture, particularly literature, in Canada
has helped to form and distribute the country’s image of itself. Since that
identity has emerged in reaction to conceptions of the United States,
Canadian literary critics have also commented about American writing and
identity, about the American dream.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Ramsay Cook, The Maple Leaf Forever: Essays on Nationalism and Politics in
Canada (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1977) p. 188-189.
Margaret Atwood, The Journals of Suzanna Moodie: Poems (Toronto: Oxford
University Press, 1970), p. 62.
See Seymour Martin Lipset, “Why No Socialism in the United States?” in s.
Bialer and S. Sluzar, eds., Sources of Contemporary Radicalism, vol. 1 (Boulder,
Col.: Westview Press, 1977), p. 74-79, 81-83, for other references.
See Harold Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1973) p. 396
Peter J. Smith, “The Ideological Origins of Canadian Confederation,” Canadian
Journal of Political Science 20 (March 1987), 25-27.
William A. Stahl, “‘May we have Dominion …’: Civil Religion and the
Legitimation of Canadian Confederation” (Luther College, University of Regina,
1986), p. 4 (italics in original).
95
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
96
Quoted in ibid.
Ibid., p. 14.
Pierre Berton, Why We Act Like Canadians (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart,
1982), p. 16-17.
Ibid., p. 16
Alan F.J. Artibise, “Exploring the North American West: A Comparative Urban
Perspective,” The American Review of Canadian Studies 14 (Spring 1984): 32.
“O Canada Eh!” prepared by McLuhan Productions, Toronto, 1986.
Charles Gordon, “No One Called In the Helicopters,” Maclean’s, May 1, 1989,
p. 35.
There were, of course, opponents of these actions, especially among French
Canadians. Not enamored with the British tie (although they preferred an
Anglican monarchy to absorption into a Protestant sectarian republic),
Francophones argued that Canada had become a North American nation and that
the decision on whether or not to go to war should depend on its interests as an
independent state. Pointing to the fact that the United States did not enter either
world war at its beginning, they contended that if Canada were truly independent,
it too would stay out of wars unless and until it was felt necessary to enter for
Canadian reasons. At times, this opposition became vehement. The Imposition of
conscription evoked riots and public disobedience in Quebec during both world
wars.
“Bleeding-Heart Conservatives.” Canada survey, The Economist, October 8,
1988, p. 4.
Philip Resnick, Parliament vs. People: An Essay on Democracy and Canadian
Political Culture (Vancouver: New Star Books, 1984). p. 13.
Frank Underhill, In Search of Canadian Liberalism (Toronto: Macmillan of
Canada, 1960) p. 222.
Mason Wade, “Quebec and the French Revolution of 1789,” in J.M. Bumsted,
ed., Canadian History before Confederation: Essays and Interpretations
(Georgetown, Ont.: Irwin-Dorsey, 1972), p. 252.
“Engels to Sorge,” February 8, 1890, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected
Correspondence (New York: International Publishers, 1942), p. 467; and “Engels
to Sorge,” September 10, 1888, in idem, Letters to Americans (New York:
International Publishers, 1953), p. 204.
Arthur K. Davis, “Canadian Society and History as Hinterland versus
Metropolis,” in Richard J. Ossenberg, ed., Canadian Society: Pluralism, Change
and Conflict (Scarborough, Ont.: Prentice-Hall Canada, 1971), p. 22-29.
Reg Whitaker, “Images of the State in Canada,” in Leo Panitch, ed., The
Canadian State: Political Economy and Political Power (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1977), p. 34, 39 (italics in original). See also Gordon T. Stewart,
The Origins of Canadian Politics: A Comparative Approach (Vancouver:
University of British Columbia Press, 1986), p. 92-93, 96-99.
See, for example, Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, 1955); and Gad Horowitz, “Notes on ‘Conservatism, Liberalism
and Socialism in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 11(June 1978):
390.
Gad Horowitz, “Red Tory,” in William Kilbourn, ed., Canada: A Guide to the
Peaceable Kingdom (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1970), p. 255 (emphasis in
original). See also idem, Canadian Labour in Politics (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1968), p. 1-52.
24. Northrop Frye, “Letters in Canada: 1952, Part I: Publications in English,”
University of Toronto Quarterly 22 (April 1953): 273.
25. See S.D. Clark, Church and Sect in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1948).
26. Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, The Future of Religion (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1985), p. 461.
27. William Christian and Colin Campbell, Political Parties and Ideologies in
Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1983), p. 29, 31.
28. S.D. Clark, The Developing Canadian Community (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1962), p. 232. See also Harold A. Innis, Essays in Canadian
Economic History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956), p. 62-77, 78-96,
97-107, 156-175, 200-210: idem, The Fur Trade in Canada; and Donald G.
Creighton, The Empire of the St. Lawrence (Toronto: Houghton Mifflin, 1958).
For an evaluation of the literature, see J.T. McLeod, “The Free Enterprise Dodo Is
No Phoenix,” The Canadian Forum 56 (August 1976): 6-13.
29. Richard Gwyn, The 49th Paradox: Canada in North America (Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart, 1985), p. 11. For a critique of the geographic argument
about Canadian character, see Carl Berger, “The True North Strong and Free,” in
Peter Russell, ed., Nationalism in Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1966),
p. 3-26.
30. Gwyn, The 49th Paradox, p. 185-187. See also Alan F.J. Artibise, “Canada as an
Urban Nation,” Daedalus 117 (Fall 1988): 237-239.
31. Michael A. Goldberg and John Mercer, The Myth of the North American City:
Continentalism Challenged (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press,
1986), p. 116.
32. Edgar W. McInnis, The Unguarded Frontier (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1942), p. 306-307. See also Douglas Fetherling, The Gold Crusades: A Social
History of Gold Rushes 1849-1969 (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1989).
33. Sacvan Bercovitch, “The Rites of Assent: Rhetoric, Ritual, and the Ideology of
American Consensus,” in Sam B. Girgus, ed., The American Self: Myth, Ideology
and Popular Culture (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981).
p. 5-6.
34. Alan C. Cairns, “Political Science in Canada and the Americanization Issue,”
Canadian Journal of Political Science 8 (June 1975): 217.
35. A.J.M. Smith, “Evolution and Revolution as Aspects of English Canadian and
American Literature,” in R.A. Preston, ed., Perspectives on Revolution and
Evolution (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1979), p. 234.
36. Margaret Atwood, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1972), p. 31-32.
37. Stanley Fogel, A Tale of Two Countries: Contemporary Fiction in English
Canada and the United States (Toronto: ECW Press, 1984), p. 19. For a
discussion of the impact of the American myth on writers, see p. 14-18.
38. W.L. Morton, The Canadian Identity (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1961). p. 86.
39. Bercovitch, “The Rites of Assent,” p. 24.
40. Underhill, In Search of Canadian Liberalism, p. 222.
41. Blair Fraser, The Search for Identity: Canada, 1945-67 (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1967), p. 301. See also S.D. Clark, in H.F. Angus, ed., Canada and
Her Great Neighbor: Sociological Surveys of Opinions and Attitudes in Canada
Concerning the United States (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1938), p. 243, 245.
97
42. Robin Winks, “’Whodunit?’: Canadian Society as Reflected in Its Detective
Fiction,” The American Review of Canadian Studies 17 (Winter 1987-88): 377.
43. David M. Potter, “Canadian Views of the United States as a Reflex of Canadian
Values: A Commentary,” in S.F. Wise and R.C. Brown, Canada Views the United
States: Nineteenth-Century Political Attitudes (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada,
1976), p. 127-129.
44. John Charles Weaver, “Imperiled Dreams: Canadian Opposition to the American
Empire, 1918-1930” (Ph.D. diss., Department of History, Duke University,
1973), p. 78-79.
45. James Bryce, Modern Democracies, vol. 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1921),
p. 495-496.
46. Ibid., p. 467, 501-502.
47. Weaver, “Imperiled Dreams,” p. 159-160.
48. H. Blair Neatby, The Politics of Chaos: Canada in the Thirties (Toronto:
Macmillan of Canada, 1972), p. 10-14. He summarizes research reported in
Angus, ed., Canada and Her Great Neighbor, especially the section by S.D.
Clark, p. 392-438.
49. For a statement by Canada’s foremost contemporary conservative philosopher on
the differences between American and Canadian conservatism, see George
Grant, Lament for a Nation (Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1965). p. 64-65,
70-71. See also Charles Taylor, Radical Tories: The Conservative Tradition in
Canada (Toronto: Anansi, 1982).
50. Gwyn, The 49th Paradox, p. 11
51. From a speech to the House of Commons, Ottawa, June 18, 1936.
52. Resnick, Parliament vs. People, p. 16-17.
98
Karen Gould
Writing in the Feminine:
Feminist Misgivings about Modernity
Abstract
Writing in the Feminine examines the creative works of Nicole Brossard,
Madeleine Gagnon, Louky Bersianik, and France Théoret, their theoretical
interest in the experimental project of “writing in the feminine,” and their
impact on contemporary Quebec letters. Chapter I outlines the historical,
political, and cultural contexts of gender-marked writing in Quebec. The
second half of Chapter I, from which this passage is taken, discusses literary
modernity and the gendered subject, American feminism and the politics of
personal experience, Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and French theories of
feminine difference, textual strategies that underscore the presence of women
writers and readers, and the significance of inserting women’s physicality in
writing.
Résumé
Writing in the Feminine examine les œuvres de création de Nicole Brossard,
Madeleine Gagnon, Louky Bersianik et France Théoret, l’intérêt théorique
qu’elles témoignent au projet expérimental de l’ « écriture au féminin » et leur
impact sur la littérature québécoise contemporaine. Le premier chapitre
porte sur les contextes historique, politique et culturel de l’écriture au féminin
au Québec. La deuxième moitié du premier chapitre porte sur la modernité
littéraire et les thèmes abordés dans une perspective féminine, le féminisme
américain et la politique de l’expérience personnelle, Hélène Cixous, Luce
Irigaray et les théories françaises de la différence féminine, les stratégies
textuelles qui soulignent la présence des écrivaines et des lectrices et
l’importance d’intégrer la présence physique des femmes dans l’écriture.
The interest generated in the experimental techniques and transgressive
stance of literary modernity and in Brossard’s work in particular announced
the beginning of the end for many of the forms and thematic concerns of
representational art in modern Quebec. It also resulted in an undermining of
the assumption that realist texts with overtly political content were the
privileged literary sites of revolutionary thought. For Brossard and others
writing in La Barre du jour, the entire mimetic enterprise of conventional
art had, in effect, been called into question, while the new focus of inquiry
became for a while the process and pleasure of writing itself. This
exploratory approach to the materiality of language had, to be sure, its own
politically subversive intent. Moreover, various strands of the sensibility
most associated with literary modernity in Quebec, and particularly with
33-34, 2006
modernity’s transgressive, exploratory approach to writing, clearly helped
prepare the way for the experimental project of writing in the feminine.
Eventually, however, a number of feminists, including France Théoret,
began to challenge literary modernity’s refusal to distinguish between
fiction and reality, between the realm of imaginative invention and real
historical events.
Initially drawn to the radicality of the new formalist project at La Barre
du jour, France Théoret feared nevertheless that a possible negative result of
modernity’s apparent need to “bracket off the referent or real historical
world”—to quote Terry Eagleton—might be the bracketing off of political
forces capable of promoting progressive social change.1 The virtual erasure
of history in the formalist texts of modernity, like the eclipse of the gendered
subject, meant that for Théoret, the speaking subject was becoming “a
textual presence abstracted from its history.” Furthermore, she argued,
This speaking subject (in formalism) has no social inscription, no
individual history and belongs to no nation, generation, or
gender/genre. If formalism has brought about the revision of an
undeniably gossipy element in literature, it has also tended to make
literature aseptic.2
Even some of the most unsympathetic critics of women’s experimental
writing in Quebec have recognized the importance of the real social
conditions of history that feminist writers such as Brossard and Théoret
would eventually bring back to the deconstructive project of modernité.3
From a woman’s point of view, the evacuation of the real and the real
speaking subject from many of the more experimentally modern texts in
Quebec could only encourage self-denial and self-effacement, a dilemma
that ultimately led a number of women writers concerned with feminist
issues to rethink the cultural bases of modernité for women in general. On a
more personal level, France Théoret has candidly acknowledged her own
recurrent feelings of failure as a writer during her association with La Barre
du jour: “We weren’t supposed to be a woman. If you were a woman, you
introduced something about the order of existence into writing and that was
semanticizing writing, returning to representation. In fact, we were
supposed to flee representation. It was not allowed to take place in any
way.”4
By the mid-1970s, Brossard herself was publicly admitting the serious
risks women engaged in formalist writing practices ran because their texts
often effaced any sense of the historical along with the identity of the
speaking subject, thereby blurring important distinctions between fiction
and the reality of women’s daily lives. In addition, a number of Quebec
women writers already interested in the writing practices of la modernité
were becoming increasingly preoccupied with the political concerns of the
feminist movements in Quebec, in France, and in the United States.
100
Brossard, Gagnon, Bersianik, Théoret, and others began to experiment with
new approaches to writing that could address—both theoretically and
poetically—the problematic position and frequent “absence” of women in
language, in writing, and in the culture as a whole. Concerned with linking
the forward-looking direction of modernity—and in the case of Gagnon in
particular, of socialism—to the political agendas of various feminist
groups, they also began to reconsider the relationships between political
theory (traditionally male) and cultural production (also predominantly
male); between language and gender (historically male constructions);
between the realms of the symbolic (inacessible to women, said Lacan), the
imaginary, and the concrete realm of women’s daily lives; and between a
sexuality that had long been repressed in a largely church-dominated
culture and the authoritative power of the (male) word.
If Quebec’s literature of modernity raised the question of how one writes
and promoted the “pleasures of the text” in terms that were presumably
gender-neutral, by the mid-1970s feminist writers were focusing
increasingly on the question of who is writing and on the problem of female
identity in a patriarchal culture that denies women’s presence. Brossard,
Théoret, and others began to rethink the relationship between the
subjectivity women aspire to and the language needed to voice that vision.
These and other questions issuing out of the encounter between feminism
and modernity began to surface in a growing number of their texts. Were the
very notions of pleasure, body, urbanity, and even transgression
itself—themes so dear to many “resolutely modern” writers in Quebec—
actually indifferent notions? Or were such themes (over) determined by an
avant-garde discourse that, for all its pretense to subversion, remained
locked in struggle and, so far as the question of gender was concerned, in
collusion with the dominant patriarchal culture? Was literary modernity yet
another (male) model for the “anxiety of literary influence,” typifying, as in
some ways it did, the rivalry between fathers and sons?5 Could the mother,
the maternal, la maternité actually be “modern”?6 On what grounds did
many of the forms of literary modernity commonly exclude the
historical—and for whose benefit? Questions such as these could no longer
be ignored.
Many feminist writers in Quebec were, of course, quick to acknowledge
the extent to which the language women use is also intricately bound up
with psychological constructs and socioeconomic systems that have
traditionally been designed by men. Thus, like the deconstructive writers of
modernité who had attempted to sever their ties with bourgeois values
through radical experimentations with language and through continuing
efforts to underscore the material production of the text, a number of
women writers followed suit in a feminist vein and began calling for the
disruption and repudiation of conventional male-oriented discourse, often
using similar deconstructive strategies for their own political purposes.
101
But for some, including Brossard, Gagnon, Bersianik, and Théoret, the
notion of a writing of transgression was not, in itself, enough. Their need to
invent other modes of writing was directly linked to a pressing and
doubtless more overriding desire to stress their presence as women in the
creative process and in the culture at large.
Louise Dupré has characterized the relationship between the more
formal orientation of literary modernity and a feminist-inspired writing of
difference in the following way: “The feminist project has made poetry
move on from experimentation to experience, for there has been a real
coincidence between research into form and enunciation of a feminine
signified.7 With respect to both the search for different modes of feminine
inscription and to the important emphasis placed on the position of the
woman writer in her text, France Théoret has further clarified this shift from
formal experimentation to experience in many recent texts by insisting that
“Language in the feminine has situated its problematic in the area of
enunciation. The speaking subject becomes at times the central figure in
writing, as does its social and individual inscription.”8 This emphasis on the
difficult yet pressing need to insert the female subject into discourse has
also meant that the very notion of gender and, more specifically, of what it
means to be a woman has had to be addressed in a variety of settings as well.
“The Personal is Political” and the Encounter with American
Feminism
While the influence of the left within the Parti Québécois decreased rather
quickly during the latter half of the 1970s, the same could also be said of its
fading influence among a growing number of Quebec feminists. As Diane
Lamoureux notes, by 1976 many of the feminists who had at one time
actively participated in socialist feminist groups or in radical feminist
groups with strong nationalist sympathies had all but abandoned traditional
Marxist analyses and Third World nationalism as their principal frames of
reference. Increasingly, women’s groups grew dissatisfied with the left’s
insistence on the institution of the State as the sole focus of struggle, a focus
that was maintained at the expense, feminists argued, of the social and the
private spheres.9
Instead of relying heavily on the male-authored political and social
theories of the left as a number of Quebec feminists had initially done in the
late 1960s and early 1970s, radical feminists in Quebec were turning
increasingly toward one another; toward the tradition of women in Quebec
who had preceded them, mothered them, and educated them; toward the
collective exchange of views from women of different backgrounds,
classes, and cultures; and toward the theoretical contributions of a growing
international feminist community in order to build a theoretical framework
based directly on women’s experience. Radical feminists in Quebec were
also encouraging the practice of a more decidedly women-centered politics
102
that would no longer function as a mere appendage to Marxist theories of
economic exploitation and class struggle or to the vision of independence of
leftist nationalists. In an interview with Le Devoir in 1979, Louky Bersianik
explains in simple terms the orientation of her own feminist politics and her
writing: “I am a radical feminist in the sense that my struggle is based on the
specific oppression of women. And the enemy to overthrow is the
patriarchy.”10
One collective example of a growing dissatisfaction with the
male-oriented left was the appearance in 1976 of the important radical
feminist newspaper, Les Têtes de Pioche (The Hard Heads), founded by
France Théoret, Nicole Brossard, Michèle Jean, and three others. In an
editorial published in 1978, Quebec historian Michèle Jean cited the
theoretical single-mindedness of the male-inspired left in Quebec, its
seemingly exclusionary hold on the “truth,” and its unwillingness to
consider the progressive common ground on which women of different
classes might usefully stand as the primary reasons for the incontrovertible
schism that was steadily widening between a number of leftist and radical
feminist groups.11
Yet even among the members of the Têtes de Pioche collective, issues of
class solidarity, sisterhood, and the politics of sexual preference were
problematic at best and the source of much questioning and dissension
about the initial political direction of the group.
France Théoret was one of several members who left this writing
collective as a result of internal political disputes. As Armande Saint-Jean
candidly notes in her discussion of the evolution of the Têtes de Pioche
collective,
The principal sources of conflict and tension between the
successive collective members were based on three types of
differences: ideological (the radical feminists versus the feminist
Marxists), class (the feminists with working-class backgrounds
versus the feminists with bourgeois roots), and sexual (the lesbian
feminists as opposed to the heterosexual feminists).12
As far as the newspaper itself was concerned, however, the editorial
stance of Les Têtes de Pioche was remarkably consistent. On the whole, the
radical feminist perspectives articulated from 1976 to 1979 in most of the
collective’s articles and editorials targeted the patriarchal family and the
patriarchal character of existing social policies, political institutions, and
cultural myths as the structural foundations of misogyny and male
supremacy in Quebec culture. The newspaper called on women to work
together to analyze and theorize about the nature of their oppression and to
create their own networks of collective resistance and strategies for
liberation. Undoubtedly one of the most important contributions of the
Têtes de Pioche collective to the feminist debates in Quebec was the
103
adaptation and affirmation of the popular American feminist slogan, “The
personal is political” For their second issue, which appeared in April of
1976 while France Théoret was still San active member of the collective,
Nicole Brossard wrote an important lead article that suggested the large
scope intended by the concept of the personal as a political sphere. As we
shall see in subsequent chapters, what has motivated much of the thematic
focus of writing in the feminine in Quebec is elucidated in Brossard’s own
reading of the phrase, “La vie privée est politique”:
Personal life is the life of a body that eats, sleeps, has orgasms,
defecates, sweats, touches, breathes, a body that knows pleasure
(qui jouit). It’s the hidden story of the body suppressed behind the
walls of the family home, the clinic, or the reform school. Personal
life is when we argue, when we come to blows; when we have been
violated, when we beat our kids, when we make love, when we
choke from happiness, when we become alcoholics, when we
suffer from insomnia; when we marry, when we give birth, when
we witness the death of our father or our mother. It’s the hidden
story of women. It’s the story that men suppress. What we call
“personal life” (vie privée) is essentially the relationship we
maintain with our bodies and with those of others. If, for myself,
this relationship is political, it’s because outside the house this
relationship continues, but this time mediated by social values
which seem to withdraw the body’s right to assert itself. Based on
how we conceive of our intimate relationship with our own body, a
whole series of behavioral patterns and social attitudes ensue from
which subjectivity has presumably been excluded by negating the
body when it works, when it projects itself, when it confronts the
powers that use it for their own ends.”13
By the mid-1970s, then, the socialist feminist politics of activist women
in Quebec were being influenced substantially by the radical feminist
current in the American women’s movement. In particular, there was
growing interest in the new theorizing in the United States and France on the
sources of women’s oppression in the dominant male culture. An activist in
union politics at the Université du Québec in Montreal for a number of
years, Madeleine Gagnon has expressed some of the reasons for this change
in the direction of Quebec feminism in terms of her own personal
experience within the university setting. For her, the work site of students,
professors, and supporting staff reflected both the structure and
institutional dynamics of sexual politics at all levels of patriarchal culture.
It’s in her place of work, her place of everyday activity, that woman
can act. Concretely. We, as university women, live in a privileged
setting but we are not any less cornered, any less a minority. 98% of
the bosses are men, 90% subordinate employees, women who
suffer the effects of sexism in a more refined fashioned—violated
with words, beaten with concepts—but how devastating nevertheless. The role of women in the university—secretaries, women
104
students, professors at every level—is to speak, to change the
direction of things, to put mechanisms in place. To react to this
subtle power, this power of SEDUCTION to which women
students and secretaries answer out of VENERATION. Look out
for those who don’t participate in this game of SEDUCTION, who
reject it … .14
Quebec feminist historians and writers alike generally agree that
American feminism played a considerable role during the latter half of the
1970s in prompting the gradual shift for many Quebec feminists on the left
from predominantly nationalist and materialist approaches to women’s
issues to a more emphatically woman-centered view of gender politics in
patriarchal cultures. Already in the early 1970s, Quebec feminism in its
various forms had been marked by the initial militancy of some radical
feminists in the United States as well as by the more pragmatic orientation
of many “mainstream” American feminists interested in creating a more
equitable place for women within existing institutions and within the
established system of government. Shortly thereafter, many Quebec
feminists all along the political spectrum were reading the landmark works
of Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, Adrienne Rich, and the
Australian-born Germaine Greer. At a time when Quebec was, itself,
looking outward and when aspiring indépendantistes within the Parti
Québécois were attempting to carve out a place for Quebec in the
international community as a future nation state, Quebec feminists were
also expanding their frames of reference to include the political activism
and theoretical analyses of feminists from other countries.
The influence of American feminism in Quebec was widespread for a
variety of reasons. The proximity of the United States, the extensive media
coverage in Quebec of American political issues and events—including the
growing women’s movement, the visits of Germaine Greer in 1971 and
Kate Millett in 1973, the teach-ins on women in Quebec universities
modeled on the American approach of politicizing the academy-all worked
to link Quebec feminists to an English-speaking women’s movement in the
United States from which most of them had remained relatively cutoff
during the late 1960s and early 1970s. By 1976, there was also a growing
perception among a number of Quebec feminists that American and
Quebec women on the left had gone through similarly radicalizing
experiences and that they may also have received similar treatment in
male-dominated groups during the anti-war movement in-the United States
and-during the height of socialist nationalist organizing in Quebec in the
late 1960s.
The initial radical feminist current in Quebec grew out of a desire to
“feminize” the political ideals and the more pragmatic organizational
politics of socialist nationalism in the early 1970s. However, the kinds of
issues with which Quebec radical feminists identified in the latter half of the
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decade were much more closely tied to the radical feminist perspectives
developing in the United States and, to a lesser extent perhaps, in France as
well. Abortion, rape, violence toward women, lesbianism and lesbian
rights, and sexism in the media, in the schools, and in the practices of the
male medical establishment became the central issues of radical feminism
in Quebec, echoing the preoccupations of several currents in American
feminism during approximately the same period of time. Feminist
consciousness-raising groups in the United States, with their emphasis on
collective support and the sharing of personal experience and repressed
material, also became a dynamic model for radical feminists in Quebec in
the mid-1970s. The number of women’s collectives, women’s centers, and
general women’s resources in Quebec grew dramatically during the same
period. The interest of Brossard and Bersianik in American feminist
thought is well known. In addition to her frequent references to AngloAmerican feminist thought, Nicole Brossard also made a film with Luce
Guilbeault during 1975 and 1976 entitled Some American Feminists, a
project that appears to have been motivated by their mutual desire to turn the
attention of Quebec women to the development and contributions of radical
feminist thought in the United States.
The frequently acknowledged debt to feminist thought in the United
States is especially strong with respect to the writings of Adrienne Rich and
Mary Daly—the former for the physicality of her feminist poetics, the latter
for her bold efforts to rear through the fabric of patriarchal mythologies and
to refashion language to celebrate women’s “converging power.”15 Further
parallels could also be drawn between the experimental writing of Quebec
feminists and the radical poetic theorizing of Audre Lorde, especially in the
welding of poetry and political praxis through what Lorde herself has
termed “a revelatory distillation of experience.” And in a much cited phrase
whose political perspective reverberates throughout the writings of
Brossard, Gagnon, Bersianik, and Theoret, Lorde adds that for women,
“poetry is not a luxury.”16 Likewise, for the writers discussed here, writing
is an indispensable facet of feminist thinking and feminist practice.
As the decade drew to a close, the collective political agenda of various
radical feminist groups in Quebec—although not without their own internal
and external conflicts—paralleled many of the positions taken by radical
feminists in the United States as well. In a relatively short period of time and
despite the notable differences of national histories and cultural traditions,
the bond between American and Quebec radical feminists had become
remarkably strong. For the four Quebec writers in question, the historical
complexities of Quebec culture and even the most influential aspects of
French theorizing on the feminine have thus been traversed by political
issues and theoretical perspectives grounded in the realities of
contemporary North American life and persuasively addressed by leading
American feminist thinkers.
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In an essay from a volume published in 1987, France Théoret reflects on
the literary consequences of the American feminist connection, noting
among other things the importance of a creative feminine space grounded in
the politics of the real world. The language of Kate Millett and Mary Daly,
Théoret argues, oscillates between classical analysis and poetic invention.
For a number of feminists writing in Quebec since the mid-1970s, this
mixing of tone and discursive strategies has been crucial for the
development of their own theoretical fiction and poetic theory. Most
important, Théoret finds that “the American nature of this writing [écriture
au féminin] can be seen in statements that offer a direct and spontaneous
mixture of the intimate and the social, the everyday and the learned. When
reading it, we have the impression of a utopia which already exists, a utopia
which promises nothing more than that the imaginary realm become visible
in language.”17
French Theory and Inscriptions of Difference
Intellectual debates in France have exerted considerable influence on
feminist thought in Quebec, particularly among feminist writers,
academics, and intellectuals. French philosophical disputes over the
configuration of “woman” in contemporary psychoanalytic thought, as
well as related discussions concerning women’s position in language and in
the realm of the symbolic, have been followed by a small but articulate
number of Quebec feminists with considerable interest. There is, moreover,
a particular way in which the French call for an écriture féminine appears to
bridge radical feminist theories of women’s difference with a more
uniquely Québécois malaise about speaking and writing that stems from
their own sense of cultural marginality and otherness. In Quebec, however,
writing in the feminine has not been viewed as a writing practice in which all
or even many women writers engage. On the contrary, there is a cultural
specificity to this concept that must be emphasized. For a number of
feminists writing in Quebec, the notion of an écriture au féminin has
developed as a political project, that is to say, as a potentially useful strategy
for subverting conventional literary forms, deconstructing patriarchal
thought, and asserting the centrality of women’s experience in writing.
Indeed, for the writers examined in this study, the project of writing as a
woman and from a woman’s place has invited the inscription of what
announces itself as “the very possibility of change, the space that can serve
as a springboard for subversive thought, the precursory movement of a
transformation of social and cultural structures.”18
Hélène Cixous’ much-discussed invitation to women to “write
themselves” in another language captures the new point of departure and
the new spirit of women’s experimental writing in Quebec after 1975:
Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring
women to writing, from which they have been driven away as
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violently as from their bodies—for the same reasons, by the same
law, with the same fatal goal,” affirms Cixous. “Woman must put
herself into the text—as into the world and into history—by her
own movement.19
Although on the whole, the work of Luce Irigaray has probably been more
influential than the writing of Hélène Cixous, the four writers discussed in
this study appear to have read Cixous’ works as well as the works of other
theoreticians of women’s difference such as Annie Leclerc and Claire
Lejeune with genuine interest. The writings of Julia Kristeva, on the other
hand, have until recently generated considerably less enthusiasm.
Certainly, the 1972-73 seminars that Cixous gave in Montreal furthered
the discussion of her thought and work among Quebec intellectuals and
students alike. While too abstract and elitist for some, recent French
theoretical discussions of women’s identity, language, and access to the
symbolic have sparked numerous women writers in Quebec to view their
own “coming to writing” as a serious site of feminist inquiry. And in so
doing, many have approached the writing process as a textual investigation
of the relationships between writing, repression, and male authority,
between gender and the imaginary.
Along with other feminist writers in Quebec who are troubled by the
inherent complicity under patriarchy between discourse and power,
between the father’s word and institutional authority, Brossard, Gagnon,
Bersianik, and Théoret have conceived the project of writing “otherwise”
—against and possibly even outside paternal reason, truth, and phallic
desire—as a radical attempt to destabilize and ultimately dislocate the
phallocentric hierarchy, both real and symbolic. On the level of textuality,
the project of writing in the feminine in Quebec has also prompted
continuing efforts to derange patriarchal discourse by overthrowing its
syntax, “by suspending its eternally teleological order,” as French theorist
Luce Irigaray would have it, “by snipping the wires, cutting the current,
breaking the circuits, switching the connections, by modifying continuity,
alternation, frequency, intensity.”20
The regions opened up by this new territory of feminist theorizing and
feminine inscription appear to be boundless, the terrain constantly
fluctuating. Experimental efforts by Brossard, Gagnon, Bersianik and
Théoret have unveiled a vast, ever-shifting field of linguistic discovery not
unlike what Luce Irigaray refers to in her own work as the “flowing,”
“fluctuating,” “excess” of women’s discourse,21 and not unlike the haunting
depths of Hélène Cixous’ oceanic expanses or the liberating “flight” (vol)
she attributes to women who dare to “steal” (vole) the words of men and
make them their own.22 The notion of theft—of a willful and joyous
thieving—is, in fact, at the very center of Many of these texts. Yet
surely-this emphasis on feminist thieving and retrieving is not surprising
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since language has traditionally been the property of men, rendered
property through a politics of unequal distribution and hoarding that, as we
know, spans much of western history.
In addition to their more general call to women to speak and to write
“otherwise,” Cixous and Irigaray have proposed a number of theoretical
constructs that have significantly influenced women’s experimental
writing in Quebec during the last twenty years. Several of the positions
developed by Cixous as part of her radical critiques of Freud and Lacan
have been crucial. In particular, her privileging of the imaginary over the
symbolic, of excess and desire over censorship and repression, have helped
map the direction of feminist inquiry in many of the texts to be discussed in
this study.23 Cixous’ notion of a writing practice in which sexuality and
textuality continuously intertwine has also been at the center of feminist
literary explorations in Quebec for well over a decade. Likewise, Irigaray’s
feminist critiques of the “blind spots” of western metaphysics have been
timely and empowering. Her contention, moreover, that phallocentric
discourse constructs an erroneous image of man as a unified, centered, and
clearly defined subject while projecting an image of woman as a pale
reflection (at best) of that same identity, has been particularly important for
the writers in question.
While the extent of the influence of Irigaray and Cixous—certainly the
most well-known French theoreticians of feminine difference—may be
difficult to assess summarily, it does appear that many of their
deconstructive moves against phallocentrism along with a number of more
affirmative efforts to valorize the feminine have resurfaced under various
guises in the feminist-inspired texts of Brossard, Gagnon, Bersianik, and
Théoret. The process of rethinking the functions and transformational
power of language from the point of view of women has prompted these
four writers and others in Quebec to develop textual strategies that work to
displace hierarchical thinking by dismantling conventional writing
practices. At the same time, each of the writers examined in this study has
sought to reposition the discussion of women’s identity around the more
fluid and expansive concepts of movement, fluctuation, contradiction, and
plurality—concepts clearly identifiable with the somewhat different, but
nevertheless contiguous projects of Cixous and Irigaray.
Faced with an oppressive and often overtly hostile environment for
women, Brossard considers the notion of an écriture an feminin—or what
she has sometimes termed écriture féminine—both as an imaginative site
on which to construct new identities for women and as an indication of the
emerging desire of contemporary women to transform themselves, both
individually and collectively, into autonomous agents in the process of
signification. During the last decade, Brossard and Bersianik have used the
terms écriture au féminin and écriture féminine to speak of feminine modes
of writing. Yet although the latter is an obvious borrowing from Hélène
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Cixous, Brossard, Bersianik, and Théoret have—unlike Cixous—
consistently understood their own approach to writing in the feminine as a
gender-marked experimental writing practice in which women alone are
engaged, rather than as an anti-logocentric or anti-phallocentric approach
to writing that male and female writers alike might pursue. “To write in the
feminine,” affirms Brossard, “means that women must work at making
their own hope and history, in the one place where these can take shape,
where there is textual matter.”24 Cixous, on the other hand, has gone to
considerable length to clarify her notion of écriture feminine as a writing
practice that hinges on a libidinal economy that is “genital,” without
necessitating that a writer be either male or female.25
For each of the writers in this study, however, writing in the feminine has
entailed the inventive mapping of women’s resistance to patriarchal
thinking as well as the continuing expansion of female subjectivity through
the fusing of feminist theory, poetry, and fiction. Brossard argues that for
women, recent gender-marked approaches to writing are beginning to
provide a space of radical opening or ouverture in the world where the
woman writer’s personal and political aspirations may finally join in the
thoroughly dangerous expression of her own desirous being: “Desire
slowly emanates from what is inadmissible in her project: transformation of
the self, and the collectivity. Inadmissible will to change life, to change her
life.”26
While Brossard’s writing stretches toward the utopian future-and toward
the invention of new forms of seeing and being-in-the-world, the works of
Bersianik continually question and reassess women’s relations to the past
and to the language and symbolic constructs of the fathers. Bersianik wrote
in 1986:
To transform darkness into light, to give new energy to the
imagination’s symbolizing function, to convert existing symbols,
to manipulate them according to a new symbolic logic so that they
emerge with new resonances, new interpretations, this is the task
of creative feminists.27
Ever cognizant of the biased readings of male critics, she also cautions
women writers against thinking that literary expressions of the male
imaginary are somehow more universal than their own. Moreover, for
women who have never been encouraged to know themselves or to
establish a concept of their own female subjectivity in writing, even
explorations into the most intimate and creative realms of the imagination
cannot be undertaken apolitically—without regard to the material
en-gendering of consciousness itself.
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Writing with Women Present
For the writers in this study, creating a significant space in which the voices
of other women can be heard involves more than merely inserting a cast of
female characters and a myriad of “women’s issues” into their texts. In the
case of Louky Bersianik, writing in the feminine appears to result in
continuing gestures of women-identification throughout her work in an
effort to reclaim the text as a site of women’s political strength, collective
affirmation, and artistic nourishment. This activist stance evolves out of
resistance, confrontation, and rupture with male-oriented history and leads,
in turn, to the unearthing and rediscovery of other women-past and present.
Bersianik refuses, however, to view the displacements and creative
reconstructions she initiates as a simple reversal of the male-female
dichotomy. Indeed, she argues that when viewed in its broadest conceptual
framework, feminism requires not only rigorous analyses of sexual politics
and accompanying proposals to correct the unequal relations of the sexes,
but also:
the capacity to “think from the outside” in order to create another
world … where new relations of reciprocity and new values would
come into being, the will to create an imaginary space in this world
as well via language because it is language that conveys reality and
transports fiction.28
Rescuing the silenced voices of forgotten women in their own texts as
well, Madeleine Gagnon and France Théoret have invoked the
reappropriative powers extended to women through the act of writing as a
way of contesting the political marginalization and general disconnectedness women have experienced in patriarchal culture. Both Gagnon and
Théoret have been highly conscious of the evolving political awareness
they and other feminist writers want to inspire in their readers, and both
have demonstrated over the years varying degrees of kinship with Marxist
readings of literature, recognizing that writing is never politically neutral,
never entirely indifferent to the dominant ideological forces already in
place during the period in which it is produced. The social implications of
the act of writing have thus been given considerable attention in their own
creative theories as well as in their actual writing practice. As Brossard,
Gagnon, Bersianik, and Théoret have in their different ways envisioned it,
writing in the feminine is an effort to move beyond the realm of the “purely
literary” (in any restricted sense of the term) toward a broader view of
cultural production and to embrace the various forms of linguistic
disruption, poetic reappropriation, and overtly political critique designed to
subvert male authority and to protest the silencing of women throughout
much of our history. It is primarily in this regard that each of the four writers
discussed here may be said to view her own experimental writing practice
as a real mode of political intervention and resistance rather than merely as
an abstract and culturally disengaged intellectual project.
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For Brossard, Gagnon, Bersianik, and Théoret, writing in the feminine
has meant contemplating women’s differences in all their conceivable
forms of expression—philosophical, psychological, intellectual,
biological, sociological, political, and aesthetic. From a political
standpoint, the project of writing in the feminine has resulted in a new
feminist-inspired poetics that valorizes other ways of writing, of relating,
and of reimagining the world that are unmistakably marked by the presence
of women. In a text written in 1975, Brossard records both the personal and
the collective realignment taking place in women’s writing at that time
when she describes the dramatic shift in her own stance vis-à-vis her readers
and her work:
I wrote in a common-law relationship with and while men were
reading me. But, deep down, I write only under a woman’s gaze,
feverishly received. Between us, the descent.29
In retrospect, Brossard’s continents capture exceptionally well an
important current of feminist literary production during the mid-1970s.
Indeed, the notion of writing to, through, and for other women quickly
becomes a central theme of this newly emerging feminist poetics. For many
of these writers, however, writing for other women is more than merely a
political stance of feminist solidarity and, as in the case of Brossard, an
equally important affirmation of lesbian identity; it also serves as a route to
creative discovery, as a way of inviting and responding to the presence of
women readers and as a way of investing the text with the sustenance and
the complicitous presence of a female angle of vision.
Recognizing the collective nature of their efforts to approach writing
differently and acknowledging their historical ties to other women writers
as well, Brossard, Gagnon, Bersianik, and Théoret have made frequent and
effective use of a variety of literary techniques to underscore the plurality of
women’s voices that traverse their own literary explorations. Bersianik has
consciously sought to incorporate the many sources of her own literary and
political inspiration through the voices of other women. References in her
writing to Mary Daly, Phyllis Chesler, Adrienne Rich, Margaret Mead,
Luce Irigaray, Awa Thiam, and others are central to Bersianik’s notion of
the necessity of developing an international vantage point for feminist
creation. And while Brossard has often cited writers such as Mary Daly,
Adrienne Rich, Ti-Grace Atkinson, Monique Wittig, Virginia Woolf,
Djuna Barnes, and Gertrude Stein in her work, France Théoret has conjured
up the presence of Marie-Claire Blais, Virginia Woolf, Colette, and a silent
aunt whose potentially dangerous words were carefully kept under wraps.
Madeleine Gagnon, on the other hand, has looked to Annie Leclerc, Eva
Forest, Marguerite Duras, her own grandmother, and to women collectively
for inspiration, literary companionship, and solidarity. In a preface to
Denise Boucher’s Cyprine, Gagnon celebrates the intentional references to
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other women writers in many of these new and increasingly unclassifiable
approaches to writing in the feminine. She also extends the concept of
women addressing women in feminist-inspired texts by suggesting that
women readers are themselves writers of the text since they harbor the
writers’ own words within them. In so doing, Gagnon debunks the old myth
of the privileged poetic voice that, by virtue of being elevated and alone,
could enlighten others.
We’re going to tell them what resemblances we share. How we
repeat ourselves, plagiarize one another; how our writings become
collective. How we will never again be wretched and clandestine
little poets. Separated in their anthologies, their analyses, their
libraries, their dissecting tables, their literary prizes, their
competitions that divide. Their competition. Their little individual
genius not like anyone else. We speak your words to all [women]:
too, me too; I could have written it; I’ll write it for you; you’ll write
it for me. Others and others still.30
For Bersianik, conjuring up the voices and contributions of women
writers over the centuries is a necessary political act of recollection and
recognition. Integrated into women’s texts in a variety of ways, la parole
des femmes or what Bersianik herself has ironically christened “La Parole
sans Histoire” (the Word without History),31 has exploded the concept of a
single, neutral poetic voice and forced history back into the text. Thus,
while particular historical stances vary considerably (Brossard addresses
the women of tomorrow, Bersianik looks to the women of our mythologized
past, Gagnon speaks to her contemporaries in struggle, and Théoret speaks
to women of all ages entrapped in cultural myths), the notion of writing to
other women as a form of acknowledgment, encouragement, and political
identification is clearly at the core of the literary experiment of writing in
the feminine. This stance of solidarity can be noted in the public sphere as
well. Indeed it is not coincidental that the number of collective women’s
writing projects and poetry readings in Quebec began to mount swiftly after
1975. Because of the plurality of voices speaking in many of these
experimental texts, writing in the feminine in Quebec has often meant
writing in the feminine plural, invoking the voices of others in order to
encourage and nourish the woman writer’s indefatigable impulse to name
herself and, in so doing, rename her relations with others.
Our Bodies in Writing
The year 1977 marked a decisive turning point for women’s writing in
Quebec as the centrality of the female body became increasingly apparent
in numerous experimental works. The series of short texts appearing in La
Barre du jour in the summer of 1977 conveyed both the new physicality of
women’s writing and the extent to which the expression of this physicality
was becoming multifaceted, poetically distinctive, and increasingly
political. The title of this special issue draws attention to feminist theorizing
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on the physicality of women’s language and to the emerging poetics of the
female body as text:
le corps
les mots
imaginaire
(body)
(words)
(imaginary)
Along with the words themselves, the iconography of the issue’s title is
particularly revealing. When read from top to bottom, the vertical,
nonlinear distribution of three key concepts in Quebec’s écriture au féminin
exemplifies a new mode of conceptualizing the female body as a generator
of women’s words and of the feminine imaginary as well. When read from
bottom to top, the body is the inscribed result of the feminine imaginary put
into words. In both cases, the interconnection and necessary interplay of
body, words, and the imaginary inform us that for the group of women
contributing to this special volume (which included Brossard, Gagnon,
Bersianik, and Théoret), creativity and language continually flow out of
and back through the female body. Since the female body has, until recently,
rarely been seen or read from a woman’s vantage point, this writing from
and toward women’s bodies must therefore be viewed as an important effort
to recontextualize and reshape the substance (the physical matter) of
women’s writing in Quebec.
Historically speaking, it is worth reiterating that the repression of the
female body in writing and in real life has often been more overt and more
fiercely maintained in Quebec than in either France or the United States,
due to the pervasive cultural and political influence of a conservative
Catholic Church. During the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, a number of
Quebec’s critically acclaimed women writers such as Claire Martin,
Marie-Claire Blais, and Anne Hebert began to expose a number of the
social, political, and familial attitudes reinforced by Church dogma that
have traditionally defined, molded, and restricted the female body in
Quebec. Yet despite the gravity of their critiques, it is important to
emphasize that, with respect to the female body, a crucial conceptual
change has occurred in the more recent experimental writings of Brossard,
Gagnon, Bersianik, Théoret and others. This discursive transformation
involves not only an important shift from thematics to textuality, but also a
striking change of focus from victimization to self-affirmation, from the
forces acting upon women’s bodies to the power women possess to
reposition their bodies as active agents in the political, social, and artistic
spheres. Hence the female body previously defined and contained by
existing cultural norms has become a body actively engaged in the
transformation of those same norms and of culture itself. The significance
of this evolving view of women’s bodies in writing should not be
underestimated, even by those most critical of the “essentialist problem.”
Many critics have already noted the pronounced presence of the female
body in the writings of Quebec feminists by the mid-1970s. Highlighting
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the extreme physicality of their literary explorations, Marcelle Brisson has
defined the recent advent of “feminist writing” in Quebec as a writing of the
body (“écriture du corps”) in which the female writer puts her body into
words in order to discover and recover herself. Brisson views this dramatic
move toward corporeal inscription in the works of Quebec feminists as a
politically motivated search for identity—personal and collective—and as
a reappropriation of the right to speak of and about the female body from a
woman’s point of view. Brisson also portrays this new writing of the body
as a more general affirmation of women’s physical difference:
Woman’s writing says to us: This is my body. It starts from there
and returns there. It is a constant in this writing, regardless of
whether or not we situate it before or after the avant-guarde
philosophical movements of its time. Woman writes from her own
hills and caverns and mountains … . If there is no reference to the
body, there is no feminist writing.32
Although undoubtedly overstating the case in her attempt to categorize
various forms of feminist-inspired writing in Quebec, Brisson’s analysis
does underscore the central placement of the female body in many
experimental texts and, by extension, resituates the physicality of women’s
discourse that works to displace phallocentric thinking and thereby to alter
the relationship between the center and the periphery in patriarchal culture.
For despite the remarkably wide range of formal structures, themes, and
generating symbolisms that Quebec women writers have employed to write
against patriarchal politics and to write for other women, it is from, to, and
through the female body as a site of political and textual empowerment and
as a focus of creative inspiration that some of the most radical forms of
feminine inscription have, in fact, taken place. Indeed, this most recent
putting into discourse of women’s bodies is both a central theoretical
construct used to underscore the links between the corporeal, the
intellectual, and the creative as well as a more literal thematics designed to
expose the very real political repression and mutilation of women’s bodies
even today. As I note in chapter 4, Bersianik makes these connections
repeatedly with respect to clitoridectomy, which she evokes as a real
practice of intentional sexual maiming as well as a metaphor for the
acceptable excision of women in numerous aspects of patriarchal culture.
Brossard echoes Bersianik’s desire to inscribe the historic pain of the
female body as well: “My body’s plural memory also tells me that
‘women’s memory is torrential when it has to do with torture’.”33
Given the particularly strong taboos concerning the female body in
traditional Quebec culture, however, this move by Quebec feminists to
foreground the female body also constitutes a strategic form of resistance to
a specific cultural history. Thus as a literary project, writing in the feminine
has encouraged the exploration of the female body in at least two
fundamental directions: first, as a personal gesture of self-recognition and
self-affirmation and second, as a theoretical point of departure for the
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articulation of women’s differences in a discourse that addresses the
political, aesthetic, and material issues of the female form.
In 1977, three texts appeared that emphasized the new corporeal
grounding of feminine inscription in Quebec. While strikingly dissimilar in
many ways, Gagnon’s poetic essay, “Mon Corps dans l’écriture,” (“My
Body in Writing”), Brossard’s radical theoretical fiction in L’Amèr (The
Sea/Mother/Sour), and France Théoret’s first major text, Bloody Mary, all
bear the insistent markings of a new physicality in women’s discourse and
attest to the tremendous vitality it began to infuse into Quebec letters. By
strategically linking the exploration and celebration of women’s bodies—
previously repressed in writing as in life—with a theoretical discourse on
language and the differences of women’s experience, Gagnon, Brossard,
and Théoret were able to combine modernity’s tendency toward
transgression and rupture with a more overtly political feminist stance.
Important social issues such as abortion, rape and other forms of violence
toward women, traditional male medical practice, institutional sexism, and
heterosexuality as a political institution have since found their way into
women’s texts in Quebec in large part as a result of this new body writing.
Released from centuries of statuesque silence like the caryatid of the
Acropolis whom Bersianik delightfully brought to life and to language two
years later in Le Pique-nique sur l’Acropole, the desiring female bodies in
“Mon Corps dans l’écriture,” L’Amèr, and Bloody Mary yearn, cry out,
even “bleed” for a language of their own making, a language capable of
subverting and breaking up both the fictional (discursive) and the real
(institutional) order of things. Each text also develops the compelling
analogy between the silenced female body and women’s historical absence
in the political and cultural spheres. As we shall see in more detail in the
chapters that follow, various attempts undertaken since 1977 to write in the
feminine (and from the female body) have brought forth new forms of
corporeal imagery, increasingly transgressive thematics centering on the
insurgent libidinal desires and creative power of women’s bodies, and
fluctuating poetic structures suggestive of the body’s alternating rhythms
and of the fluidity of language itself.
Yet if women’s bodies function as important generators of poetic
movement and political reflection, they are not universalized in these texts.
Above all, we are struck by their differences and perhaps, by an abundance
of skin—especially in the later works of Brossard and Bersianik, for as
Bersianik notes in Axes et eau (1984), “The deep voice that we hear right
here is the skin.”34 Still, the only thing that can really be said with any
certainty about the texts of the four writers in this study is that women’s
bodies are excessively present. Canadian critic Shirley Neuman appears to
agree with this view when she notes that
116
there is no particular body inscribed in these feminist writers’texts,
but rather many bodies: mothering bodies, erotic bodies. The
mothering body appears in many rhetorical shapes. What those
shapes have in common … is an unremitting emphasis on “real”
bodies at the expense of the symbolic: on the exhaustion and the
exhilaration of labor, on bleeding and crowning and suckling and
washing as positive, sensuous experience mediated by a female
relation to language.35
It does seem that despite undeniable differences in their thematic
material, stylistic devices, and political approach, Brossard, Gagnon,
Bersianik, and Théoret appear to support Irigaray’s contention that female
sexuality “has always been conceptualized on the basis of masculine
parameters,” and that in reality it has a rather different economy since
“woman has sex organs more or less everywhere.”36 In a number of the texts
examined in this study, we are able to locate the traces of women’s pleasures
and pain all over their bodies, inside and out. The ruptured, rearranged
syntax, the use of female intertexts, the recourse to feminist mythopoesis,
and the reconstituted literary forms encountered in many of these works
thus signal not only a radical break with conventional forms of discourse
and the emergence of the female form, but also a continuing collective
effort to disassociate women’s writing from the unifying authority of the
phallus in all its possible modes of expression.
It has, of course, been noted that this move to inscribe the body’s surfaces
and pulsations, the female unconscious, and for that matter all that
challenges male logocentrism in the West is not unique to contemporary
women’s writing as it has been practiced either in France or in Quebec. In
the context of the modern French literary tradition, there are surely earlier
attempts to de-center male hegemony through a discourse of rupture in the
writing of Artaud, Breton, Leiris, Bataille, and others. Yet as Christiane
Makward points out:
Never before has this been claimed so insistently, so consciously,
and never before by women. Rather, these [pulsations, the body,
the unconscious, the anti-Logos] were traditionally the qualities
attributed to women as intrinsic defects of their nature, not as a
conscious poetics and aesthetic.37
At first glance then, the specificity of an écriture au féminin in Quebec
may appear to be located primarily in biological difference itself. Yet a
closer look suggests that the theoretical considerations underlying these
inscriptions of the female body are as firmly rooted in political analyses of
the various forms of women’s oppression as they are in some of the more
essentialist paradigms of biological difference which have sometimes been
targeted by the critics as still other versions of (over)determined categories
and dualistic thinking.38 In “Mon Corps dans l’écriture,” for example,
Gagnon argues for an approach to women’s writing that would displace
117
patriarchy’s phallic “conceit” by putting female sexuality and women’s
desires back at the very center of discourse. For Gagnon, the historic
repression of women’s sexuality and desire for life in phallocentric
discourse has resulted in the continued cultural repression of the female
form and, likewise, in the suppression of women’s creativity at all levels of
society.
Echoing American feminist Adrienne Rich, who has also urged women
to “touch the unity and resonance of our physicality, our bond with the
natural order, the corporeal ground of our intelligence,”39 Gagnon
considers the link between textuality and corporeality a fundamental one in
the struggle to revolutionize women’s consciousness. As women write their
bodies, so will they write the changing contours of the female form and thus
begin to reconceptualize their infinite possibilities—a notion central to
Cixous’ position in La Venue à l’écriture (The Coming to Writing) as well.
By writing with and through a desiring female body—a body awakened to
the multiplicity and fullness of life in all its forms, Gagnon hopes to destroy
the false binary opposition of mind (reason) and body (sexuality) that has
long dominated phallocentric discourse in the West. From the vantage point
she articulates in “Mon Corps dans l’écriture,” the knowledge that has
(mis)guided western thinking for centuries is “structured by a discourse
without sexuality: without drives or fantasies. It is a knowledge without
desire.” (83)
Like Brossard, Bersianik, and Théoret, Gagnon’s commitment to write
through her body and thereby to establish a direct relationship between her
own physicality and the unfolding text rests with the belief that the
scriptorial, the corporeal, and the political are essentially one. To give voice
to the female body’s story in this way is not to abandon the domain of the
intellect and succumb to the patriarchal dichotomy of Man-Culture/
Woman-Nature as American feminists have sometimes charged, but to
supplement and extend the very meaning of knowledge. Thus for Théoret,
the feminization of language does not so much involve the invention of new
idioms or the relating of a particular physical sensation as it does the
displacement of the male symbolic system. “By abolishing the boundary
between nature and culture,” Théoret argues, “by revising the relations
between nature and culture, women writers are engaged in a rehabilitative
cultural rereading, reinvigorating women’s literature, and producing their
own readings of all literature.”40 It is with this goal of boundary breaking in
mind that both Gagnon and Théoret have positioned women’s bodies at the
center of many of their texts. In so doing, they have underlined the concrete,
material realities of women’s oppression in a culture that seeks, on the one
hand, to harness and ignore women and, on the other, to render the female
body the forever dangerous site of taboo and transgression, of wickedness
and punishment—a site always imagined, of course, from a male point of
view.
118
In a similar vein, Brossard and Bersianik have consciously tempered
their own intellectual training and their respective interests in the
theoretical foundations of western thinking with the sensorial as well as the
sexual. In so doing, they write to emphasize the inherent deficiency of a
metaphysical orientation that has repeatedly privileged a removed
rationality over the body’s lived experience. While intellectual theorizing is
rigorous in the works of Brossard, Gagnon, Bersianik, and Théoret, the
rigor itself is of a different nature. Their theorizing does not forget the body
but moves outward from it, always citing it as the origin of narrative
movement and poetic invention, returning to it for creative inspiration,
analyzing and theorizing its power, its resources.
For the writers in this study, writing in the feminine is their response to a
historic moment of radical cultural re-assessment, signaling the first steps
in a period of transition from a patriarchal to a more egalitarian society, from
a notion of sexuality based on reproduction and commodification to an
understanding of sexuality that incorporates the polyvalent, fluctuating,
and regenerative aspects of the female body, its passions and its knowledge.
Women who write as women, from their bodies and in utter defiance of
patriarchal structures and paternal law, break the censure of silence,
reconceive women’s trajectory of thought about themselves, and replace
traditional approaches to writing with a writing of approximation and an
orientation toward the future:
To write is always to make the inadmissible emerge; to produce,
from the collective imaginary territory we occupy, other cues,
other vehicles for thought. It is to conceive of a link between
mental space, body, and reality: in sum, through the very practice
of language to conceive of what is inconceivable outside language.
It is to know how to be synchronized there.41
This synchrony of which Brossard speaks is a potentially useful concept
when discussing a number of the characteristics of writing in the feminine
in Quebec since the notion of the synchronic forces us to acknowledge the
ways in which the intellectual, the corporeal, and the political constantly
traverse one another at any given textual moment in these experimental
works—whether or not the woman writer is fully aware of it and whether or
not the text allows us to witness this process in full view. As we shall see,
Gagnon, Bersianik, and Théoret are, like Brossard, fully cognizant of and
intent on highlighting the powerful linkages between the space of the mind,
the body, and historical reality in their own literary production. At the same
time, their efforts to explore what it means to write as a woman have also led
them to inscribe the feminine, in the words of France Théoret, “wherever it
has been erased.”42
Although differences in style, theme, and political perspectives remain
critical, the combined works of the four women writers discussed in the
following chapters exemplify the continually affirming movements from
119
women’s bodies to writing and from theorizing to being-in-the-world that
have characterized many of the efforts to write in the feminine in Quebec
during the 1970S and 1980s. At various times, however, each of these
writers has also acknowledged that the act of writing is but one site of
resistance in the struggle to liberate women from the institutional
structures, cultural myths, and philosophical discourses that continue to
subjugate us as a group and that contribute to our historic sense of
dispossession and exile.
In terms of the theoretical reflections on difference that are currently
circulating in the United States, France, and Canada, the writings of
Brossard, Gagnon, Bersianik, and Théoret offer inspiring models for
women’s entry into language and into the various processes of signification
that writing allows. While it may be argued that their linguistic explorations
arc never entirely free from the oppressive forms of discourse they have
sought to overthrow nor from the binary logic of sexual difference that
patriarchal thinking has for so long encouraged, their writings nevertheless
move beyond resistance and rupture to the more open spaces of reflection,
desire, and rebirth, where women’s bodies, minds, and voices no longer
tremble uncontrollably under the male gaze. More often than not, their
efforts at literary subversion lead us beyond particular instances of
linguistic “awkwardness” and beyond rebellious battles with conventional
discourse as well to some of the most dynamic and innovative examples of
gender-marked writing witnessed anywhere. Along with renewed efforts to
undo and remake the text, the continuing originality of their poetic visions
and the plurality of their tongues suggest that women’s writing
today—particularly in Quebec—may well provide one of the most
provocative social forums for exploring differences and for imagining
another kind of future.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
120
Terry Eagleton, Against the Grain (London: Verso Press, 1986), 140.
France Théoret, “Writing in the Feminine: Voicing Consensus, Practicing
Difference,” in A Mazing Space: Writing Canadian Women Writing, ed. Shirley
Neuman and Smaro Kamboureli, trans. A. J. Holden Verburg, (Edmonton,
Alberta: Longspoon/NeWest, 1986), 362.
See, for example, Pierre Nepveu, “BJ/NBJ: difficile modernité,” Voix et images
10.2 (1985): 164.
France Théoret, “Le Fantasme de la BJ, c’est la théorie,” Voix et images 10.2
(1985): 89.
Susan Suleiman raises a similar question in a provocative dealing with the
father-son drama in Georges Bataille’s pornographic writing: “Is there a model of
textuality possible,” she asks, “that would not necessarily play out, in discourse,
the eternal Oedipal drama of transgression and the Law—a drama which always,
ultimately, ends up maintaining the latter?” See Susan Rubin Suleiman,
“Pornography, Transgression, and the Avant-Garde: Bataille’s Story of the Eye,”
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
in The Poetics of Gender, ed. Nancy K. Miller (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1986), 132.
This particular question continues to perplex feminist writers like France Théoret,
whose comments in 1982 suggest that modernity’s inclination to reverse the
system of logocentrism and reclaim the mother as the site of civilization’s origin
still flounders in the midst of the same dualism it has repeatedly vowed to
overturn. Feminist writers who have privileged the mother have at times been the
subject of similar criticisms. See France Théoret, “La Mère peut-elle être
moderne?” La Nouvelle Barre du jour 116 (1982): 47-50.
Louise Dupré, “From Experimentation to Experience: Québécois Modernity in
the Feminine,” in A Mazing Space: Writing Canadian Women Writing, ed.
Shirley Neuman and Smaro Kamboureli (Edmonton, Alberta: Longspoon/
NeWest, 1986), 357-8.
Théoret, “Writing in the feminine,” 363.
Lamoureux, 125.
Jean Royer, “Notre Corps d’écriture” (interview with Louky Bersianik), in
Ecrivains contemporains: Entretiens I: 1976-1979 (Montreal: L’Hexagone,
1982), 73.
Michèle Jean, “La Gauche et le féminisme au Québec,” in Les Têtes de Pioche
(Montreal: Remue-ménage, 1980), 162.
Armande Saint-Jean, “Préface,” in Les Têtes de Pioche (Montreal:
Remue-ménage, 1980), 8.
Nicole Brossard, “La Vie privée est politique,” in Les Têtes de Pioche (Montreal:
Remue-ménage, 1980), 21.
Monique Roy, “Madeleine Gagnon,” Les Cahiers de la femme/Women’s Studies
1.1 (1978): 5.
Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1978), 380.
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (Trumansburg, N.Y.: Crossing Press, 1984), 37.
France Théoret, Entre raison et déraison (Montreal: Les Herbes Rouges, 1987),
149.
Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa,” trans. Keith Cohen and Paula
Cohen, Signs 1.4. (1976): 879. Originally published as “Le Rire de la Méduse,”
L’Arc 61 (1975): 39-54.
Cixous, “Medusa,” 875.
Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1985), 142.
Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1985). Originially published as Ce Sexe qui n’en est pas
un (Paris: Minuit, 1977).
Cixous, “Medusa.”
Verona Andermatt Conley explains Cixous’ adapted use of Lacan’s notion of the
imaginary in the following terms: “Writing takes place at the level of the
imaginary, a Lacanian term Cixous borrows without further elaboration. Making
use of Lacan’s distinctions between the imaginary and the symbolic, she
privileges the former, the realm of identification and doubling. Any relation
between two things is necessarily imaginary. Fiction is linked to the imaginary
and the Ego as a location of the subject’s primary and secondary identifications.
As an imaginary nature, the Ego is a function of unawareness that makes ideology
and knowledge possible. Hence the importance for those in power to control the
production of images, the imaginaries of others. Characterization in fiction is
121
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
122
always based on restriction of the imaginary. … Against literary production that
sustains the status quo, Cixous argues for a new kind of production, a writing
from the imaginary, with its infinite multiplicity of identifications precluding a
stable subject. She urges for figuration, not characterization, with possibilities of
reading in different directions.” See Verena Andermatt Conley, Hélène Cixous:
Writing the Feminine (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 25-26.
Brossard, The Aerial Letter, 76.
As Cixous envisions it, this writing would be “the inscription of something that
carries in everyday language the determination of the provisional name of
femininity, and which refers precisely to something that I would like to define in
the way of an economy, of production, of bodily effects of which one can see a
great number of traits.” See Conley, 131.
Louky Bersianik, “Aristotle’s Lantern: An Essay on Criticism,” in A Mazing
Space: Writing Canadian Women Writing, ed. Shirley Neuman and Smaro
Kamboureli, trans. A. J. Holden Verburg (Edmonton, Alberta: Longspoon/
NeWest, 1986), 46.
Louky Bersianik, “Comment naître femme sans le devenir,” in La Nouvelle Barre
du jour 172 (1986): 64.
Madeleine Gagnon, Préface, Cyprine, by Denise Boucher (Montreal: L’Aurore,
1978), 9-10
Louky Bersianik, Maternative: Les Pré-Ancyl (Montreal: VLB Editeur, 1980),
13. Subsequent references to this edition will appear parenthetically in the text.
Marcelle Brisson, “Femme et écriture,” Arcade II (1986): 27.
Brossard, The Aerial Letter, 78. This phrase originally appeared in Amantes
(Montreal: Quinze, 1980), 49.
Louky Bersianik, Axes et eau: Poèmes de “La bonne chanson” (Montreal: VLB
Editeur, 1984), 205.
Shirley Neuman, “Importing Difference,” in A Mazing Space. Writing Canadian
Women Writing, ed. Shirley Newman and Smaro Kamboureli (Edmonton,
Alberta: Longspoon/NeWest, 1986), 400.
Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, 23, 28.
Christiane Makward, “To Be or Not to Be … A Feminist Speaker,” trans.
Marlène Barsoum, Alice Jardine, and Hester Eisenstein, in The Future of
Difference, ed. Hester Eisenstein and Alice Jardine (New Brunswick, N.J.:
Rutgers University Press), 100.
This move toward privileging the biological as the creative source of écriture
féminine (particularly the centrality of the maternal body in Cixous’ early work)
has been hotly debated by a number of American critics, including Ana Rosalind
Jones and Domna Stanton, who have pointed out some of the philosophical as
well as political pitfalls of valorizing difference by means of what appears to be
an essentialist argument. See Ann Rosalind Jones, “Writing the Body: Toward an
Understanding of l’écriture féminine,” in Feminist Criticism and Social Change,
ed. Judith Newton and Deborah Rosenfelt (New York: Methuen, 1985), 86-101.
See also Domna C. Stanton, “Language and Revolution: The Franco-American
Dis-Connection” in The Future of Difference, ed. Hester Eisenstein and Alice
Jardine (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1985), 73-87 and
“Difference on Trial: A Critique of the Maternal Metaphor in Cixous, Irigaray,
and Kristeva,” in The Poetics of Gender, ed. Nancy K. Miller (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986), 157-82. For some probing questions on the
39.
40.
41.
42.
distinctions between masculine and feminine writing in the Canadian context, see
Donna Bennet, “Naming the Way Home,” in A Mazing Space: Writing Canadian
Women Writing, ed. Shirley Neuman and Smaro Kamboureli (Edmonton,
Alberta: Longspoon/NeWest, 1986), 228-45.
Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution
(New York: Norton, 1976), 21.
Théoret, Entre raison et déraison, 152.
Théoret, “Writing in the feminine,” 364.
123
Marc Levine
La Reconquête de Montréal
Résumé
La Reconquête de Montréal est une étude historique de la politique
linguistique au Québec, en particulier l’incidence des lois linguistiques sur la
transformation du paysage social, culturel et économique de Montréal au
cours du dernier quart du XXe siècle. Dans le dernier chapitre du livre, dont
des extraits figurent ici, je tente de faire le point sur la situation linguistique à
Montréal à la fin des années 90. Selon ma principale conclusion, même si les
lois linguistiques ont entièrement modifié la dynamique linguistique à
Montréal et indéniablement renforcé la place du français dans la ville,
plusieurs menaces continuent de peser sur la sécurité linguistique du
français. J’ai conclu que l’efficacité de la politique linguistique dans le
renforcement du français avait atteint sa limite et que l’avenir du français à
Montréal serait maintenant déterminé dans des domaines comme l’éducation,
le réaménagement urbain et la politique d’immigration.
Abstract
La Reconquête de Montréal is a historical study of language policy in
Quebec, in particular the impact of language laws in transforming the social,
cultural, and economic landscape of Montreal in the last quarter of the
twentieth century. In the final chapter of the book, excerpted here, I attempt to
take stock of where the language situation in Montreal stood at the end of the
1990s. My chief conclusion was that, although language laws had thoroughly
reshaped Montreal’s linguistic dynamics and undeniably strengthened the
place of French in the city, several threats to the linguistic security of French
remained. The efficacy of language policy in strengthening French, I
concluded, had reached its limits, and the future of French in Montreal would
now be determined in areas such as education, urban redevelopment, and
immigration policy.
Le français et l’anglais dans le nouveau Montréal
Le dernier quart de siècle a vu se produire de grands changements dans les
communautés francophone et anglophone de Montréal. La mobilisation
politique des francophones et l’adoption de lois linguistiques ont
complètement bouleversé la hiérarchie sociale et économique fondée sur la
langue. Presque toutes les grandes institutions de Montréal – écoles,
entreprises des secteurs privé, public et parapublic – ont été transformées
33-34, 2006
par cette « révolution linguistique », et le français s’est imposé comme
langue officielle des communications publiques à Montréal.
Deux événements, à quarante ans d’intervalle, illustrent bien la
redéfinition de la dynamique linguistique à Montréal : en 1955, le Canadien
National pouvait passer outre aux protestations des francophones en
donnant à son nouvel hôtel du centre-ville le nom on ne peut plus
britannique de Queen Elizabeth; à l’opposé, en 1996, 2500 anglophones
manifestaient au centre Fairview, dans l’ouest de l’île à majorité
anglophone, pour protester contre le manque d’anglais sur les affiches du
centre commercial. Dans les années cinquante, Montréal était une ville où
une élite anglophone impérieuse pouvait ignorer en toute impunité les
revendications des francophones au sujet de la valeur symbolique du nom
d’un important édifice du centre-ville. Dans les années quatre-vingt-dix,
après l’adoption de plusieurs lois linguistiques dont la première interdisait
l’anglais dans l’affichage commercial au Québec (loi 101, 1977) et les deux
autres autorisaient une présence restreinte de l’anglais à l’intérieur (loi 178,
1988) puis à l’extérieur (loi 86, 1993) des commerces, Montréal est
désormais une ville dans laquelle des pressions pour qu’ils affichent en
anglais s’exercent sur des grands magasins comme Eaton, Sears et
Wal-Mart.
Avant 1960, Montréal comptait « deux majorités », et l’élite anglophone,
en vertu de son pouvoir économique, possédait dans les faits un droit de
veto sur toutes les décisions publiques concernant la langue. Comme dans
le cas de l’hôtel Reine-Élisabeth, ces élites agissaient comme si Montréal
était une ville britannique qui comptait par hasard plusieurs citoyens de
langue française. Toutefois, dans les années quatre-vingt-dix, la hiérarchie
linguistique a été inversée: les dirigeants francophones affirmaient les
prérogatives culturelles et linguistiques qui reviennent à une majorité et les
anglophones défendaient leurs intérêts communautaires en invoquant le
principe des « droits de la minorité ».
Les lois linguistiques ont été le principal instrument de la « reconquête »
de Montréal par les francophones. Des progrès remarquables ont été
réalisés quant aux objectifs principaux de la politique linguistique,
c’est-à-dire la fréquentation de l’école française par les immigrants et le
renforcement de la place du français comme langue du travail, du
commerce et de l’affichage1. En outre, bien que de grandes divergences
subsistent entre ceux qui conçoivent Montréal comme ville bilingue et ceux
qui la définissent comme métropole du Québec français, tous reconnaissent
habituellement l’importance du français à Montréal. « La prédominance du
français » plutôt que la « double majorité » est maintenant la base commune
de tout débat public sérieux sur la langue, même parmi ceux qui souhaitent
un assouplissement des lois linguistiques, voire le bilinguisme officiel à
Montréal2.
126
Certes, il y a eu reconquête linguistique de Montréal, mais, dans les
années quatre-vingt-dix, il devient évident que cette reconquête est fragile.
Malgré la loi 101, et comme le retour de la question linguistique sur la scène
politique en 1996 en témoigne, les inquiétudes des francophones au sujet du
caractère français de Montréal sont loin d’être disparues, surtout dans le
contexte d’une nouvelle vague de protestation anglophone contre le régime
linguistique de Montréal. Chez les francophones, les préoccupations
d’ordre démolinguistique persistent, car l’immigration internationale et les
migrations interrégionales semblent menacer l’île de Montréal de
« défrancophonisation » et donc de « minorisation » des francophones. De
plus, la tâche délicate d’intégrer les immigrants a fait naître de nouvelles
tensions culturelles dans une société francophone qui, jusqu’à la fin des
années soixante-dix, était homogène au chapitre de sa composition
ethnique et qui n’avait jamais vécu la dynamique ethnique et raciale propre
aux grandes villes du Canada anglais et des États-Unis. Enfin, la
conjoncture économique à Montréal, principalement la grave crise de
l’emploi, ainsi que l’intégration grandissante de la métropole à l’économie
nord-américaine et mondiale lancent de grands défis à l’établissement du
français comme langue commune de Montréal.
Au milieu de la décennie 1990, la question linguistique, telle qu’elle se
pose à Montréal, a atteint un nouveau stade. Il ne s’agit plus seulement
d’une question de politique linguistique, mais, de plus en plus, d’une
question de savoir comment d’autres politiques gouvernementales
influeront sur le caractère culturel et linguistique de Montréal3. La première
phase de la question linguistique concernait des enjeux qui pouvaient être
directement pris en charge par des lois linguistiques, comme décider si les
enfants immigrés seraient obligés de fréquenter l’école française, si l’usage
exclusif du français serait imposé dans l’affichage commercial ou comment
franciser les secteurs public et privé. Des stratégies de planification
linguistique appropriées étaient de toute évidence susceptibles de modifier
de façon sensible la hiérarchie linguistique. Dans son bilan publié en 1996,
le Comité interministériel sur la situation de la langue française fait état
d’une réussite intéressante bien qu’incomplète des lois linguistiques en ce
qui a trait à l’avancement du français comme langue commune de Montréal.
Toutefois, dans les années quatre-vingt-dix et au-delà, l’avenir du
français à Montréal se jouera dans des domaines qu’il n’est pas facile de
réglementer au moyen de lois linguistiques. Par exemple, quels sont les
niveaux d’immigration et les méthodes de sélection des immigrants qui
sont les plus compatibles avec la protection du français? Quelle politique
culturelle permettra l’intégration la plus harmonieuse des immigrants à la
société francophone et comment les institutions francophones
s’adapteront-elles pour tenir compte d’une ville francophone de plus en
plus multiethnique? Jusqu’à quel point l’étalement urbain et l’exode des
francophones hors de l’île de Montréal menacent-ils la pérennité du
127
français dans la métropole et est-ce que la tendance peut être renversée par
l’intervention de l’État?
La Charte de la langue française aura été une étape nécessaire, mais non
suffisante pour assurer une reconquête linguistique réelle de Montréal, dans
laquelle le français se pose comme la véritable langue commune de la
métropole. La sécurité linguistique des francophones continuera d’exiger
une politique linguistique efficace et souple; bien que les « tendances du
marché » soient beaucoup plus favorables au français qu’il y a vingt ans, la
difficile tâche de préserver le caractère français du Québec sur un continent
nord-américain anglophone appelle une intervention sans équivoque de
l’État. Mais les nouvelles forces qui agissent sur Montréal, telles que la
mondialisation de l’économie, l’immigration massive et l’étalement
urbain, font surgir des enjeux qui débordent le cadre d’application
d’instruments traditionnels de la planification linguistique. Plus que les lois
linguistiques, ce seront des politiques concernant entre autres
l’immigration et le développement urbain qui influeront sur le caractère
linguistique et culturel futur de Montréal.
L’avenir démolinguistique de Montréal
Comme nous l’avons vu au chapitre III, la politique linguistique est
devenue une affaire d’intérêt général à la fin des années soixante, alors que
les francophones s’inquiétaient au sujet de leur poids démographique dans
l’île de Montréal. D’ailleurs, la disposition la plus controversée de la loi
101, celle qui oblige les enfants immigrés à fréquenter l’école française,
dérivait de la crainte des francophones que l’anglicisation des enfants
allophones par le biais de l’école ne mène à leur « minorisation » à
Montréal.
Un des facteurs qui a contribué à attiser les tensions linguistiques dans les
décennies 1960 et 1970 était les prévisions démographiques alarmantes
selon lesquelles les francophones seraient minoritaires à Montréal d’ici l’an
2001. Or, malgré la loi 101 et tous les changements qui se sont produits au
cours des vingt-cinq dernières années, le recensement de 1991 a révélé une
diminution dramatique de la proportion des francophones dans l’île de
Montréal (voir le tableau 18) et des démographes sérieux prédisent
maintenant qu’entre 2006 et 2111 l’île de Montréal cessera d’être un lieu où
la majorité des résidants parlent français à la maison4 (voir le tableau 19).
Pendant les années soixante-dix et au début des années quatre-vingt,
l’exode des anglophones avait stabilisé de façon quelque peu artificielle la
proportion des francophones parmi la population totale de l’île. Toutefois,
dans les années quatre-vingt-dix, trois grands facteurs contribuent à réduire
le poids démographique des francophones dans l’île de Montréal. Le
premier est que, malgré les mesures «natalistes» instaurées par le
gouvernement Bourassa dans les années quatre-vingt, le taux de natalité
chez les Franco-Montréalais est demeuré inférieur au « seuil de rempla-
128
cement » et est certainement insuffisant pour assurer une croissance réelle
de la population francophone5.
Tableau 18.
Composition linguistique de Montréal exprimée en pourcentage
de la population, selon la langue maternelle, 1971-1991
Montréal métropolitain
Île de Montréal
Français
Anglais
Autres
Français
Anglais
Autres
1971
66,2
21,7
12,0
61,2
23,7
15,1
1981
68,7
18,2
13,0
59,7
22,3
18,0
1986
69,7
16,9
13,4
60,1
21,3
18,7
1991
68,4
15,5
16,1
56,6
20,4
24,0
Source : Statistique Canada, Recensement du Canada, 1971, 1981, 1986, 1991.
Tableau 19.
Évolution prévisible de la population selon la langue parlée à la
maison, 1996-2041 (en pourcentage)
Montréal métropolitain
Île de Montréal
Français
Anglais
Autres
Français
Anglais
Autres
1996
67,8
18,9
13,3
54,6
25,9
19,5
2001
66,6
18,5
14,9
52,4
25,6
22,0
2006
65,5
18,1
16,5
50,5
25,2
24,4
2011
64,2
17,8
18,0
48,8
24,9
26,3
2016
63,1
17,6
19,3
47,3
24,5
28,2
2021
61,9
17,4
20,7
45,8
24,3
29,9
2024
56,6
17,3
26,1
40,4
23,7
35,9
Source : Comité interministériel sur la situation de la langue française, Le français,
langue commune, enjeu de la société québécoise, Québec, Direction des
communications, ministère de la Culture et des Communications, 1996, p.
276.
La forte croissance, à la fin des années quatre-vingt, de l’immigration
internationale constitue un deuxième facteur. Ainsi, deux fois plus
d’immigrants ont été admis au Québec entre 1987 et 1991 (187 473)
qu’entre 1982 et 1986 (86 789). Puisque les immigrants ont continué de
s’établir surtout dans l’île de Montréal, cette poussée migratoire a entraîné
une augmentation de la population allophone de 23 % dans l’île, tandis que
la population francophone diminuait de 4 % et la population anglophone, de
2,1 %. Dans un sens, la période 1986-1991 a été marquée par une forte
« allophonisation » de l’île de Montréal, ce qui a entraîné une nette
réduction de la proportion des francophones dans l’ensemble de la
population de l’île.
129
Enfin, troisième grand facteur, pendant que les immigrants s’installaient
massivement dans l’île, les francophones la quittaient au profit de la
banlieue nord et sud. L’étalement urbain est un phénomène nord-américain
qui a vidé le centre des grandes villes au profit de la banlieue de plus en plus
éloignée. Toutefois, cette tendance nord-américaine a pris, comme
beaucoup de choses à Montréal, un caractère linguistique. Les
francophones sont sur-représentés parmi ceux qui partent: la recherche
récente de Michel Paillé a montré que les francophones étaient, entre 1986
et 1991, trois fois plus susceptibles que les allophones ou les anglophones
de quitter l’île pour aller s’établir dans d’autres régions du Québec,
principalement dans les proches municipalités de la couronne nord6.
Dans l’île de Montréal, ces facteurs se sont unis pour provoquer, si l’on
considère la tendance historique à long terme, une diminution importante
du pourcentage des francophones entre 1986 et 1991, soit de 60,1 % à
56,6 %7 (tableau 18). En même temps, la vague d’immigration de la fin des
années quatre-vingt faisait grimper le pourcentage des allophones de
18,7 % à 24 % au cours de la même période. Ce brusque changement
démographique, combiné aux projections démo-linguistiques de Termote
et d’autres, suscite une fois de plus la hantise que les francophones
deviennent minoritaires à Montréal et laisse entrevoir la possibilité que
cette tendance démographique complique l’importante tâche de
l’intégration des immigrants à la société francophone. On peut donc dire,
avec Louis Balthazar, que si le taux de croissance des non-francophones
continue à dépasser celui des francophones dans l’île de Montréal, « il se
trouverait donc éventuellement plus d’immigrants sur le territoire
montréalais que de francophones québécois pour les intégrer8 ».
Bref, les tendances récentes donnent à penser qu’une « défrancophonisation » de l’île de Montréal est en train de s’opérer. La question clé pour
l’avenir du français à Montréal est de savoir si la tendance à la baisse du
nombre de résidants de langue maternelle française est un signe
avant-coureur de la « défrancisation » de l’île et de la région. Il est important
de souligner que les deux phénomènes ne sont pas nécessairement
synonymes. Par exemple, de la même manière que l’immigration a réduit la
proportion de francophones à Montréal, des villes comme Toronto,
Vancouver, Miami, New York et Los Angeles se sont « désanglophonisées » depuis le début des années quatre-vingt. La proportion
d’allophones dans les régions de Vancouver et de Toronto atteignait
presque 30 % en 1991 et les quartiers centraux de ces deux villes sont
beaucoup plus multiethniques que ceux de Montréal. Plus de 40 % de la
population de New York, de Los Angeles et de Miami est composée
d’immigrants.
Il n’empêche que, dans ces villes, l’anglais est la langue dominante et
celle qu’adoptent les immigrants. Il y a peu de risque que la « désanglophonisation » (diminution de la proportion des autochtones anglophones)
130
n’entraîne une «désanglicisation» (perte du caractère anglais) de la vie
économique et sociale. Même si la diversité culturelle et linguistique
s’épanouit dans ces villes et porte son lot de tensions inévitables, il ne fait
aucun doute que l’anglais sert de langue véhiculaire et de lien entre les
communautés culturelles. À Toronto et à Vancouver, par exemple, plus de
35 % de la population allophone a déclaré l’anglais comme langue parlée à
la maison en 1991, le critère par lequel les démographes mesurent
habituellement les transferts et la mobilité linguistiques9.
Par contraste, à Montréal, la persistance du poids de l’anglais dans une
ville officiellement française signifie que l’intégration des immigrants
s’accomplit dans un contexte plus ambigu de dualisme linguistique dans
lequel, ainsi que Daniel Latouche l’écrit, « le français et la culture
québécoise n’ont qu’une prédominance relative10 ». Par exemple, en 1991,
seulement 10,7 % des allophones de la région de Montréal ont déclaré le
français comme langue parlée à la maison par rapport à 21,6 % d’entre eux
qui avaient effectué un transfert linguistique vers l’anglais11. Ainsi, à moins
que soit établie une structure sociopolitique dans laquelle le français
servirait de langue normale de l’intégration des immigrants – et, comme
nous le verrons plus loin, des indices montrent que cette structure se
construit graduellement à Montréal –, la « défrancophonisation » pourrait
menacer l’île de « défrancisation », peur qui habite les nationalistes
francophones depuis l’arrivée de la question linguistique sur la scène
politique pendant les années soixante.
D’autre part, plusieurs facteurs sont susceptibles de faire obstacle à la
« défrancophonisation » de l’île de Montréal, de prime abord inquiétante.
Premièrement, même si la part de la population que représentent les
francophones a baissé dans l’île après 1986, ce recul menace peu à l’heure
actuelle la prédominance francophone dans la région de Montréal. Une
grande partie du déclin francophone dans l’île de Montréal est due aux
départs des francophones vers la banlieue nord et sud, mais ceux-ci sont
toujours présents dans la région. Ainsi, le pourcentage des résidants du
Montréal métropolitain qui parle le français à la maison a augmenté,
passant de 66,3 % en 1971 à 69,5 % en 1991, et il est demeuré dans
l’ensemble stable entre 1986 et 1991. Selon les prévisions de Termote, ce
pourcentage demeurera à 63,1 % en 2016.
Deuxièmement, bien que les prévisions démographiques d’une
« minorisation » des francophones de l’île de Montréal soient plausibles,
plusieurs éléments peuvent fausser ces prédictions. Il est certain que des
projections qui se rendent jusqu’à 2040 doivent être considérées avec la
plus grande prudence, car trop d’inconnues peuvent intervenir entre-temps
et influer sur l’équilibre démolinguistique à Montréal. Par exemple, des
changements dans les comportements de migration des différents groupes
linguistiques auraient des répercussions considérables sur les tendances
démolinguistiques. Une reprise de l’exode des anglophones – et il y a
131
quelques indices d’une reprise des départs en 1996 – modifierait la situation
démolinguistique dans l’île en faveur des francophones, tout comme des
changements dans le niveau et la composition de l’immigration
internationale à destination du Québec12.
Troisièmement, la « défrancophonisation » mènera-t-elle à la « défrancisation » de Montréal? La réponse dépendra des choix linguistiques de la
population allophone grandissante de l’île. Jusqu’à quel point le français
devient-il la langue commune des immigrants, la langue de ce que le
Conseil supérieur de l’éducation appelle « l’espace civique commun13 »?
Pendant la dernière décennie, plusieurs signes ont indiqué une évolution
encourageante du français, particulièrement en ce qui concerne, nous
l’avons vu au chapitre v, les habitudes linguistiques des « enfants de la loi
101 ». De plus, comme le montre le tableau 20, la tendance chez les
immigrants plus récents est d’adopter le français plus que l’anglais comme
langue parlée à la maison14. Selon une étude de Daniel Monnier sur les
choix linguistiques des travailleurs immigrants et allophones, le français
est la principale langue de travail pour une nette majorité de ceux-ci et ils
utilisent le français plus que l’anglais dans les communications avec les
commerces et les services publics15. Enfin, une étude sur l’adaptation
linguistique des immigrants de la décennie 1980 réalisée par Calvin
Veltman et Sylvie Paré révèle que, dans une vaste gamme d’activités, la
nouvelle génération d’immigrants à Montréal utilise le français plus que
l’anglais16. Bref, tout porte à croire que l’intégration linguistique des
immigrants à la société francophone, bien que fragile, est sur la bonne voie.
Tableau 20.
Transferts linguistiques chez les allophones en fonction de la
période d’immigration au Québec, 1971-1991 (en %)
Période
d’immigration
Vers l’anglais
Vers le français
Réponses
multiples
Langue
maternelle
av. 1971
26,6
10,9
6,9
55,6
1971-1975
15,8
18,0
9,3
57,0
1876-1980
9,6
19,3
10,0
61,1
1981-1986
7,3
16,5
9,8
66,4
1986-1991
6,0
11,5
9,9
72,5
Source : Direction des études et de la recherche, ministère des Affaires internationales,
de l’Immigration et des Communautés culturelles, Population du Québec
selon les langues maternelles, 1991, p. 48.
Enfin, et le Comité interministériel sur la situation de la langue française
l’a pertinemment souligné, il faut dire que les méthodes traditionnelles
d’examen du processus d’intégration linguistique des immigrants seraient
quelque peu trompeuses. Les études qui indiquent un déclin numérique des
132
francophones dans l’île de Montréal ou qui mesurent les transferts
linguistiques s’appuient sur les données sur la langue maternelle et la
langue parlée à la maison extraites du recensement du Canada. Toutefois,
comme le Comité fait remarquer :
Les mesures selon la langue maternelle ou la langue parlée à la
maison sont nécessaires et devront toujours être utilisées.
Toutefois, elles ont besoin d’être complétées pour rendre compte
plus précisément de la situation actuelle. En effet, avec
l’importance qu’a prise l’immigration, de nombreux immigrants
connaissent le français, l’utilisent dans leurs activités publiques de
travail, de consommation courante, de consommation culturelle et
adhèrent aux objectifs de francisation. Ces immigrants sont bien
intégrés et on peut dire à leur égard qu’ils participent à la vie
collective en français. […] Or, une partie d’entre eux adopteront le
français comme langue d’usage à la maison dans une, deux, voire
trois générations et la mesure de la langue parlée à la maison ne
pourra les prendre en compte que dans vingt, quarante ou soixante
ans. Ces immigrants sont donc actuellement exclus de toutes les
statistiques, de tous les portraits de situation et, de ce fait, se sentent
mis à l’écart du processus de francisation alors qu’ils en sont partie
prenante17.
Afin d’aller au-delà des mesures classiques d’intégration linguistique, le
Comité interministériel a tenté de mettre au point un indicateur permettant
de mesurer tant l’usage du français comme langue véhiculaire (langue de
communication entre gens dont la langue maternelle est différente) que
comme langue parlée à la maison. En vertu de cet indicateur, le Comité a
établi que 69 % de la population de l’île de Montréal faisait usage du
français à l’extérieur de la maison alors que le seul critère de «langue parlée
à la maison» établit ce pourcentage à 57 %18. Bref, analysée dans la
perspective de la « langue d’usage public » au lieu de la « langue d’usage
privé », la situation démolinguistique semble plus favorable qu’elle ne le
paraît à première vue.
Il reste que la tentative du Comité interministériel pour élaborer une
nouvelle définition du processus d’intégration linguistique soulève
plusieurs questions intéressantes. Est-ce que la place du français sera
assurée à Montréal, même si le nombre de francophones de souche continue
de diminuer dans l’île, tant et aussi longtemps qu’une forte majorité de la
population utilise le français comme langue véhiculaire? Si les
francophones de souche deviennent minoritaires à Montréal et que la
proportion de ceux qui parlent français à la maison diminue, est-ce que le
français comme langue véhiculaire va inévitablement perdre du terrain?
Est-il plausible de penser que, même si le français est parlé dans un nombre
moins grand de foyers montréalais, il demeurera la « langue normale et
habituelle du travail, des communications, du commerce et des affaires », le
but visé par la Charte de la langue française?
133
Les sociolinguistes reconnaissent depuis longtemps l’importance d’une
« masse critique » de locuteurs natifs (qui parlent leur langue maternelle),
particulièrement unilingues, pour soutenir une communauté linguistique.
Si c’est le cas, les théories sociolinguistiques donneraient à entendre que la
sécurité linguistique des francophones serait en danger si leur nombre
continue à décroître. Qui plus est, même à Montréal, l’anglais demeure une
force assimilatrice dans les années quatre-vingt-dix. Par exemple, dans
l’ouest de l’île – un territoire qui peut, à certains égards, illustrer ce que
serait la dynamique linguistique dans un Montréal « défrancophonisé » –,
« le pouvoir d’assimilation de l’anglais est plus élevé en 1991 qu’en 1971,
malgré la baisse du nombre d’anglophones (langue maternelle) dans la
région19 ». Ainsi, la baisse du nombre de francophones dans l’île de
Montréal a de quoi déranger. Une « minorisation » possible des francophones à Montréal ne serait pas aussi catastrophique que ce que craignent
les observateurs nationalistes, car le renforcement du français comme
langue utilitaire et langue du travail à Montréal pourrait suffire à le soutenir,
de la même manière que l’anglais persiste dans les grandes villes
cosmopolites de Toronto, de New York ou de Los Angeles. Mais il est
difficile de concevoir, compte tenu de la dynamique linguistique fragile de
Montréal, comment la diminution du nombre des francophones dans l’île
de Montréal pourrait être favorable à l’avenir du français dans la ville.
La diversification ethnique et le Montréal francophone
Un des changements récents les plus saisissants dans le tissu urbain
montréalais consiste dans la diversification ethnique de la population à la
suite de l’intensification de l’immigration au milieu des années quatrevingt. Jusqu’en 1900, Montréal était presque exclusivement composée de
citoyens d’origine britannique et française. Encore en 1951, 86 % des
habitants de l’île faisaient partie de ces deux «peuples fondateurs» et la
communauté juive anglicisée représentait un autre 5 % de la population.
Toutefois, en 1991, la composante britannique ne représentait plus que
6 % de la population et plus de 32 % de la population était composée de
«communautés culturelles» d’origine autre que française et britannique20.
Les Italiens (138 000) et les Juifs (70 000) constituaient les plus importantes
minorités ethniques, un nombre non négligeable de Grecs et de Portugais
ont immigré à Montréal, surtout entre 1945 et 1970. À la fin des années
soixante-dix, une nouvelle vague d’immigration vient transformer la
composition ethnoculturelle de Montréal. En effet, des gens fuyant la
guerre, la répression et la pauvreté dans le tiers-monde trouvent alors refuge
à Montréal. Plus de 60 % des personnes qui ont immigré depuis 1978 sont
originaires d’Afrique, d’Asie et des Caraïbes, ajoutant la diversité raciale à
la diversité culturelle. Dans les années quatre-vingt-dix, ce sont des pays
comme le Liban, la Chine, Haïti, Hong Kong, le Salvador et le Sri Lanka qui
fournissent la part du lion de l’immigration québécoise.
134
Comme nous l’avons vu précédemment, pendant les années soixante, à
l’époque de la liberté de choix linguistique, les immigrants se tournaient
vers la communauté anglophone, envoyant leurs enfants à l’école anglaise
et recourant aux services de santé et aux services sociaux de langue
anglaise. Jusqu’au milieu de cette décennie, l’attitude des francophones
face à l’intégration des immigrants dans les institutions de langue française
oscillait entre l’indifférence et l’opposition. En fait, comme le rapport de la
commission Tremblay dans les années cinquante le soulignait, l’accent
était mis sur la survivance culturelle au nom de « la pureté de nos origines »
et on tentait de réduire au minimum les contacts avec les autres groupes
culturels. Toutefois, dans les années soixante-dix, les nationalistes
francophones percevaient les minorités ethniques de Montréal comme une
importante « troisième force » dans l’équilibre démolinguistique. Les
affrontements intercommunautaires les plus amers, comme la crise scolaire
de Saint-Léonard, mettaient en présence des francophones nationalistes et
des minorités ethniques peu disposées à envoyer leurs enfants à l’école
française ou à être « intégrées » de force à la société francophone.
En donnant au français toute sa place en tant que langue officielle du
Québec, la loi 101 a fait entrer les minorités ethniques dans les institutions
de langue française de Montréal et, pour la première fois, a instauré une plus
grande interaction avec la société francophone. Comme nous l’avons vu au
chapitre v, le résultat a été un «choc culturel», puisque le Montréal
francophone faisait pour la première fois l’expérience des conflits
ethniques et raciaux et des accommodements entre groupes, typiques des
grandes villes des États-Unis et du Canada anglais. Jusqu’à la fin des années
soixante-dix, ni le gouvernement québécois ni la Ville de Montréal
n’avaient de stratégie pour aider les minorités ethniques à trouver leur place
dans la société francophone.
À l’origine, l’attitude du Parti Québécois était nettement assimilatrice :
dans le Québec qu’il voulait bâtir, il tenait pour acquis que les immigrants
s’intégreraient naturellement à la majorité francophone de la même
manière qu’il présumait que les immigrants s’assimilaient à la culture de
langue anglaise au Canada anglais et aux États-Unis. « Ce qu’il nous faut au
Québec, écrit Daniel Latouche, ce n’est pas le pluri-, le multi- ou
l’interculturalisme, mais tout simplement notre version bien à nous du
melting-pot américain22. » Comme Clift et Arnopoulos l’ont fait remarquer,
« la possibilité que des immigrants intégrés de force à la société française
puissent exercer une influence considérable sur celle-ci n’effleura même
pas l’esprit des sociologues et des hommes politiques qui présidèrent à la
rédaction de cette loi [la loi 10123] ».
Dans son livre blanc de 1978, La politique québécoise du développement
culturel, le Parti Québécois commença à s’éloigner timidement de la
conception ethnocentrique de la culture québécoise autour de laquelle
s’articulait le rapport de la commission Tremblay. S’il posait «la culture
135
québécoise de tradition française comme premier point d’appui», le livre
blanc ne mettait pas explicitement en valeur le rôle central de l’ethnicité ou
le « génie national français » comme l’avait fait le rapport Tremblay24. La
définition de la culture québécoise prenait un caractère plus linguistique,
reconnaissant une culture française de base, mais faisant une place aux
minorités à l’intérieur de celle-ci :
D’abord société française, le Québec doit aussi trouver chez les
minorités une source de vitalité. De nos jours, le modèle du
« melting pot », illustré par la société américaine, est heureusement
de plus en plus contesté. L’assimilation à la vapeur de tous les
nouveaux arrivants n’est pas un objectif souhaitable […]. [L]e
bien commun et l’intérêt même des minorités exigent que ces
divers groupes s’intègrent à un ensemble québécois essentiellement francophone. Mais une fois posée et respectée cette exigence
fondamentale, l’existence de groupes minoritaires vigoureux et
actifs ne peut être qu’un acquis pour l’ensemble25.
À l’aube des années quatre-vingt, alors que la loi 101 orientait de façon
irréversible les minorités ethniques vers les écoles, les services de santé et
les services sociaux francophones, le PQ publiait un autre livre blanc,
Autant de façons d’être Québécois, dans lequel il traçait les grandes lignes
d’un plan d’action visant à intégrer les cultures minoritaires dans les
institutions publiques québécoises26. Mais l’énoncé de politique le plus
complet sur la « nouvelle réalité ethnique » a paru en 1990, dans Énoncé de
politique en matière d’immigration et d’intégration du gouvernement
Bourassa27. Le document établissait un cadre d’action stratégique relativement à l’accroissement de l’immigration proposé par le gouvernement
Bourassa dans sa politique de redressement démographique pour
compenser la décroissance continue de la natalité parmi les francophones.
Les buts étaient d’attirer plus d’immigrants au Québec et de mettre en place
des mécanismes qui faciliteraient leur intégration à la société francophone,
ce qui constituerait une source de renouvellement démographique pour
préserver le français à Montréal et au Québec. Fait à signaler, les 171 571
immigrants acceptés au Québec entre 1991 et 1994 – les quatre années qui
ont immédiatement suivi l’Énoncé – représentent le plus grand nombre
d’admissions au Québec par tranche de quatre ans depuis la fin de la
Seconde Guerre mondiale28.
Bref, l’Énoncé rejetait la conception du passé selon laquelle
l’immigration était considérée « au mieux comme un mal nécessaire, au
pire comme une menace contre laquelle il [...] fallait se protéger29».
L’immigration massive serait encouragée comme « un facteur nécessaire et
un atout pour relever les grands défis démographique, économique,
linguistique et socioculturel que doit relever le Québec à l’aube des années
quatre-vingt-dix30 ». La notion centrale de l’Énoncé était le « contrat
moral » par lequel, en échange de leur admission au Québec, les immigrants
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avaient l’obligation morale de respecter les principes de base de la société
d’accueil :
une société où le français est la langue commune de la vie
·
publique;
une société démocratique;
·
une société pluraliste ouverte aux multiples apports dans les
·
limites qu’imposent le respect des valeurs démocratiques
fondamentales et la nécessité de l’échange intercommunautaire31.
Par son « ouverture à l’altérité », l’Énoncé proposait le premier appui
explicite de la part du gouvernement québécois à une version pluraliste
d’une communauté nationale « civique » par opposition à « ethnique » et un
appui sans réserve à la diversité culturelle dans un cadre français.
Cette valorisation du français comme langue officielle et langue de
la vie publique, écrivent ses auteurs, n’implique toutefois pas
qu’on doive confondre maîtrise d’une langue commune et
assimilation linguistique. En effet, le Québec, en tant que société
démocratique, respecte le droit des individus à adopter la langue de
leur choix dans les communications à caractère privé32.
Bref, en préconisant l’immigration massive, l’Énoncé proposait sans
détour rien de moins qu’un nouveau modèle culturel pour la société
québécoise :
À l’opposé de la société québécoise traditionnelle, qui valorisait le
partage d’un modèle culturel et idéologique uniforme par tous les
Québécois, le Québec moderne s’est voulu, depuis plus de trente
ans, résolument pluraliste33.
En définitive, au milieu des années quatre-vingt-dix, alors que les
institutions francophones de Montréal comme les écoles publiques avaient
acquis un caractère multiethnique inimaginable il y a à peine vingt ans, les
responsables de l’élaboration des politiques cherchaient une manière de
définir une « culture publique commune34 » dans laquelle « la langue
française [serait] présentée comme le foyer de convergence pour les
diverses communautés qui peuvent par ailleurs maintenir et développer
leur spécificité35 ». Or, malgré ces efforts, l’adaptation du Montréal
francophone à la nouvelle diversité ethnique des années quatre-vingt et
quatre-vingt-dix s’est accompagnée de contradictions et de tensions. Aux
États-Unis, pays qui a pourtant une longue tradition d’immigration, des
inquiétudes au sujet du taux élevé d’immigration se sont fait jour au début
des années quatre-vingt-dix et des appels ont été lancés en faveur d’une
restriction de l’immigration. Aussi n’est-il pas surprenant qu’au Québec,
qui n’a pas une telle tradition et où le taux d’immigration était deux fois plus
élevé qu’aux États-Unis au début des années quatre-vingt-dix, certains
aient exprimé des doutes quant à la capacité d’absorber les 40 000 à 50 000
nouvelles arrivées annuelles proposées par le gouvernement Bourassa au
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milieu des années quatre-vingt-dix36. Déjà, des critiques avaient affirmé
qu’un taux trop élevé d’immigration mènerait au « déracinement des jeunes
Québécois37 » et à la « désintégration sociale », et que Montréal prendrait
l’allure « des méga-villes américaines de plus en plus invivables38 ».
Un aspect en particulier de la « nouvelle réalité ethnique » qui inquiète
certains intellectuels et décideurs francophones est la tendance des
nouveaux arrivants à s’installer dans l’île de Montréal. Certes, la
concentration des immigrants dans le principal centre urbain d’une région
ou d’un État n’a rien d’inhabituel; le phénomène est courant aux États-Unis
et, pour donner un exemple canadien, la grande région de Toronto abrite le
deux tiers de la population immigrée de l’Ontario. Les immigrants à la
recherche d’un emploi sont naturellement attirés vers les grandes villes où
l’économie est plus diversifiée et où, comme par hasard, la majorité de leurs
compatriotes les ont précédés. Toutefois, même si les données laissent
entendre que l’intégration linguistique des nouveaux immigrants à
Montréal se déroule relativement bien, une appréhension subsiste au sujet
de leur concentration à Montréal qui « nuit à l’objectif de la francisation.
L’ambivalence, l’ambiguïté de Montréal où bilinguisme et multiculturalisme émettent des messages contradictoires sinon confus, bref la nature
même de Montréal ne favorise pas l’intégration simple et presque naturelle
des arrivants39 ».
Quelques rapports gouvernementaux ont recommandé des mesures
incitatives, comme des crédits d’impôt pour les employeurs, des bureaux de
placement, des programmes de formation et l’aide à l’établissement pour
favoriser l’acheminement des immigrants vers les régions périphériques du
Québec et éviter que la concentration des nouveaux venus à Montréal ne
coupe le Québec en deux. Certains groupes, allant plus loin que l’incitation
volontaire, ont même fait allusion à la nécessité de prendre des mesures plus
coercitives pour assurer la « démontréalisation » des immigrants. Par
exemple, au printemps 1991, dans le cadre d’un forum sur l’immigration au
Québec, Sylvain Simard, alors président du Mouvement national des
Québécois et maintenant ministre dans le gouvernement du Parti
Québécois, a affirmé que la concentration des immigrants à Montréal
mettait les francophones mal à l’aise et qu’un Québec indépendant pourrait
songer à adopter une politique qui forcerait les nouveaux immigrants à
s’établir en région. L’idée d’obliger les immigrants à s’installer en dehors
de la région de Montréal demeure extrêmement marginale dans l’opinion
publique francophone; néanmoins, elle révèle les inquiétudes de certains
Franco-Québécois de souche au sujet de la transformation du tissu social de
Montréal.
Même la notion de « régionalisation » volontaire a été critiquée et
qualifiée de naïve. « C’est joli sur papier, écrivait Lise Bissonnette, mais
parfaitement utopique. L’immigration, c’est dans la grande ville que ça se
passe, ici comme ailleurs40. » La politique québécoise d’intégration des
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immigrants devra être ancrée dans un contexte montréalais et liée au
développement urbain et à des politiques sociales visant à changer la
situation qui fait de Montréal une ville « où la population francophone la
plus pauvre, la plus sous-scolarisée, est au front de la tâche plus massive de
l’intégration des nouveaux venus41… ».
Outre ces inquiétudes au sujet des répercussions d’ordre social et culturel
de l’immigration, le Montréal francophone vit également les tensions
sociales propres aux sociétés multiethniques : perception de discrimination
dans l’emploi, conflits de valeurs et de coutumes, préjugés raciaux et
inégalités. Les minorités ethniques demeurent nettement sous-représentées
dans la fonction publique, malgré des programmes, limités, il faut le dire,
d’action positive mis en œuvre pendant la décennie précédente pour tenter
de diversifier ces châteaux forts québécois francophones. Les leaders des
communautés ethniques attribuent généralement cet état des choses à des
pratiques d’emploi qui favorisent les francophones de souche et ils
continuent à revendiquer une plus grande représentation des minorités dans
le secteur public42.
Des conflits au sujet des habitudes linguistiques ou des coutumes de
certaines communautés culturelles ont à l’occasion éclaté dans des
institutions francophones ces dernières années, particulièrement dans les
écoles publiques de Montréal. Comme nous l’avons vu au chapitre v, la
question de «l’anglais dans la cour de récréation» avait donné lieu à une
controverse au sein de la CECM au début de la décennie 1990. Il y a
également eu des incidents isolés de bagarres entre élèves d’origines
différentes dans des écoles multiethniques. En 1995, l’affaire du foulard
islamique a provoqué un débat passionné: fallait-il, au nom de l’intégration
à la société francophone, interdire le port du hidjab à l’école publique?
D’autres conflits de valeurs de ce genre sont susceptibles de faire surface
dans les années à venir: c’est pourquoi les éducateurs et dirigeants scolaires
cherchent des manières de reconnaître le pluralisme culturel dans les écoles
francophones de plus en plus multiethniques et que les immigrants
demandent une plus grande reconnaissance de leur spécificité par les
institutions francophones.
Enfin, à la suite de l’immigration de membres de minorités visibles
depuis les années soixante-dix, Montréal a été le lieu des frictions
grandissantes entre les minorités raciales et la majorité francophone.
Comme dans les grandes villes américaines, les relations entre la police et
les citoyens sont devenues le point de mire de tels conflits. Plusieurs
incidents de brutalité policière envers les Noirs, y compris les morts
suspectes d’Anthony Griffin et de Marcellus François, ont terni l’histoire
récente de Montréal et des commissions d’enquête ont documenté la
manifestation d’attitudes et de comportements racistes dans la police43.
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En plus de ces relations problématiques entre la police et les minorités
raciales, des inégalités et des pratiques de discrimination raciale à
l’américaine semblent apparaître à Montréal. Aucun quartier montréalais
n’atteint le désolement des ghettos noirs américains, mais les quartiers
haïtiens défavorisés de Montréal-Nord et de l’arrondissement Villeray–
Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension et les quartiers noirs anglophones de la
Petite Bourgogne et de Côte-des-Neiges donnent des signes indéniables de
problèmes sociaux grandissants. Quelque 70 % des Haïtiens de Montréal,
selon une analyse réalisée au milieu des années quatre-vingt, recevaient des
prestations d’assurance-chômage ou d’aide sociale44. Un bas niveau
d’instruction, jumelé à la discrimination raciale sur le marché du travail
montréalais, expliqueraient le faible avancement économique des Haïtiens
de Montréal45. La communauté noire anglophone est « doublement
marginalisée » dans le nouveau Montréal, souffrant non seulement des
inégalités raciales, mais étant aussi limitée par une connaissance
insuffisante du français (bien que des leaders de la communauté affirment
que cette méconnaissance sert de justification à des pratiques
discriminatoires d’emploi fondées sur la race46). En effet, seulement 20 %
des membres de la communauté jamaïcaine de Montréal déclaraient
connaître le français en 1991; le reste était unilingue anglophone et des
études ont démontré que leur interaction avec l’ensemble de la société était
faible47. Dans le nouveau Montréal, de telles carences linguistiques,
combinées à la sous-scolarisation et à d’autres problèmes sociaux, limitent
l’avancement et freinent l’intégration sociopolitique. En somme, plusieurs
problèmes sociaux, structurels et linguistiques touchent les minorités
raciales de Montréal.
Il était inévitable que des conflits culturels et des affrontements
interethniques isolés surgissent de la transformation culturelle de Montréal
sous l’effet de la loi 101 et de l’immigration. Dans un laps de temps
remarquablement court, la société francophone de Montréal a effectué une
délicate transition sur la question de l’immigration, passant d’une « société
frileuse48 » à une société d’accueil. Mais la rhétorique xénophobe demeure
extrêmement marginale dans l’opinion publique montréalaise et,
contrairement à la France et à l’Allemagne, deux pays où il n’existe pour
ainsi dire pas de tradition d’intégration des immigrants, où se sont propagés
des discours xénophobes et des flambées de violence, au Québec, l’accueil
des immigrants s’est fait dans un contexte où l’intolérance généralisée est à
peu près absente. En effet, des études récentes portant sur la vie quotidienne
dans les quartiers multiethniques de Montréal ont montré un degré élevé de
tolérance et une coexistence pacifique entre les groupes49, une situation tout
à l’opposé de celle qui règne en France dans les quartiers pauvres à forte
population immigrée. Dans une variété de lieux publics, tels les parcs, les
stations de métro et les centres commerciaux, les chercheurs de l’INRSUrbanisation ont observé entre 1992 et 1994 une cohabitation interethnique
principalement non conflictuelle. S’ils n’ont pas trouvé beaucoup de traces
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de relations interethniques amicales et soutenues, les chercheurs n’ont pas
trouvé non plus beaucoup de traces de tensions quotidiennes ou de
confrontations culturelles.
Or cette modalité d’accommodement intercommunautaire a été ébranlée
le soir du référendum du 30 octobre 1995, quand le premier ministre
Jacques Parizeau a attribué la défaite des souverainistes « à l’argent et au
vote ethnique ». La remarque de Parizeau a envoyé une onde de choc dans
les communautés ethnoculturelles de Montréal. Elles se sont demandé si les
immigrants étaient vraiment bienvenus au Québec ou simplement perçus
par les souverainistes comme un obstacle aux aspirations nationales des
francophones. Des sceptiques ont remis en question la prétendue
transformation du « nationalisme ethnique », réservé exclusivement aux
francophones de souche, en un « nationalisme civique », qui inclut tous les
citoyens du Québec dans une culture publique commune50.
Les remarques de Parizeau dénotaient indéniablement la frustration de
beaucoup de francophones devant la faible adhésion des communautés
culturelles à la cause souverainiste. Mais ses paroles symbolisaient aussi
une crainte parmi certains francophones au sujet de la transformation
culturelle irréversible de la communauté francophone à la suite de
l’immigration et de la loi 101. L’important Énoncé de politique en matière
d’immigration et d’intégration de 1990 affirmait: « La culture québécoise
est ainsi une culture dynamique qui, tout en s’inscrivant dans le
prolongement de l’héritage du Québec, se veut continuellement en
mutation et ouverte aux différents apports51. » Autrement dit, les auteurs de
l’Énoncé reconnaissaient que le processus d’intégration bouleversait non
seulement l’identité des immigrants, mais aussi la culture de la société
franco-québécoise. Pour beaucoup de nationalistes, cette mutation
culturelle est troublante et engendre une ambivalence au sujet de la place
des immigrants dans la société québécoise52. L’expression la plus concrète
de cette inquiétude a été le documentaire controversé Disparaître, écrit par
l’ancienne ministre péquiste et auteure de téléromans Lise Payette et
présenté à Radio-Canada en 1989, qui agitait le spectre de la disparition de
la langue et de la culture françaises au Québec alors que les francophones de
souche en déclin démographique sont submergés par une vague
d’immigration.
Il existe des preuves concrètes que le processus de mutation culturelle
crée des clivages non seulement entre Montréal et le reste du Québec qui
demeure « pure laine », mais entre la ville cosmopolite et la banlieue
majoritairement francophone. À Montréal, écrit Pierre Laplante, « on est
déjà loin du “je me souviens” ou de “la pureté de nos origines53” ». Dans une
tournée révélatrice de la région de Montréal en 1992, Carole Beaulieu,
journaliste à L’actualité, a découvert que les francophones de la banlieue
avaient de plus en plus tendance à percevoir la ville comme le lieu type pour
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« la violence, les étrangers qu’on accepte mal, les embouteillages, la
saleté54 ».
Pourtant, des sondages réalisés à peine quelques mois après le discours
de Parizeau ont révélé que « le Québec est une des régions du Canada où
l’opinion publique est le plus en faveur de l’immigration55 ». En réalité, les
tensions accrues entre les francophones et les communautés culturelles qui
ont immédiatement suivi le référendum ont pu être conjoncturelles. Les
remarques de Parizeau tranchaient avec l’orientation de la politique du PQ
et le premier ministre Bouchard, du moins publiquement, a réaffirmé le but
de construire une société civique multiethnique autour du français comme
langue commune. Les tensions ethniques postréférendaires ont pu marquer
une pause politique dans un processus sociologique d’intégration des
immigrants et d’accommodement interethnique qui est, toutes proportions
gardées, sur la bonne voie.
La radicalisation de l’opinion anglophone de Montréal
On ne peut pas en dire autant des relations entre les anglophones et les
francophones de Montréal dans le contexte de l’après-référendum. La
quasi-victoire des forces souverainistes, suivie de la secousse du discours
de Parizeau, a eu un effet immédiat sur les relations entre les deux groupes
linguistiques et a conduit à la radicalisation de l’opinion publique
anglophone. Bien entendu, la communauté anglophone s’était déjà
mobilisée à propos de questions de langue par le passé. Comme nous
l’avons vu au chapitre v, plusieurs anglophones avaient réagi à l’adoption
de la loi 178 en 1988 en abandonnant le Parti libéral et en flirtant avec le
Parti Égalité dont le discours sur la langue était plus radical.
Toutefois, les anglophones étaient en règle générale satisfaits du
gouvernement Bourassa qui avait, en 1993, rétabli le bilinguisme dans
l’affichage en adoptant le projet de loi 86. « Une nouvelle mentalité existe à
Montréal », avait dit Alfred Rouleau du Mouvement Desjardins au début
des années quatre-vingt au sujet des relations entre francophones et
anglophones. « Quand nous nous parlons, nous nous comprenons mieux
qu’à l’époque où nous étions chacun de notre côté56. » À la fin des années
quatre-vingt, La Presse et Le Devoir avaient tous deux publié des séries
d’articles sur le thème de la disparition des barrières linguistiques et
l’acceptation par les anglophones du Québec français57. La moitié des
écoliers anglophones de Montréal étaient inscrits en immersion française et
le taux de bilinguisme parmi les Anglo-Montréalais était passé d’environ
24 % en 1960 à près de 60 % en 1991. La notion des « deux solitudes »
comme principe directeur des rapports entre francophones et anglophones
semblait en voie de disparition. En 1994, les Anglo-Québécois étaient
revenus non seulement au Parti libéral, mais aussi au ton modéré et
conciliant à l’égard de la politique linguistique du Québec, ce qui avait
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amené plusieurs observateurs à proclamer le début d’une ère nouvelle de
rapprochement entre groupes linguistiques.
Mais l’illusion de la suppression des divisions linguistiques a été
dissipée après le référendum de 1995. Dans la communauté anglophone, le
choc qui a suivi la défaite de justesse du OUI rappelait le traumatisme qui
avait suivi la victoire du Parti Québécois en 1976. Des idées qui étaient
auparavant complètement marginales dans l’opinion publique anglophone,
comme la partition de Montréal et du Québec advenant une victoire
souverainiste au prochain référendum, se sont répandues comme une
traînée de poudre à la fin de 1995 et au début de 1996. Les modérés qui
critiquaient la partition, la disant dangereuse et irréaliste, étaient traités
« d’agneaux » par la ligne dure montante personnifiée par le chroniqueur de
la Gazette William Johnson58. La stratégie d’Alliance Québec, qui semblait
accepter la légitimité de la Charte de la langue française dans ses
« négociations constructives » avec le gouvernement pour obtenir des
assouplissements à la loi, était taxée de quasi-trahison59. Les propos
d’Howard Galganov, le « héros » de l’activisme anglophone renouvelé,
résument la situation :
Ce qui est arrivé, c’est que pendant les vingt-cinq dernières années,
nous avons fait confiance à nos élites sociales et politiques pour
négocier de plus en plus de concessions et tous ces gens qui ont
pensé que vendre nos droits mènerait à la paix et à la sécurité se
sont trompés. Nous avons failli signer notre arrêt de mort le 30
octobre60.
La grogne des anglophones dans la période qui a suivi le référendum a
fait renaître le militantisme anglophone sur la question linguistique.
Galganov et son Quebec Political Action Committee ont lancé une série de
manifestations au printemps et à l’été 1996 qui ont été populaires. En avril
1996, Galganov a organisé des manifestations et a menacé de boycotter les
commerces dans un centre commercial de Pointe-Claire qui n’afficheraient
pas en anglais à l’extérieur, ce que permet la loi 86. Les commerçants ont
cédé à la pression de Galganov pour ne pas perdre des clients dans l’ouest de
l’île majoritairement anglophone. Par la suite, Galganov a annoncé son
intention de contester les dispositions de la loi 86 qui exigeaient deux fois
plus de français ou un lettrage français deux fois plus gros dans l’affichage
bilingue; Galganov réclamait une place égale pour le français et l’anglais.
On parlait même de revenir au «libre choix» dans la langue d’affichage, une
visée lourde de sens dans l’histoire de la question linguistique.
Il reste à voir si cette nouvelle intransigeance des anglophones va durer et
si elle risque de menacer la « normalisation » de la politique linguistique du
Québec qui semblait être bien en place au début des années quatre-vingtdix. Toutefois, il apparaît clairement qu’à la suite du durcissement du
discours et de l’opinion publique anglophones, les relations entre groupes
linguistiques sont à un tournant dangereux. Le retour de la question
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linguistique sur la scène politique s’est produit dans ce que certains ont
appelé « le climat malsain » de l’après-référendum : comme dit un
journaliste, « le nouvel activisme anglophone n’est pas alimenté par des
dispositions précises des lois linguistiques du Québec, mais plutôt par la
peur qu’a causée le référendum d’octobre dernier et l’inquiétude que
suscite la perspective d’un autre référendum dans un proche avenir61 ».
L’idée de la partition de Montréal fait naître l’image d’une version nordaméricaine de Belfast, ville déchirée par la violence intercommunautaire62.
On peut se demander si l’incertitude au sujet de l’avenir politique du
Québec va continuer d’alimenter le débat sur la politique linguistique. Bien
que les purs et durs du Parti Québécois soient aussi empressés de rouvrir le
dossier linguistique que les nouveaux militants anglophones – nous y
reviendrons plus loin –, le premier ministre Bouchard et les membres de la
direction du Parti Québécois préfèrent nettement préserver le statu quo
plutôt que de relancer un débat qui risque de créer une situation dangereuse
et explosive.
Il reste que le référendum de 1995 et les remarques acerbes de Jacques
Parizeau ont pu marquer le tournant qui a modifié à tout jamais le cours de la
dynamique linguistique de Montréal. Des opinions qui étaient considérées
comme excentriques dans la communauté anglophone il y a à peine
quelques années (la partition du Québec, le retour du libre choix) sont
maintenant prises au sérieux. Elles ne sont pas encore endossées par la
majorité des leaders d’opinion anglophones, même si des organismes
comme Alliance Québec ont dû durcir leur discours pour demeurer dans la
course. Quoi qu’il en soit, l’« engagement constructif » des années quatrevingt, dont le point culminant a été la « bilinguisation » de l’affichage en
1993, semble démodé pour un grand nombre d’anglophones63. Du moins
dans l’immédiat, un leader anglophone qui se dit « raisonnable » devant la
question linguistique met en jeu sa crédibilité dans sa communauté. Bref,
comme Lise Bissonnette l’a écrit, « les deux solitudes semblent donc,
comme toujours, irréconciliables64 ».
La question linguistique à la fin du XXe siècle
Le retour de la question linguistique sur la scène politique en 1996,
principalement en ce qui a trait à la langue d’affichage, a rappelé à chacun
que tout ce qui concerne la langue demeure un sujet explosif à Montréal.
Néanmoins, le maintien des dispositions fondamentales de la politique
linguistique, c’est-à-dire la restriction de l’accès à l’école anglaise et la
promotion du français comme langue de l’économie, est assuré. Les
militants anglophones peuvent rêver de liberté de choix ou d’un statut
officiellement bilingue pour Montréal, mais compte tenu des inquiétudes
profondes et fondées des francophones au sujet de la situation fragile du
français en Amérique du Nord, il serait utopique de penser que le fond de la
loi 101 serait abrogé.
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Toutefois, plusieurs dossiers épineux qui ont un certain lien avec la
question linguistique restent pendants dans les années quatre-vingt-dix.
Ainsi en est-il de la réorganisation de la structure confessionnelle des écoles
publiques de Montréal, qui est intimement liée à la politique linguistique en
matière d’enseignement. Comme nous l’avons vu, la division selon la
religion correspondait plus ou moins à la division selon la langue lors de
l’établissement de la structure confessionnelle des écoles au XIXe siècle.
Mais, dans les années soixante, la croissance du secteur anglo-catholique et
la laïcisation de l’enseignement protestant ont rendu la division du système
scolaire selon la religion caduque et illogique. Néanmoins, toutes les
tentatives pour réorganiser les écoles de l’île de Montréal, soit par la
création de commissions scolaires unifiées ou l’organisation de la gestion
des écoles selon la langue, ont été tuées dans l’œuf dans les années soixante
et soixante-dix par une coalition de gens d’affaires anglophones et de
groupes d’enseignants et d’administrateurs scolaires des secteurs angloprotestant et franco-catholique.
À la suite de l’évolution de la situation démographique à Montréal à la fin
des années soixante-dix et au début des années quatre-vingt, la structure
confessionnelle semblait encore plus désuète et inadéquate, et l’idée de
réforme scolaire refaisait surface. Ainsi que je l’ai souligné, la croissance
du secteur franco-protestant avait suscité de vives inquiétudes parmi les
francophones, à cause du nombre grandissant d’enfants immigrés à
l’intérieur d’une structure (la CEPGM) qui demeurait anglophone. Au
milieu des années quatre-vingt-dix, près d’un cinquième des enfants
allophones fréquentant l’école française à Montréal étaient inscrits à une
école protestante et les critiques voyaient cette séparation confessionnelle
comme un obstacle à l’intégration complète des enfants allophones65. De
plus, à l’intérieur de la CECM, les parents habitant le quartier multiculturel
de Côte-des-Neiges avaient tenté de transformer l’école primaire
Notre-Dame-des-Neiges en école non confessionnelle. Cette controverse a
ramené l’attention sur l’influence de la diversité culturelle croissante sur
des institutions franco-québécoises traditionnelles comme l’école francocatholique et fait ressortir le lien entre la restructuration scolaire et l’avenir
linguistique et culturel de Montréal.
Ainsi, entre 1982 et 1984, le gouvernement péquiste a tenté de surmonter
les obstacles historiques à la réforme scolaire et de réaménager
l’enseignement public à Montréal66. Dans un premier projet publié en 1982,
Camille Laurin, alors aux commandes de l’Éducation dans la deuxième
administration Lévesque, présentait les grandes lignes d’une réforme en
profondeur qui comprenait le remplacement des commissions scolaires
confessionnelles par des commissions unifiées à l’extérieur de l’île de
Montréal et par des commissions scolaires linguistiques dans l’île de
Montréal67. La vraie innovation de Laurin ne résidait pas dans le projet de
commissions scolaires linguistiques, mais dans sa vision d’une structure
très décentralisée dans laquelle des pouvoirs réels seraient confiés à
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chacune des écoles qui seraient dirigées par des « conseils » composés de
parents et d’enseignants68. En juin 1983, Laurin présentait le projet de loi 40
qui s’appuyait en grande partie sur les recommandations de son livre blanc
de 1982, bien que certaines propositions radicales, comme la constitution
en société pour les écoles individuelles, aient été éliminées69.
Le projet de loi 40 a été dénoncé par la plupart des groupes anglophones
et combattu par les groupes de pression scolaires franco-catholiques et
anglo-protestants qui avaient bloqué la réforme scolaire par le passé. La
réaction des anglophones était en partie instinctive. Plus précisément, les
groupes anglophones craignaient que les nouvelles structures
n’affaiblissent les commissions scolaires et n’accroissent l’influence du
ministère de l’Éducation, dominé par les francophones, sur l’enseignement
local. Tout compte fait, malgré les garanties que les anglophones
administreraient leurs commissions scolaires linguistiques, ces derniers
refusaient d’échanger la garantie constitutionnelle de l’article 93 de
l’AANB70 pour une « simple » assurance d’autonomie linguistique dans
une loi qui pourrait toujours être modifiée. Comme par le passé, la vieille
garde de l’establishment anglo-catholique s’est alliée aux anglophones
pour lutter contre la réforme scolaire. Affaibli par la défaite du référendum
de 1980, l’échec constitutionnel de 1981 et la crise économique de
1982-1983, le gouvernement n’était pas en mesure de résister aux pressions
de ses adversaires et retira l’ambitieux projet de loi 40. Ultérieurement, le
Parti Québécois adopta une version diluée de son projet de réforme scolaire,
le projet de loi 3, mais en mai 1985, la Cour supérieure du Québec déclara
que le projet de loi contrevenait à l’article 93 de la Constitution.
En 1988, le gouvernement Bourassa proposa un autre plan qui établirait
des commissions scolaires linguistiques dans l’île de Montréal, le projet de
loi 107. Claude Ryan, ministre de l’Éducation, avait trouvé une solution à
l’impasse constitutionnelle en maintenant les commissions scolaires
confessionnelles tout en établissant des commissions scolaires linguistiques. L’accès à la CECM et à la CEPGM serait réservé exclusivement aux
catholiques et aux protestants respectivement (de langue française et
anglaise); les autres devraient fréquenter des écoles laïques de langue
française ou anglaise dans leur localité (qui étaient bien entendu ouvertes
aux catholiques et aux protestants). Les protestants constituaient moins de
la moitié des élèves dans le secteur anglais de la CEPGM et environ le tiers
des élèves de son secteur français. Ainsi, selon la modalité d’application du
projet de loi 107, la CEPGM pouvait perdre jusqu’à 55 % de sa population et
possiblement son influence comme pilier de l’establishment scolaire
anglophone de Montréal71. Le projet de loi 107 fut adopté à la fin de 1988 et
critiqué par les réformateurs de l’éducation et l’opposition péquiste pour
son maintien « des structures confessionnelles caduques » et son incapacité
« de sortir du carcan de l’article 93 [...] en réglant ce problème de façon
réelle et durable72 ».
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Malgré le jugement de la Cour suprême du Canada en 1993 qui a reconnu
la constitutionnalité de la loi 107, la conception d’une formule pour arriver à
l’établissement de commissions scolaires linguistiques à Montréal fut
ardue. En 1994, un conseil consultatif mis sur pied pour élaborer un projet
de mise en application, présidé par l’ancien recteur de l’Université
Concordia, Patrick Kenniff, a proposé de créer des commissions scolaires
linguistiques en même temps que des « comités confessionnels auxquels
seraient attribués certains pouvoirs » à Montréal et à Québec afin de
satisfaire aux exigences de la Constitution canadienne73. La défaite du Parti
libéral en 1994 a mis en veilleuse le projet de Kenniff et ce n’est qu’à l’été
1996 que le gouvernement péquiste, sur l’initiative de Pauline Marois,
ministre de l’Éducation, a rouvert le dossier en proposant essentiellement
un projet de « déconfessionnalisation » des commissions scolaires du
Québec qui reprenait les grandes lignes du rapport Kenniff74. Malgré des
sondages qui indiquent que plus de 88 % des Québécois « désirent
regrouper tous leurs enfants dans une même école indépendamment de la
religion des parents plutôt que de les séparer dans des écoles différentes » et
que près de 60 % appuient «la mise sur pied d’un réseau de commissions
scolaires linguistiques en lieu et place de l’actuel système confessionnel»,
le plan Marois a vite suscité de vives résistances75.
Dans les années quatre-vingt-dix, les anglophones avaient fini par
accepter que les commissions scolaires linguistiques seraient le meilleur
moyen de protéger les intérêts de leur communauté en matière d’éducation,
et c’est pourquoi les leaders anglophones, tout en trouvant certains défauts
au plan Marois, le considéraient «comme un pas dans la bonne direction76 ».
Mais la réaction des francophones a été beaucoup plus sévère. Les
dirigeants de la CECM ont dénoncé le plan Marois, y voyant une ingérence
dans la liberté religieuse dans l’enseignement, tandis que les représentants
de la CEQ critiquaient la lourdeur du plan et les pouvoirs trop grands donnés
aux conseils confessionnels qui seraient intégrés aux commissions
scolaires linguistiques. Dans un éditorial mordant, Lise Bissonnette a écrit :
Les intégristes qui ont présidé à la détérioration de l’école
montréalaise pourront continuer à sévir; leur aire d’influence
diminuera, certes, mais ils auront sous la main les moyens de
réaliser leur vieux rêve, celui de transformer les écoles en axes de
leurs chapelles77.
Beaucoup de critiques francophones ont affirmé que le plan créerait des
ghettos ethnoculturels dans les écoles montréalaises: les immigrants
fréquenteraient les écoles françaises laïques, tandis que les Québécois de
souche se retrouveraient à l’école catholique. Une telle ségrégation nuirait à
l’intégration des nouveaux arrivants à la culture et à la société francophones
du Québec.
Compte tenu de l’opposition générale, la ministre de l’Éducation,
Pauline Marois, a mis de côté son plan et a décidé de confier la question de la
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restructuration scolaire aux États généraux sur l’éducation, un projet de
consultation amorcé par le gouvernement en 1995 comme prélude à une
réforme de l’éducation au Québec78. Enfin, après encore plusieurs mois de
tergiversations, Mme Pauline Marois a présenté en mars 1997 un projet de
loi créant des commissions linguistiques à la grandeur du Québec. Son plan
a soulevé un véritable tollé. Selon plusieurs, le délai que prévoyait le projet
de loi pour remplacer les 156 commissions scolaires confessionnelles par
71 commissions scolaires linguistiques avant l’année scolaire 1998-1999
était trop serré. Les groupes anglophones, qui, au départ, appuyaient
l’établissement de commissions scolaires linguistiques, se sont ensuite
opposés au plan initial du projet qui limitait le droit de vote aux élections
dans les commissions scolaires anglophones aux seuls parents ayant des
enfants qui fréquentent les écoles anglaises. En outre, la mise en œuvre du
plan intégral dépendait de la volonté du gouvernement fédéral d’apporter
une modification à la Constitution pour permettre l’élimination des écoles
confessionnelles. Bien que le gouvernement Chrétien ait manifesté son
désir d’agir rapidement, tout retard pourrait bien signifier pour Montréal
l’existence d’un système scolaire « double », avec des conseils
confessionnels représentants les catholiques et les protestants à l’intérieur
de commissions scolaires linguistiques.
Le projet de loi 109, qui crée les commissions scolaires linguistiques, a
été adopté à l’unanimité par l’Assemblée nationale en juin 1997, mettant
ainsi fin à trente ans de tentatives infructueuses dans le dossier de la
restructuration scolaire. Cependant, la question soulève toujours des
débats. En effet, les péquistes purs et durs de Montréal-Centre, par exemple,
ont exprimé leur vif mécontentement face au compromis du gouvernement
Bouchard qui a accepté de ne pas limiter le droit de vote aux seuls parents
d’enfants fréquentant l’école anglaise. Les critiques soutiennent que le
projet de loi 109 risque d’établir un précédent et d’ouvrir davantage l’accès
aux écoles anglophones, accès qui est soigneusement circonscrit par la loi
101. De plus, après que la ministre Marois a dévoilé les territoires couverts
par les nouvelles commissions scolaires de l’île de Montréal – trois
francophones et deux anglophones –, certains ont soutenu qu’ils avaient été
établis à la hâte, sans grand souci pour l’efficacité de l’enseignement.
Toutefois, malgré ces inquiétudes – et à moins d’imprévus –, la
déconfessionnalisation des écoles de Montréal, rêve des bureaucrates
québécois depuis les années soixante, sera enfin réalisée. Le Montréal
francophone sera doté d’une structure pour l’établissement de véritables
« écoles communes », événement prometteur à une époque de changements
culturels rapides.
Dans un autre ordre d’idée, comme nous l’avons vu aux chapitres v et vi,
la langue d’affichage a refait surface comme sujet de controverse en 1996.
Bien que le gouvernement Bouchard ne soit aucunement intéressé à abroger
la loi 86 et à imposer de nouveau le français dans l’affichage commercial, la
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ligne dure du PQ, particulièrement les militants des régions de
Montréal-Centre et de Montréal-Ville-Marie, continuent de réclamer un
retour à la loi 101 sur cette question79. S’il semble y avoir peu de volonté
populaire de rouvrir le dossier de la langue, ces militants de Montréal
tiennent à l’abrogation de la loi 86. Comme Louise Harel, qui, à l’instar de
Camille Laurin et d’autres notables du parti, a tenté de freiner le mouvement
en faveur de l’abrogation, le fait remarquer :
Ceci est le centre-ville de Montréal et ils [les militants de
Montréal-Centre] sont réellement sur la ligne de front
relativement à la question linguistique – des hommes et des
femmes qui presque tous les jours doivent, selon leur dire, lutter
pour protéger le français80.
Ainsi, le gouvernement Bouchard est placé entre l’arbre et l’écorce, entre
une minorité anglophone de plus en plus combative et une base militante
dans son propre parti. Néanmoins, à la fin de 1996, des sondages laissaient
entendre que la dernière « crise » linguistique pourrait avoir été exagérée:
selon un sondage de Léger et Léger, 90 % des francophones appuient le
maintien de la loi 86 sur l’affichage commercial bilingue81. Pourtant,
d’autres sondages signalent qu’une majorité de francophones croient « que
Montréal prend un visage plus anglais82 ». Il semble qu’il subsiste une
certaine insécurité linguistique parmi les francophones qui continuera à
faire de la question de la langue un enjeu important dans la vie montréalaise.
De plus, bien que l’intérêt de l’ensemble de la population pour la question
semble être modéré au milieu des années quatre-vingt-dix, il faut se
rappeler que la problématique a commencé à émerger dans les années
soixante, portée par un « noyau militant », avant que des événements
comme la crise scolaire de Saint-Léonard et la loi 63 n’interpellent toute la
population. En conclusion, tant qu’il existera de l’insécurité au sujet de
l’avenir du français à Montréal, il y aura un débat sur la politique
linguistique.
Toutefois, l’avenir du français à Montréal sera de plus en plus déterminé
par des facteurs extérieurs aux lois linguistiques. Dans un contexte de
mondialisation de l’économie, le fait que Montréal soit située à proximité
des plus grands marchés anglophones du monde et la présence d’une
minorité anglophone importante à Montréal signifient qu’une certaine
forme d’intervention sera toujours nécessaire pour assurer la première
place au français dans la ville. Mais la politique linguistique en ce qui a trait
à la promotion du français à Montréal a plus ou moins atteint ses limites, ce
qui a fait dire à Jean Paré que « si la loi 101, qui a 20 ans, n’a pas réussi à
assurer la santé du français, rien n’y arrivera83 ». L’abrogation de la loi 86 ou
l’extension de la francisation aux petites entreprises aurait une influence
minime sur la protection du français à Montréal. De plus en plus, c’est dans
les domaines de la politique d’immigration, de la politique familiale et du
développement économique urbain que l’avenir du français se jouera.
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Prenons par exemple le phénomène de l’étalement urbain. Comme nous
l’avons vu plus haut, la diminution possible de la proportion des
francophones dans l’île de Montréal est, de l’avis de la majorité des
observateurs, une situation qui ne serait pas favorable à l’avenir du français.
Toutefois, cette « minorisation » possible est en partie le résultat du départ
de nombreux francophones pour l’extérieur de l’île de Montréal. En 1961,
80 % des francophones de la région habitaient l’île de Montréal, tandis
qu’aujourd’hui la majorité des francophones de la grande région de
Montréal est établie à l’extérieur de l’île. Les familles francophones ayant
des enfants d’âge scolaire ont quitté l’île en masse depuis les années
soixante-dix. Cet exode a principalement touché la classe moyenne
francophone; en 1990, plus de 57 % des salariés francophones de la grande
région de Montréal gagnant plus de 25 000 $ par année habitaient
l’extérieur de l’île (par rapport à 49 % des francophones gagnant moins de
25 000 $ par année). À l’opposé, en 1970, seulement 21,7 % des francophones de la grande région de Montréal qui gagnaient plus de 25 000 $ par
année (en dollars constants de 1990) habitaient l’extérieur de l’île84.
Comme Louis Balthazar l’a expliqué franchement, « ce n’est pas en
laissant Montréal aux seuls groupes ethniques […] que nous construirons le
Québec multiethnique. Laval aux francophones, Montréal aux allophones.
Quelle aberration 85 . » Les politiques d’aménagement urbain, de
développement économique, de logement et de transport doivent être
coordonnées pour revaloriser le noyau urbain comme lieu de résidence
attrayant pour les familles et comme lieu de travail. En ce sens, les
recommandations du Groupe de travail sur Montréal et sa région, formulées
en 1993, qui réclamaient l’établissement de nouvelles structures politiques
pour créer une véritable « ville-région », ont une portée culturelle qui
dépasse le besoin évident de nouvelles structures pour soutenir l’économie
défaillante de Montréal et consolider son assise budgétaire86. Bien que le
gouvernement Bouchard ait reconnu les problèmes particuliers de
Montréal en créant un ministère d’État à la métropole, la formation d’une
Commission de développement de la grande région de Montréal avait à
peine bougé en 1996. Tout compte fait, les politiques d’aménagement
urbain qui attirent et gardent plus de francophones dans l’île de Montréal
ainsi que des politiques de partage des revenus fiscaux et d’imposition de
taxes qui renforcent la ville et rendent l’étalement urbain moins payant
pourraient avoir des retombées plus grandes pour l’avenir du français que
l’abrogation de la loi 86 ou le rétablissement de la Commission de
protection de la langue française.
De la même façon, la relance économique de Montréal compte autant
que les lois touchant la langue dans la préservation et l’épanouissement du
caractère français de Montréal. Le taux de chômage à Montréal est l’un des
plus élevés en Amérique du Nord, et une ville qui s’appauvrit n’est pas le
lieu le plus propice à l’intégration des nouveaux arrivants à la société
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francophone. Une ville en plein marasme économique n’est pas capable
non plus de retenir la classe moyenne francophone qui quitte l’île depuis les
années soixante-dix.
Certains analystes comme Marcel Côté, Jean-Luc Migué et Pierre
Arbour ont affirmé que le « protectionnisme linguistique » a contribué
considérablement au déclin économique de Montréal et préconisent des
assouplissements dans la politique linguistique pour « atténuer les effets de
l’insularité linguistique de Montréal87 ». Migué préconise même la liberté
de choix non seulement comme solution aux maux économiques qui
sévissent à Montréal, mais comme un élément essentiel à « l’essor du
français88 ». On entend de plus en plus de gens d’affaires anglophones
demander que Montréal soit déclarée zone bilingue, ce qui comprendrait la
liberté de choix dans l’enseignement, pour relancer l’économie. « Quoi de
mieux, écrit un journaliste des affaires, que de faire de Montréal une vraie
ville internationale, une Genève ou un Hong Kong nord-américain89. »
Mais ces analyses passent à côté d’un élément fondamental. Certes, il y a
eu un prix à payer pour la francisation de l’économie et de la société
montréalaise90. Toutefois, ces coûts doivent être comparés aux bénéfices
que les francophones ont retiré de ces actions depuis 1970, comme la
sécurité linguistique, une répartition plus juste des richesses et la maîtrise
de l’économie. Par ailleurs, les problèmes économiques de Montréal ont
plusieurs causes, et la transformation linguistique, « une transition
sociologique inévitable » reconnaît Marcel Côté, n’est qu’une cause parmi
d’autres91. Rien ne prouve que des assouplissements mineurs à la politique
linguistique rendraient Montréal plus attrayant pour les investisseurs, et
une redéfinition radicale de la politique linguistique, comme le retour du
libre choix de la langue d’enseignement, comporte des risques d’ordre
culturel et linguistique inacceptables pour les francophones montréalais.
Le déclin rapide de la base industrielle traditionnelle de Montréal ainsi
que la transition difficile de la situation de métropole nationale à la situation
de centre régional sont à l’origine du malaise économique de la ville92. Des
stratégies innovatrices de développement économique seront nécessaires
pour attaquer ces problèmes et faire une brèche dans le chômage et la
pauvreté chroniques. Sans relance économique, il sera de plus en plus
difficile pour les travailleurs montréalais d’atteindre la sécurité
économique en français. En cette fin de siècle, la politique économique peut
avoir autant d’importance que la politique linguistique pour l’avenir du
français à Montréal.
En conclusion, la politique linguistique était nécessaire à la
« reconquête » de Montréal, mais la préservation des acquis fragiles de cette
reconquête et l’établissement du français comme langue commune
exigeront des mesures d’intérêt public dans une variété de domaines. La
politique d’immigration doit fixer des niveaux que Montréal est capable
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d’absorber et prévoir des mécanismes d’accueil efficaces. Les politiques
d’aménagement urbain doivent mieux gérer l’étalement urbain pour éviter
dans l’avenir un genre d’apartheid linguistique selon lequel une couronne
francophone encerclerait une île de Montréal de plus en plus allophone. La
politique économique doit revaloriser le noyau urbain de Montréal comme
endroit où les immigrants et tous les Montréalais peuvent atteindre la
sécurité économique en français. Une politique culturelle doit faire de la
place aux communautés culturelles dans une culture publique commune
francophone tout en renforçant les écoles publiques françaises comme
principale institution de la nouvelle société d’accueil.
Dans certains de ces domaines, tels que l’immigration, la politique
gouvernementale est sur la bonne voie au Québec. Dans d’autres domaines,
comme le développement de la région de Montréal, peu de progrès a été fait
et il n’y a guère eu de débat sérieux sur ces dimensions linguistiques de la
question. Pourtant, ce sont ces politiques qui seront au cœur des nouveaux
enjeux de la question linguistique, et c’est rien de moins que l’avenir du
français à Montréal qui est en jeu.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
152
Une excellente enquête détaillée sur le progrès dans ces domaines est contenue
dans le rapport du Comité interministériel sur la situation de la langue française,
Le français, langue commune: enjeu de la société québécoise, Québec, Direction
des communications, ministère de la Culture et des Communications, 1996.
Voir, par exemple, Michael Goldbloom, directeur de la Gazette, « Where the
Gazette Stands », 28 septembre 1996. Goldbloom affirme : « Nous sommes
d’accord avec le fait que le Québec, en tant que foyer du fait français au Canada, a
un rôle spécial pour protéger et promouvoir la langue française. Par conséquent,
nous croyons que les mesures gouvernementales pour promouvoir l’usage du
français sont légitimes, mais nous avons toujours rejeté les mesures qui
suppriment l’anglais et d’autres langues. » Alors que la Gazette continue
certainement à s’opposer à plusieurs éléments de la politique linguistique du
Québec, cette reconnaissance de la légitimité des lois linguistiques constitue un
revirement majeur par rapport aux années soixante-dix.
J’ai d’abord présenté cet argument dans Marc V. Levine, « Au-delà des lois
linguistiques : la politique gouvernementale et le caractère linguistique de
Montréal dans les années 1990 », dans Contextes de la politique linguistique
québécoise, Québec, Conseil de la langue française, 1993, p. 1-40. Ici comme
dans le reste du chapitre, j’emprunte abondamment à cet article.
Cette prévision provient d’une analyse faite par le démographe Marc Termote
pour le Conseil de la langue française et elle est citée dans Comité interministériel
sur la situation de la langue française, ouvr. cité, p. 276.
Marc Termote, L’avenir démolinguistique du Québec et de ses régions, Québec,
Conseil de la langue française, 1994.
Michel Paillé, « La migration des Montréalais francophones vers la banlieue : les
faits », dans Bulletin du Conseil de la langue française, vol. 3, no 2, juin 1996,
p. 7-8.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
Cela est la proportion de la population de langue maternelle française. Pour la
langue parlée à la maison dans l’île de Montréal, le pourcentage du français a
diminué, passant de 61,8 % en 1986 à 58,5 % en 1991. Selon les prévisions de
Termote, ce pourcentage sera de 54,6 % en 1996 et les francophones seront à
peine majoritaires (50,5 %) en 2006.
Louis Balthazar, « Pour un multiculturalisme québécois », L’Action nationale,
vol. 79, no 8, octobre 1989, p. 945. Les données du recensement de 1991 portent à
croire que la présence d’une importante « masse critique » de francophones peut
faciliter l’intégration des immigrants. Dans les municipalités fortement non
francophones de l’ouest de l’île comme Côte-Saint-Luc et Dollard-des-Ormeaux,
le nombre d’immigrants qui adoptent l’anglais comme langue parlée à la maison
dépasse ceux qui font un transfert vers le français dans une proportion de quatre
contre un. À l’inverse, dans des quartiers très francophones de Montréal comme
Rosemont ou Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, les transferts linguistiques des
immigrants avantagent le français dans un rapport d’environ trois contre un. Dans
l’ensemble de l’île de Montréal, les transferts linguistiques vers l’anglais
(25,1 %) dépassent ceux qui favorisent le français (18,7 %). Dans l’atmosphère
plus francophone de l’extérieur de l’île de Montréal, les transferts avantagent le
français (32 % contre 22,9 %). Bref, cela semble illustrer que la « masse critique »
de Québécois francophones a une influence et que la diminution du pourcentage
des francophones dans l’île de Montréal lancerait un défi à la pérennité du
français dans l’île.
Statistique Canada, Rétention et transfert linguistiques, 1991, Ottawa, Industrie,
Sciences et Technologie Canada, 1993. Recensement du Canada de 1991.
Numéro 94-319 au catalogue. Aux États-Unis, même à Miami où le poids
économique et politique des exilés cubains donne à l’espagnol une influence
inégalée ailleurs, la recherche récente montre que les enfants des immigrants
choisissent en grande majorité l’anglais comme langue principale de
communications. Voir Alejandro Portes et Richard Schauffler, « Language and
the Second Generation », dans R. G. Rumbaut et S. Pedraza (dir.), Origins and
Destinies: Migration, Race, and Ethnicity in America, Belmont (Calif.),
Wadsworth, 1995.
Daniel Latouche, Le bazar : des anciens Canadiens aux nouveaux Québécois,
Montréal, Boréal, 1990, p. 123.
Statistique Canada, Rétention et transfert linguistiques, 1991, ouvr. cité.
Toutefois, comme nous le verrons plus loin, il existe des différences importantes
entre les allophones arrivés à Montréal avant et après 1976 et les transferts
linguistiques les plus récents parmi les allophones semblent se faire en faveur du
français.
Henry Aubin, « Net Outflow Rises Sharply: StatsCan Data », The Gazette, 1er
octobre 1996.
Conseil supérieur de l’éducation, Pour un accueil et une intégration réussis des
élèves des communautés culturelles, Québec, Conseil supérieur de l’éducation,
1993, p. 69.
Toutefois, la vaste majorité des immigrants récents n’ont pas effectué de transfert
linguistique et continuent de parler leur langue maternelle à la maison. Même
parmi ceux qui ont immigré avant 1971, qui tendent à adopter l’anglais plutôt que
le français par une marge de 2,5 contre un, 55 % continuent d’utiliser leur langue
maternelle comme langue parlée à la maison. Ainsi, comme Michel Paillé le fait
remarquer, les transferts linguistiques « se produisent très lentement et comptent
encore trop peu dans l’ensemble des facteurs démographiques à l’œuvre, les plus
153
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
154
puissants et les plus rapides à produire leurs effets étant la fécondité et
l’immigration internationale ». Voir Michel Paillé, « Pour en finir avec les “pure
laine” », Le Devoir, 5 janvier 1996.
Daniel Monnier, Les choix linguistiques des travailleurs immigrants et
allophones, Québec, Conseil de la langue française, 1993, p. 17.
Calvin Veltman et Sylvie Paré, L’adaptation linguistique des immigrants de la
décennie 1980, Québec, ministère des Affaires internationales, de l’Immigration
et des Communautés culturelles, 1993, p. 66-71.
Comité interministériel sur la situation de la langue française, ouvr. cité, p. 237.
Ibid. Malheureusement, le Comité n’a pas précisé la méthodologie qu’il a
employée pour arriver à ce chiffre et il reconnaît le besoin d’un indicateur
beaucoup plus rigoureux pour la « langue d’usage public ».
Charles Castonguay, « L’évolution de l’assimilation dans le West Island et le
West Quebec », Le Devoir, 23 novembre 1994. Ma propre analyse des transferts
linguistiques dans certaines municipalités de l’ouest de l’île jusqu’en 1986
montre une anglicisation substantielle de la part des francophones et des
allophones. Voir la version anglaise de The Reconquest of Montreal,
Philadelphie, Temple University Press, 1990, p. 214.
Les données proviennent du recensement de 1991 de Statistique Canada,
présentées dans ministère des Affaires internationales, de l’Immigration et des
Communautés culturelles, Portraits statistiques régionaux : Québec et ses
régions, 1991. Recensement 1991 : données ethnoculturelles, Québec, 1995, p.
86. Ces statistiques tiennent compte seulement des réponses uniques à la question
sur l’origine ethnique; 13,5 % des résidants de Montréal ont déclaré des origines
multiples comme britannique-française, britannique-autre, etc. Même en
attribuant certaines origines multiples au groupe britannique, le déclin de la
composante ethnique britannique parmi la population de Montréal tout au long de
ce siècle reste étonnant.
On oublie parfois que la loi 22, votée en 1974, a été la première loi à faire du
français la langue officielle du Québec.
Daniel Latouche, ouvr. cité, p. 101.
Dominique Clift et Sheila McLeod Arnopoulos, Le fait anglais au Québec,
Montréal, Libre Expression, 1979, p. 236.
Gouvernement du Québec, La politique québécoise du développement culturel,
Québec, Éditeur officiel du Québec, 1978, vol. 1, p. 41; William D. Coleman, The
Independence Movement in Quebec, 1945-1980, Toronto, University of Toronto
Press, 1984, p. 134.
Gouvernement du Québec, La politique québécoise du développement culturel,
ouvr. cité, p. 63.
Gouvernement du Québec, Autant de façons d’être Québécois, Québec, Éditeur
officiel du Québec, 1981.
Gouvernement du Québec, Au Québec pour bâtir ensemble, Québec, ministère
des Communautés culturelles et de l’Immigration, 1990.
Comité interministériel sur la situation de la langue française, ouvr. cité, p. 300.
Gouvernement du Québec, Au Québec pour bâtir ensemble, ouvr. cité, p. 15.
Ibid., p. 21.
Ibid., p. 15.
Ibid., p. 16.
Ibid., p. 17.
Conseil supérieur de l’éducation, ouvr. cité, p. 71-76.
35. François Rocher et Guy Rocher, « La culture québécoise en devenir : les défis du
pluralisme », dans Fernand Ouellet et Michel Pagé (dir.), Construire un espace
commun : pluriethnicité, éducation et société, Québec, Institut québécois de
recherche sur la culture, 1991, p. 52.
36. Conseil scolaire de l’île de Montréal, Commentaires quant au volume des niveaux
d’immigration pour les années 1995, 1996, 1997, Montréal, CSIM, 1994.
37. Jean-Marc Léger, « Primauté du français et pluralisme culturel », Le Devoir, 25
octobre 1988.
38. Rodrigue Tremblay, « Le pays le plus ouvert au monde », Le Devoir, 7 juillet
1994.
39. Paul-André Comeau, « Des pistes à explorer en matière d’immigration »,
L’Action nationale, vol. 79, no 10, décembre 1989, p. 1169-1170.
40. Lise Bissonnette, « La première politique d’immigration », Le Devoir, 5
décembre 1990.
41. Ibid.
42. Irwin Block, « Public Sector Short on “ethnics” », The Gazette, 19 septembre
1996.
43. Martin Pelchat, « Les policiers se méfient davantage des Noirs », Le Devoir, 8
décembre 1988; Jean-V. Dufresne, « La police de Montréal et les minoritaires »,
Le Devoir, 8 décembre 1988.
44. André Lachance, « Être Haïtien à Montréal : davantage une affaire de bile que de
ville », Le Devoir, 6 avril 1986.
45. Alberte Ledoyen, Montréal au pluriel : huit communautés ethnoculturelles de la
région montréalaise, Québec, Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture,
1992, p. 180-188.
46. Rollande Parent, « Le français sert d’alibi pour ne pas embaucher des Noirs », Le
Devoir, 24 avril 1988.
47. Ministère des Affaires internationales, de l’Immigration et des Communautés
culturelles et Ville de Montréal, Profils des communautés culturelles du Québec,
Québec, Gouvernement du Québec, 1995, p. 325.
48. L’expression « société frileuse » vient de Paul-André Comeau (« Une société
frileuse », Le Devoir, 10 mars 1987), dans un reportage sur un sondage qui
montrait de fortes inquiétudes parmi les francophones au sujet de la menace de
« trop d’immigration » pour la langue française.
49. Annick Germain et autres, Cohabitation interethnique et vie de quartier,
Montréal, INRS-Urbanisation, 1995.
50. Pour une analyse du passage d’un nationalisme ethnique à un nationalisme
civique au Québec, voir Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Journeys Into
the New Nationalism, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993; Raymond
Breton, « From Ethnic to Civic Nationalism: English Canada and Quebec »,
Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 11, no 1, janvier 1988, p. 85-102.
51. Gouvernement du Québec, Au Québec pour bâtir ensemble, ouvr. cité, p. 17.
52. Dominique Clift et Sheila McLeod Arnopoulos (ouvr. cité, p. 235-236) avaient
été perspicaces en 1979 quand ils émettent l’hypothèse que la loi 101 pourrait
devenir un genre de « cheval de Troie » pour les francophones, c’est-à-dire une loi
qui, dans sa volonté d’assurer l’avenir démographique du Québec français,
réinventerait la culture franco-québécoise d’une manière que les nationalistes
n’avaient pas prévue et que certains d’entre eux pourraient trouver troublante.
53. Pierre Laplante, « Que sera le Québec de demain? », Le Devoir, 3 septembre
1988.
155
54. Carole Beaulieu, « Dans le ventre de la métropole », L’actualité, 15 mai 1992,
p. 28.
55. Andrew McIntosh, « Immigrants Welcome: Attitudes have eased », The Gazette,
4 juillet 1996. Les personnes qui avaient voté OUI au référendum exprimaient
une opinion plus négative au sujet de l’immigration que celles qui avaient voté
NON : 41 % des tenants du OUI étaient d’accord avec l’énoncé « L’immigration
affaiblit la culture québécoise » par rapport à 23 % des tenants du NON.
56. Cité dans Gerald Clark, Montreal: The New Cité, Toronto, McClelland and
Stewart, 1982, p. 237.
57. « Les anglophones : une révolution discrète », La Presse, 11-14 avril 1987;
George Toombs, « Les Anglo-Québécois : une minorité en quête d’une nouvelle
identité », Le Devoir, 6 octobre 1988.
58. William Johnson, « Anti-Partitionists: The Lamb Lobby », The Gazette, 10
février 1996.
59. Hubert Bauch, « The Summer of the Angry Anglo: Referendum Scare Fuels New
Activism », The Gazette, 31 août 1996.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. Norman Webster, « Partition Montreal? Remember Belfast and Then Let The
Idea Go », The Gazette, 15 décembre 1995.
63. Gretta Chambers, « Many Anglos no Longer Think Being “Reasonable”
Works », The Gazette, 23 août 1996.
64. Lise Bissonnette, « Dans une librairie », Le Devoir, 12 février 1996.
65. Conseil scolaire de l’île de Montréal, Statistiques et commentaires sur les
origines des élèves, 1993-1994 et 1994-1995, Montréal, CSIM, 1995, p. 33.
66. Pour une excellente étude des efforts du gouvernement du Parti Québécois en
matière de réforme scolaire, voir Henry Milner, La réforme scolaire au Québec,
Montréal, Québec/Amérique, 1984.
67. Gouvernement du Québec, ministère de l’Éducation, L’école québécoise : une
école communautaire et responsable, Québec, Gouvernement du Québec, 1982,
99 p.
68. Ibid., p. 51-58; Henry Milner, ouvr. cité, p. 125-146.
69. Loi 40, Loi concernant l’enseignement public primaire et secondaire, Assemblée
nationale, 32e législature, 4e session, 1983.
70. La Constitution de 1867 garantissait le droit à l’enseignement public protestant à
Montréal et, par conséquent, l’existence de la commission scolaire protestante.
L’article 93 ne faisait aucune référence aux droits linguistiques, mais néanmoins
les anglophones le voyaient comme la meilleure protection de leur autonomie
scolaire.
71. Jean-Pierre Proulx, « La loi 107 réduira de 55 % les effectifs de la CEPGM », Le
Devoir, 22 décembre 1988.
72. Gilles Lesage, « Écoles : Ryan maintient la clause dérogatoire », Le Devoir, 22
décembre 1988. Voir aussi Henri Laberge, « La loi 107 est un monstre : où sont
les responsables? », La Presse, 22 avril 1994.
73. Paul Cauchon, « La voie Kenniff », Le Devoir, 12 juin 1996.
74. Ibid.
75. Paul Cauchon, « Le débat sur la confessionnalité de l’école est relancé », Le
Devoir, 6 septembre 1996; Pierre O’Neill, « La majorité des Québécois veulent
sortir la religion des écoles », Le Devoir, 5 septembre 1996.
76. « Anglos Want Linguistic Boards », The Gazette, 21 juin 1996.
77. Lise Bissonnette, « Le mauvais trajet », Le Devoir, 14 juin 1996.
156
78. Paul Cauchon, « Marois fait marche arrière sur les commissions scolaires
linguistiques », Le Devoir, 16 août 1996. En octobre 1996, les États généraux sur
l’éducation ont préconisé la création de commissions scolaires non confessionnelles comme moyen de moderniser l’enseignement public au Québec.
79. Pierre O’Neill, « Les péquistes défient Bouchard », Le Devoir, 30 septembre
1996. Il n’est pas étonnant que les affrontements les plus célèbres entre Lévesque
et la base de son parti sur la question de la langue aient engagé les militants de
Montréal-Centre.
80. Philip Authier et Hubert Bauch, « PQ Ridings Defiant », The Gazette, 30
septembre 1996.
81. Don Macpherson, « Obsessed by the Language Law », The Gazette, 9 octobre
1996.
82. Irwin Block, « Quebecers Wary of Language Issue, poll finds », The Gazette, 23
juin 1996.
83. Jean Paré, « La pseudo-crise linguistique », L’actualité, 1er avril 1996, p. 6.
84. Statistique Canada, compilation spéciale.
85. Louis Balthazar, « Pour un multiculturalisme québécois », L’Action nationale,
vol. 79, no 8, octobre 1989, p. 950.
86. Groupe de travail sur Montréal et sa région, Montréal, une ville-région, décembre
1993.
87. Marcel Côté, Un cadre d’analyse pour le Comité ministériel permanent de
développement du Grand Montréal, SECOR, 1990, p. 20. Voir aussi Pierre
Arbour, Québec Inc. et la tentation du dirigisme, Montréal, l’Étincelle, 1993, et
Jean-Luc Migué, « L’essor ou le déclin du français », Le Devoir, 13 mai 1993.
88. Jean-Luc Migué, art. cité.
89. Peter Hadekel, « Naming Island Bilingual Zones Makes Cents », The Gazette, 14
septembre 1996.
90. Voir François Vaillancourt, « English and Anglophones in Quebec: An Economic
Perspective », dans John Richards, François Vaillancourt et William G. Watson
(dir.), Survival: Official Language Rights in Canada, Toronto, Institut C. D.
Howe, 1992, p. 69. Vaillancourt affirme que « les résidants du Québec sont prêts à
sacrifier un certain niveau de revenus en retour d’un usage accru du français. […]
le compromis maximum est de l’ordre de 15 ou 20 % de moins que les revenus
qu’il serait possible d’atteindre dans une société anglophone ». Vaillancourt
n’explique pas clairement comment il est arrivé à ce chiffre, bien que le concept
soit juste, car il existe un compromis acceptable – un emplacement sur la «courbe
d’indifférence» des économistes – entre la sécurité culturelle et le niveau de vie.
91. Marcel Côté, ouvr. cité, p. 10.
92. Voir William J. Coffey et Mario Polèse, « Le déclin de l’empire montréalais :
regard sur l’économie d’une métropole en mutation », Recherches sociographiques, vol. 104, no 3, 1993, p. 417-438.
157
Béatrice Collignon
Les connaissances géographiques :
des pratiques et des récits
Résumé
Ce texte correspond aux deuxième et troisième parties du troisième chapitre
de Les Inuit ce qu’ils savent du territoire, issu d’une thèse sur le savoir
géographique d’un groupe inuit de l’arctique central canadien : les Inuinnait.
Ce chapitre est consacré à l’identification non seulement des connaissances
géographiques des Inuinnait mais aussi des grands champs de savoirs dans
lesquels elles s’inscrivent : les pratiques et la tradition orale. Pour cette
dernière, j’ai analysé principalement les récits constitués et la toponymie, à
laquelle est entièrement consacré le chapitre quatre de l’ouvrage.
L’introduction du chapitre et de la première partie aideront à situer l’extrait.
Abstract
This text corresponds to the second and third parts of chapter three in Les
Inuit, ce qu’ils savent du territoire, which stems from a thesis on the
geographic knowledge of the Inuinnait—an Inuit group in Canada’s Central
Arctic. This chapter is not only devoted to identifying the geographic
knowledge of the Inuinnait, but also to the broader field of knowledge to
which it belongs: practices and oral traditions. For the latter, I mainly
analyzed narratives and toponymy—to which the entire forth chapter of the
book is dedicated. The introduction to the chapter and to the first part will
help situate the excerpt.
La géographie des Inuinnait se situe à la croisée de deux champs de savoirs
différents, qui apparaissent comme les dépositaires privilégiés des
connaissances géographiques. Le premier est surtout technique et se
compose d’abord d’une série de pratiques ; le second est discursif et repose
sur la parole.
Les pratiques : déplacements et activités cynégétiques
Chasseurs et nomades, les Inuinnait associent étroitement la géographie
aux déplacements et à la chasse, considérés comme les deux faces d’un
même savoir, reconnu pour occuper une place spécifique dans les champs
de la connaissance. En effet il importe autant, sinon plus, de savoir retrouver
son campement que d’être capable de trouver et de prendre le gibier. Les
conversations qui s’y attachent se concentrent plus sur la pratique que sur le
33-34, 2006
savoir qui la sous-tend, de sorte que l’on peut dire qu’il s’agit d’un savoir
peu verbalisé. […]
Le verbe : la tradition orale
Certaines des connaissances géographiques sont intégrées à un autre champ
du savoir, celui de la tradition orale qui, autant que le savoir cynégétique, est
au cœur de toutes les cultures inuit. Mon approche de la tradition orale s’est
concentrée sur les récits et, plus encore, sur les toponymes. Parce que ces
derniers ont occupé une place centrale dans ma recherche, ils sont analysés
à part, dans le chapitre suivant.
Si interrogés directement sur le sens implicite des histoires, les Inuit ont
tendance à éluder la question, les analyses structurales et, plus récemment,
contextuelles, en ont montré toute la richesse (voir page ). Les Inuinnait
paraissent peu soucieux de classer les récits de leur tradition orale. Dans le
recueil de M. Métayer (1973), où les dates d’enregistrement sont indiquées
pour chaque récit, il n’y a pas d’ordre apparent. Les mythes fondateurs sont
contés entre deux petits incidents d’intérêt local. D. Jenness (1924) et
K. Rasmussen (1932) ont tous deux organisé leur corpus en suivant un
classement thématique, à l’inverse de M. Métayer, qui avait volontairement
évité tout classement à l’intérieur de chacun de ses trois volumes, restant
ainsi proche des conditions brutes de recueil. Cependant, pour ces trois
recueils, ces conditions sont artificielles car elles engageaient le seul
conteur et l’ethnographe, en tête à tête, le second sollicitant le premier. En
décontextualisant l’acte de la narration, elles rendent impossible toute
analyse contextuelle, qui serait pourtant précieuse pour compléter tout
autre type d’analyse, notamment sémantique. Cette dernière, que dans sa
préface au recueil de M. Métayer R. Savard (1973 : xiii) appelait de ses
vœux, reste aussi à faire.
À partir d’une analyse géographique des contenus, il est possible de
proposer un classement fondé sur la portée des récits. Ils se rapportent en
effet à des espaces plus ou moins étendus et sont ainsi opératoires à
différentes échelles. Il n’était pas pour moi nécessaire d’entrer dans plus de
détails et un regroupement des récits en trois grands types, correspondant
aux trois échelles classiques des géographes, était suffisant. Échelle
générale (ou nationale) des mythes et de certaines légendes, qui proposent
une explication de l’Univers et de la vie humaine partagée par l’ensemble
des cultures inuit; échelle régionale de certains récits légendaires et
historiques, dont le contenu géographique reflète la lecture du territoire
propre au groupe culturel qui les produit; échelle locale, enfin, des relations
d’anecdotes qui dressent la carte de l’espace fréquenté par chaque
sous-groupes, voire par chaque famille. C’est en somme l’échelle de
l’espace1.
160
Une explication de l’Univers et de la vie humaine
Des rives du détroit de Béring au Groenland, la continuité des mythes
fondateurs de la tradition orale des Inuit a frappé les ethnologues. Il est en
effet remarquable d’entendre, à des milliers de kilomètres de distance, les
mêmes histoires narrées dans une même langue, en dépit des différences
dialectales et des variantes locales quant aux circonstances exactes de
certaines péripéties. Ces récits ont une portée générale, ils s’adressent à tous
les Inuit. Aussi se lisent-ils à l’échelle « nationale », si l’on admet que l’unité
culturelle de ce peuple justifie que l’on parle d’une « nation » inuit. Depuis
F. Boas cette grande tradition a retenu l’attention des ethnologues.
Cependant, si les recueils sont assez nombreux, la plupart des études
approfondies se limitent à un ou deux mythes. X. Blaisel (1993) est le seul a
proposer une interprétation globale, étudiant les rites et la cosmologie des
Inuit de la Terre de Baffin dans une perspective holiste.
Cosmogonies, origines de la vie humaine et processus de mise en ordre
du monde, tous ces récits, très rarement localisés, expriment – aussi – une
lecture géographique du monde habité, ils lui donnent un sens pour les
hommes qui y vivent, les Inuit.
Cosmogonies
Les mythes fondateurs et les sagas de héros légendaires connus de plusieurs
groupes inuit intéressent le géographe en ce qu’ils proposent une
explication de l’Univers tel qu’il s’observe. Une cosmogonie détaillée
s’attache aux astres – les étoiles, la lune, le soleil – ainsi qu’aux météores –
les nuages, les aurores boréales, les arcs en ciel, etc.
K. Rasmussen (1932 : 23) rapporte que, pour les Inuinnait, ces
phénomènes célestes sont tous, à l’origine, des Inuit ou des animaux
(chiens, ours polaires, caribous2), qui ont été transportés dans les cieux lors
d’un événement particulier ou après leur mort, violente le plus souvent. Par
exemple, la constellation du Bouclier d’Orion est pour eux Tuvaaryuit :
« les trois petits chasseurs », qui furent élevés brutalement vers la voûte
céleste alors qu’ils poursuivaient un ours polaire. Les Inuit accordent en
général plus d’attention aux étoiles dont l’apparition est cyclique – celles
qui se lèvent et se couchent – qu’aux étoiles dites circumpolaires, toujours
présentes dans le ciel arctique. Les premières sont plus souvent que les
autres identifiées comme des êtres humains. Outre des raisons pratiques,
celles-là sont plus utiles pour mesurer le passage du temps à toutes les
échelles, de la journée à la saison, on peut penser que cette primauté est aussi
l’expression d’une reconnaissance, dans ce mouvement de lever / coucher,
d’une des caractéristiques des êtres vivants – êtres humains comme
animaux.
Les Inuinnait partagent avec les autres Inuit le mythe du soleil et de la
lune. Hiqiniq (le soleil, une femme) avait un frère : Tatqiq (la lune, un
161
homme). En ce temps là il n’y avait pas de jour, il faisait nuit en permanence.
En hiver, les Inuit se réunissaient dans un qalgik (grand iglou de danse) pour
chanter et danser. Tous les soirs, avant qu’elle sorte de chez elle pour
rejoindre les autres, Hiqiniq recevait la visite d’un homme qui éteignait la
lampe en entrant et avait ensuite des relations sexuelles avec elle. Curieuse,
elle voulut un soir connaître l’identité de son partenaire. Elle s’enduisit le
nez de suie et attendit. Après que l’homme fut venu et reparti, elle sortit à
son tour. Comme elle entrait dans le qalgik, elle vit Tatqiq, son propre frère,
le nez noir de suie. Furieuse et honteuse, elle se planta devant lui, coupa ses
seins et les lui lança à la figure en lui disant : « puisque tu m’aimes tant,
mange moi », puis elle sortit en courant, sa lampe à la main. Tatqiq se
précipita derrière elle, prenant à peine le temps d’allumer sa propre lampe.
Il se mit à lui courir après autour de l’iglou et ils furent soudain enlevés dans
les airs. Ils poursuivent aujourd’hui leur course vaine dans le ciel. Hiqiniq,
dont la lampe était bien allumée, brille de tous ses feux : c’est le soleil. En
revanche, la flamme vacillante de Tatqiq ne renvoie qu’une faible lueur et
pas de chaleur : c’est la lune (Rasmussen, 1932 : 33). Contrairement aux
Inuit plus orientaux, les Inuinnait ne pensent pas que tous les morts vivent
dans Qilaak (« le haut », « le plafond » mais aussi « la sphère céleste ») et que
les étoiles sont les fenêtres scintillantes de leurs iglous. Pour eux, les morts
habitent un monde d’abondance qui n’est pas perceptible, mais leurs esprits
restent sur la toundra. Par ailleurs, on ne trouve, à ma connaissance, aucune
cosmogonie relative à la neige et à la pluie dans leur tradition orale. En
revanche, l’origine des nuages est expliquée (voir plus loin).
D’après J. G. Oosten (1983), le mythe du soleil et de la lune se rattache à la
grande tradition des mythes amérindiens concernant ces mêmes météores.
Son sens symbolique concernerait la juste distance qu’il faut garder avec sa
parenté, une question évoquée dans la plupart des mythes, qui traitent de
façon récurrente de la question de la distance à maintenir entre parents,
entre Inuit, mais aussi avec le monde animal et les divers monstres qui
peuplaient autrefois la terre.
Origines de la vie et de l’humanité
Les mythes expliquent encore les origines de la diversité de l’humanité et de
sa répartition à la surface du monde habité. Les Inuit sont présentés comme
ayant toujours existé (du moins dans la tradition orale des Inuinnait, pour ce
qui en a été relevé) et sont à l’origine de tous les autres hommes : les Indiens
(Itqilit) et les autres (Qallunaat), qui sont issus de l’accouplement contre
nature d’une Inuit et d’un chien, soit d’une situation où les bonnes distances
non pas été respectées. En effet, comme cette fille refusait tous les maris
qu’il lui proposait son père, fâché, l’abandonna seule avec un chien sur une
île, afin qu’elle en fît son époux. Sur les ordres de leur mère, les enfantschiots nés de cette union partirent les uns vers le Sud (où viennent les
Qallunaat), les autres vers l’intérieur des terres, sur le continent (où ils
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deviennent les Itqilit), tandis que les derniers restèrent avec les Inuit.
(Jenness, 1924 : récits 72a, b, c, d, e, et Rasmussen, 1932 : 240)
Les Inuit sont également à l’origine de la vie animale. Les mammifères
marins, si importants dans la vie quotidienne, procèdent ainsi tous de la
même femme. Ils sont en effet issus de la chair tailladée d’une Inuit :
Arnakapkhaaluk. Enlevée par un chien monstrueux déguisé en homme, elle
menait une existence misérable sur une île isolée au milieu de l’océan
jusqu’au jour où son père vint en kayak et l’embarqua pour la ramener chez
lui. Mais le chien poursuivit les fuyards, se transformant en tempête.
Comme le père ne lui rendait pas sa fille, il augmenta la force de la tempête :
à tout moment, le kayak risquait de chavirer. Alors, la mort dans l’âme, le
père poussa sa fille par dessus bord pour la rendre au mari furieux et sauver
sa propre vie. Mais Arnakapkhaaluk s’accrocha au kayak. Son père lui
coupa alors les premières phalanges, qui devinrent aussitôt les phoques.
Comme elle s’accrochait encore, il lui coupa les deuxièmes phalanges, qui
devinrent les morses et les baleines. Puis, comme elle s’accrochait toujours,
il lui coupa les troisièmes phalanges qui devinrent les poissons tandis
qu’elle coulait au fond de l’océan, où elle habite désormais. Depuis son
iglou du fond des mers, elle règne sur les mammifères marins et, lorsqu’elle
est fâchée contre les Inuit, elle range tout le gibier sous son lit – non pas le
corps mais l’esprit de chaque animal – ainsi que les esprits des armes des
hommes et du matériel de couture des femmes. La famine s’installe alors
chez les Inuit et il appartient au chaman d’aller parlementer avec
Arnakapkhaaluk pour calmer sa colère et la persuader de relâcher les esprits
qu’elle tient captifs. (Rasmussen, 1932 : 24)
Pour les mammifères terrestres, il n’y a pas de mythe comparable, qui les
considérerait dans leur globalité. Leur origine tient au contraire à des
événements indépendants les uns des autres. A l’unité du monde marin,
s’oppose la diversité du monde terrestre, ce qui renforce l’idée – centrale
dans la perception inuit de l’œkoumène – qu’il s’agit de deux mondes bien
différents, qu’il convient de séparer dans la pratique. Sans doute ceci est-il
aussi lié au fait que les Inuit sont d’abord un peuple de chasseurs de
mammifères marins, qui ne s’est tourné que tardivement (vers le XVIIe ou
XVIIIe siècle ?) vers l’exploitation du gibier terrestre.
L’origine des Inuit n’est pas évoquée dans les corpus publiés de la
tradition orale des Inuinnait. Il y a toujours eu des « hommes par
excellence », mais ils étaient peu nombreux et entourés d’êtres à l’identité
incertaine, dans un temps où la limite entre monde animal et monde humain
restait floue. Certains êtres humains avaient des pratiques déviantes – les
anthropophages, les homosexuels3, les Inuit mariés à des animaux –
d’autres étaient monstrueux – « ceux qui n’avaient pas d’orifice dans la
partie inférieure de leurs corps » (ce qui les empêchait d’avoir des relations
sexuelles et d’enfanter), « ceux qui avaient de longues griffes », les géants –
d’autres enfin étaient des mutants, des animaux – ours ou chiens, parfois
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renards et gloutons – qui prenaient momentanément une forme humaine
pour tromper les Inuit.
Mise en ordre du monde
Les légendes rapportent comment, de péripétie en péripétie, les Inuit sont
parvenus à éliminer un à un ces êtres à l’humanité mal assurée. Au fur et à
mesure, ils ont pu eux-mêmes se multiplier et développer leur société – celle
des « hommes par excellence » – n’étant plus sous la menace des géants, des
anthropophages et autres ours trompeurs. Ils ont ainsi établi un ordre dans
un monde auparavant chaotique. Mythes et grandes légendes s’achèvent
lorsque le monde des Inuit est en place.
« Toutes ces histoires datent d’une époque où toutes sortes de
choses incroyables pouvaient arriver » confiait un Iglulingmiuk à
K. Rasmussen (1929 : 257). « C’était l’époque où l’on fabriquait
des mots magiques. Un mot dit par hasard pouvait soudain devenir
puissant, et ce que les gens voulaient qu’il arrivât pouvait arriver,
et personne ne pouvait expliquer comment cela ce faisait », lui
expliquait encore une Natsilingmiuk (1931 : 208. Traductions
libres).
Cependant, entre les hommes et le monde animal les relations demeurent
étroites. Elles se poursuivent dans le chamanisme : le chaman fait appel aux
esprits des animaux pour utiliser, avec leur accord, leur force ou leur ruse
pour son propre compte ou pour celui de tout le groupe. X. Blaisel (1993) a
montré que cette relation est aussi réactivée en permanence par
l’accomplissement des rites. La chasse est ainsi un véritable rituel, dont
toutes les étapes, de la quête du gibier à son partage, sont marquées par des
gestes ou des paroles obligatoires : au moment de la prise d’un phoque ou
d’un caribou, de courtes incantations sont récitées, le gibier est dépecé et
découpé suivant certaines règles afin de ne pas offenser son esprit mais au
contraire de le remercier, pour qu’il s’offre à nouveau aux harpons ou aux
flèches des chasseurs, etc.
Communs à tous les Inuit, ces récits sont au cœur de leur culture et leur
sens symbolique imprègne toute la société et tous les champs du savoir. Ils
participent ainsi, entre autres, à l’élaboration d’un savoir géographique
spécifique. Le recours aux récits symboliques pour rendre compte de
l’ordonnancement de l’Univers place la géographie inuinnait dans le cadre
d’une pensée animiste et magique, fort éloignée de la pensée cartésienne
qui préside à la construction de la géographie savante occidentale.
Un mode d’emploi du territoire
Parallèlement à ces récits dont le contenu géographique consiste en une
explication de la formation de Hila – de « l’Univers » –, la tradition orale
transmet des histoires qui se rapportent plus précisément au territoire du
groupe qui les élabore. Leur portée n’est plus nationale mais régionale et si
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certaines narrations sont partagées par plusieurs groupes, d’autres ne sont
connues que d’un seul. Dans le premier cas, chacun les accommode à sa
façon, en fonction des caractéristiques de son propre territoire. Dans cette
série, les récits ayant un contenu géographique sont associés à des lieux
réels, nommés ou décrits précisément, par opposition aux lieux-types –
abstraits – des récits de portée nationale. Les événements historiques ou
légendaires rapportés dans les histoires de cette seconde catégorie
proposent soit des explications sur l’origine de certaines configurations
topographiques, soit des recommandations à propos de l’utilisation du
territoire.
Explications de configurations topographiques
Un premier type de récit est constitué de légendes qui rapportent l’origine
de certaines formes topographiques remarquables. En associant ces récits à
des lieux réels, visibles sur le territoire, la tradition orale répond à une triple
exigence : répondre à la question de l’origine des phénomènes naturels,
affirmer avec force la vérité de l’histoire – les événements qu’elle relate ont
bien eu lieu, puisqu’il en reste une marque dans le paysage –, s’approprier
des légendes qui appartiennent au fond commun de plusieurs groupes voire
de tous. Ainsi on retrouve souvent les mêmes trames narratives d’un groupe
à l’autre, mais la mise en scène varie pour s’adapter aux modelés
topographiques de chaque région.
Pour les Inuinnait, trois légendes illustrent particulièrement bien le
fonctionnement de ce type de récit. L’une associe trois collines situées à
l’Ouest de Cambridge Bay (Amaaqtuq, Uvayuq, Uvayurruhiq) à l’origine
de la mort. Les trois monts sont les corps des quatre premiers morts de
l’humanité : un couple, leur jeune garçon et leur bébé. Ils succombèrent à
l’épuisement, l’un après l’autre sur le chemin de l’océan, un été où la famine
sévissait à l’intérieur des terres. La topographie porte à jamais le souvenir
de cet événement, que rappelle aussi la toponymie : Amaaqtuq (« celui qui
est une femme qui porte son bébé »), c’est l’épouse qui portait dans son dos
un nourrisson; Uvayuq (« celui dont l’un des versants est plus long que
l’autre »), c’est l’époux, dont on dit qu’Uvayuq était son nom; Uvayurruhiq
enfin, (« le petit Uvayuq »), c’est le jeune garçon4.
La deuxième histoire rend compte à la fois de l’origine de la rivière
Coppermine (Qurluqtuup kuugaa : « la rivière de “qui est des rapides” ») et
de celle des nuages. Elle ancre dans une réalité régionale une cosmogonie
(l’origine des nuages) commune à plusieurs groupes. Une jeune fille
enlevée par une ourse grizzly – l’histoire se passe sur le continent –
s’échappe de la tanière pendant que la femelle et ses petits dorment en
attendant que leur proie, qu’ils croient gelée car la jeune fille se tenait très
raide pour les abuser, s’amollisse un peu en dégelant. Poursuivie par
l’ourse, elle trace avec son doigt un long trait sur le sol, qui devient aussitôt
une puissante rivière tumultueuse : Qurluqtuup kuugaa. De l’autre rive,
l’ourse l’apostrophe : « Comment as-tu traversé question » Comme la jeune
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fille répond qu’elle a bu l’eau et asséché ainsi la rivière, l’ourse se met
aussitôt à boire, tant et si bien qu’elle explose. L’eau sortie de ses entrailles
s’élève vers le ciel où elle forme les nuages, qui n’existaient pas
auparavant5. On retrouve ici l’idée du pouvoir de la volonté, exprimée dans
ce cas non par des mots mais par un geste. On note d’ailleurs que, dans la
tradition orale, le fait de tracer une ligne sur le sol (sur la terre ou la
banquise) est très souvent un acte magique, créateur d’une distance qui
sépare et protège celui qui en est l’auteur.
Le troisième récit associe la présence de deux marques profondes dans le
sol (au Nord-Ouest de Kugluktuk) et d’un énorme rocher (Ahungahungalik,
situé sur le rivage d’une île du détroit du Dauphin et de l’Union) aux
pérégrinations d’un géant. Celui-ci marchait près d’une rivière
(Nuahungniq6) et il était si grand et si lourd que ses pas sont restés imprimés
dans le sol, où ils sont toujours visibles. Puis, après avoir terrorisé les
Inuinnait qui campaient à proximité, il traversa la mer en deux enjambées,
ramassant les phoques à pleines mains sur son passage. Comme il atteignait
le petit archipel d’Ukaliq (« le lièvre arctique ») les hommes, ayant recours à
la magie, le pétrifièrent alors qu’il posait un pied sur le sommet de la falaise.
Comme son autre pied était encore dans l’eau, il était légèrement penché en
avant, aussi devint-il Ahungahungalik (« l’endroit qui a une bosse »), gros
rocher plus large à mi-hauteur qu’à la base et au sommet7.
Recommandations quant à la pratique du territoire
On peut regrouper dans un second type de récits régionaux ceux qui
fournissent des recommandations pour un bon usage du territoire. Ceux-là
sont toujours situés dans le temps (plus ou moins ancien) et leur historicité
est affirmée. Au-delà d’une certaine diversité, on peut distinguer deux
catégories : ceux qui relatent des catastrophes à l’origine desquelles on
trouve toujours une erreur d’appréciation de la part des Inuinnait
concernés ; ceux qui indiquent des lieux marqués par un certain pouvoir
magique ou par la présence d’êtres hors du commun.
Les récits de catastrophes sont assez nombreux dans la tradition orale. Ils
rapportent soit des famines dramatiques ayant décimé tout un sous-groupe,
soit, pour les Inuinnait du continent uniquement, des rencontres meurtrières
avec les Indiens.
Toutes les histoires de famines graves suivent le même schéma. Au
printemps, un sous-groupe installé sur une petite île éloignée des côtes
connaît une période d’abondance inhabituelle8 puis se trouve coupé de la
terre ferme au moment de la débâcle et prisonnier sur l’île9. Cette situation
peut résulter d’un choix délibéré – la communauté décide de passer l’été sur
l’île en vivant des réserves de viande accumulées avant la dislocation de la
banquise – ou d’une grave erreur d’inattention : trop absorbés par leur
chasse et avides d’amasser davantage de viande, les hommes attendent trop
longtemps pour retourner sur la terre ferme. Un récit précise qu’il faut voir
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là non seulement de l’inconscience mais aussi une certaine paresse : les
stocks sont si importants que les Inuinnait n’ont pas le courage de les
transporter sur les rives de la terre ferme10, où ils seraient normalement
laissés en dépôt pour être consommés à l’automne, en période de soudure.
Las! Les réserves, surestimées, s’épuisent trop vite et la famine s’installe
dans le camp pris au piège au milieu de l’océan. Il ne reste finalement que
quelques survivants, qui parviennent à gagner la terre ferme en construisant
un radeau de fortune à l’aide de traîneaux et de vieilles peaux de phoques.
La signification géographique de ces récits est claire : quiconque se risque à
ne pas respecter le principe de l’alternance saisonnière dans son occupation
du territoire court à sa perte. Dans les versions recueillies par M. Métayer,
les narrateurs insistent toujours sur le fait que les Inuinnait furent d’abord
victimes de leur propre folie : « ils avaient perdu la raison » commentent-ils
en cours de récit.
Les Indiens (Itqilit : « les porteurs de poux ») sont des voisins dangereux,
rappelle la tradition orale11. Les histoires qui les concernent suivent deux
types de trames narratives. Premier cas de figure : par erreur ou nécessité
(pour trouver du bois pour les traîneaux par exemple), les Inuinnait
franchissent la limite des arbres et passent en territoire indien. Malgré leur
discrétion ils sont repérés et les Indiens envahissent leur camp et
assassinent ceux qui s’y trouvent. Eventuellement, ceux qui ont échappé au
massacre lancent une expédition punitive, mais les Inuinnait sortent
rarement vainqueurs de ces rencontres. Second cas de figure : ce sont les
Indiens qui, par provocation, quittent la forêt pour la toundra, apparemment
dans le seul but de massacrer les Inuinnait. Ils s’attaquent traîtreusement à
un camp en l’absence des chasseurs et trucident allègrement les femmes, les
enfants et les vieillards. Aleur retour, les chasseurs partent à la poursuite des
assaillants qu’ils tuent à leur tour, les attaquant par surprise alors que les
imprudents festoient dans leurs tipis, se réjouissant de leur forfait12. Le
message géographique est là aussi limpide : si les Inuinnait sont libres de
leurs mouvements et règnent en maîtres sur la toundra et la banquise, ils
doivent limiter le plus possible leurs incursions dans la forêt, qui appartient
aux Indiens. On retrouve à nouveau ici la question de la juste distance.
Une seconde catégorie regroupe les récits qui indiquent des lieux
particuliers, à fréquenter avec précaution parce qu’ils sont habités par des
êtres étranges, plus ou moins monstrueux : Tuniti (« les petites personnes »,
sortes d’esprits de toute petite taille – ils sont à peine visibles – qui, selon les
cas, aident ou harcèlent les hommes) ou poissons carnivores souvent
présentés comme des poissons géants.
Les Tuniti sont l’objet, pour les récits de portée régionale, de petites
histoires courtes qui indiquent seulement les lieux où ils habitent et la sage
distance à laquelle les hommes doivent s’en tenir. Alik n’avait pas suivi ces
recommandations. Il passa sa tête dans la fissure d’un rocher qui n’était
autre que le couloir d’entrée de la maison d’une famille de Tuniti, tant il était
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curieux de voir comment s’organisait leur intérieur. Aussitôt, la fissure se
resserra et sa tête resta coincée à l’intérieur. Il ne dut la liberté qu’à
l’intervention d’un chaman. (Rasmussen, 1932 : 34). Il est éventuellement
recommandé de laisser un peu de nourriture près de l’endroit, afin que les
Tuniti aient de quoi manger. Leur petite taille ne leur permet en effet guère
de chasser eux-mêmes.
Quant aux poissons géants de certains lacs, leur description ne va pas
sans parfois rappeler celle du fameux monstre du Loch Ness. Pour chaque
lac, lau suda tradition rapporte les circonstances dans lesquelles les
Inuinnait découvrirent la présence de cet habitant dangereux. La bête
s’attaque soit aux caribous sur un de leurs passages à gué, soit à des
chasseurs traversant le lac en kayak. Parfois, elle est seulement aperçue
depuis la rive par des pêcheurs. Aujourd’hui, on ajoute souvent que le
monstre lacustre a été vu d’avion un jour de grand beau temps. On notera
qu’il n’y a jamais plus d’un poisson géant par lac. La longévité du monstre
est par ailleurs source de nombreux commentaires. Ces histoires invitent les
Inuinnait à être prudents lorsqu’ils traversent ces lacs, mais non pas à les
éviter. Ainsi la rive occidentale du lac Napaaqtulik (« l’endroit qui a des
arbres »), au Sud de Kugluktuk est un campement très fréquenté alors que le
lac abrite un poisson géant. Mais le monstre n’habiterait qu’une partie du
lac, qui est justement celle que l’on évite lorsque l’on traverse le lac gelé et
sur les rives de laquelle on ne campe normalement pas.
Ces récits figurent tous au moins une fois dans l’un des trois recueils
publiés et m’ont également été rapportés à plusieurs reprises. Sans être
toujours connu d’un bout à l’autre du territoire des Inuinnait, chacun
s’inscrit dans la tradition de plusieurs groupes voisins. Pour chaque groupe
on trouve toujours au moins une histoire de famine et un lac habité par un
poisson géant. L’une des fonctions de ces récits est bien d’indiquer
comment faire bon usage du territoire, ce qui passe notamment par le
respect de certaines distances et de certains rythmes. Qu’ils rendent compte
de l’origine d’une forme topographique ou qu’ils concernent la pratique du
territoire, ces récits étaient toujours signalés lors de l’enquête
toponymique. L’association systématique de l’histoire au lieu indique
qu’elle est considérée comme lui étant intimement liée, ce qui est aussi un
signe de l’efficacité géographique de la tradition orale, sans prétendre
limiter cette dernière à ce seul domaine. L’échelle régionale s’affirme
comme celle à laquelle s’énonce une sorte de mode d’emploi du territoire.
Les origines de la vie humaine s’inscrivent dans des formes topographiques
qu’il convient de respecter pour ce qu’elles représentent ; les mésaventures
des ancêtres doivent servir de leçon à leurs descendants.
Une géographie de l’espace vécu
On peut enfin identifier un troisième type de récits, qui sont efficaces à
l’échelle locale et dont la portée ne dépasse guère la famille élargie. Ils
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relatent les petits incidents survenus aux uns et aux autres en des lieux
précis. Récits circonstanciés, où les protagonistes sont nommés, connus du
groupe, ils se perdent avec le souvenir de leurs héros.
Ces toutes petites histoires, que l’on raconte à la veillée ou lorsque l’on
est sur le lieu même où elles se sont produites, comportent une foule de
renseignements géographiques. Ainsi cette petite baie du grand lac
Uyaraktuuq (« le rocailleux ») est celle où tel cousin prit un jour un si gros
ihuuq (« très gros poisson ») qu’il n’arrivait pas à le hisser hors de l’eau, car
il était trop lourd. Il dut demander de l’aide à ses voisins, mais il fallut
agrandir le trou creusé dans la glace pour passer la ligne, car il était trop
étroit pour ce poisson vraiment énorme. Pour pratiquement tous les lieux
nommés du territoire, il existe une anecdote de ce type.
Très variées, elles soulignent les atouts et les pièges de chacun des lieux,
indiquent des itinéraires plus ou moins faciles, des raccourcis, de faux
raccourcis, fixent quelques toponymes, etc. Mais, plus encore, elles
inscrivent dans les mémoires une histoire du territoire par laquelle l’espace,
étendue neutre, devient un milieu porteur du vécu des hommes qui
l’humanisent sans pour autant l’artificialiser. Plus encore que les
précédents, ces récits chargent le territoire d’une épaisseur historique et
d’une dimension affective qui jouent un rôle de tout premier plan dans la
perception de l’espace et le savoir géographique des Inuinnait.
Aucune d’entre elles ne figure dans les publications de D. Jenness et de
K. Rasmussen. Comment interpréter cette lacune ? Considérant qu’elles
intéressent surtout le cercle familial, les Inuinnait n’auraient pas jugé
opportun d’en faire part aux deux ethnologues ? Ou bien faut-il comprendre
que ce sont ces derniers qui, devant leur apparente insignifiance, les ont
écartées de leurs corpus ? Le fait que celui de M. Métayer en comporte un
assez grand nombre plaide en faveur de cette seconde explication. Cela
conforte l’idée que, du point de vue géographique tout du moins, ces récits
sont bien partie intégrante de la tradition orale. Ils remplissent les mêmes
fonctions que les autres, mais à une échelle inférieure.
La perception du territoire : essai de reconstruction
Un savoir géographique n’est pas seulement fait de connaissances
spécifiques, la perception de l’espace y occupe aussi une place importante.
En décomposant cette perception il est possible d’identifier les éléments sur
lesquels elle se construit et les termes dans lesquels elle se pense. Puisque la
géographie est, chez les Inuinnait, éclatée entre deux champs du savoir, il
est légitime de partir de ces derniers afin de saisir comment chacun
intervient dans la constitution de la perception globale de l’espace.
Cependant, pour approcher cette dernière, il convient d’ajouter au savoir
cynégétique et à la mémoire une troisième dimension, qui n’est pas le
champ d’un savoir mais d’une expérience : l’espace du quotidien, non pas
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celui de la chasse et des déplacements mais celui du camp, espace local dans
lequel les jeunes Inuinnait prennent peu à peu « conscience de ce qui les
entoure », pour reprendre leurs propres termes.
La part du local : un semis de lieux
Les études menées sur la perception de l’espace ont depuis longtemps
montré que celle-ci se construit à partir de l’individu, qui appréhende au fur
et à mesure qu’il grandit des territoires de plus en plus vastes. À partir du
lieu d’enracinement (la maison, puis le quartier, puis la ville ou le village),
s’élabore une représentation plus globale de l’espace.
Pour les Inuinnait on retrouve ce même schéma général, avec quelques
variations dues à leur mode de vie nomade. La construction ne se fait pas à
partir d’un lieu central mais de plusieurs lieux, qui sont autant de pôles sur
lesquels repose la perception du territoire. L’enfant grandit dans un
contexte de grande mobilité, mais aussi de grande stabilité. Si l’espace
extérieur est toujours provisoire, l’espace intérieur, au contraire, ne change
jamais : d’un bout à l’autre de l’année et d’une génération à la suivante, il
reste organisé de la même façon, à l’intérieur des iglous comme des tentes
(voir à ce sujet Collignon 2001).
C’est d’abord sur les lieux que repose la perception inuinnait du
territoire. Il est une série de lieux – de points – qui forment un semis sur une
étendue dont les interstices sont plus ou moins bien connus. Ces lieux sont
ceux de la vie quotidienne : les camps d’abord – les siens et ceux des
autres –, les petits lacs poissonneux, les cours d’eau, mais aussi toutes les
marques que porte le territoire. Marques visibles, tels les inukhut, les caches
à viande, les trappes à renards, les formes topographiques originales, etc.;
mais aussi marques invisibles des histoires et des anecdotes que seule la
parole ancre dans le réel. C’est à partir de tout cela que l’espace s’organise,
se découvre et s’appréhende. Il s’établit également une hiérarchie entre tous
ces lieux. Les principaux – souvent les camps – servent de références pour
situer les autres lieux, qui ne sont perçus que par rapport à ces points forts à
partir desquels s’organise le territoire.
Cette question sera reprise dans les chapitres suivants. Il suffit pour
l’heure de retenir que la perception de l’espace se construit d’abord sur
l’expérience quotidienne de l’espace du camp. Pour les femmes, qui ne
participent normalement pas aux activités cynégétiques, le territoire reste
ce semis de points dont la mise en relation par des lignes de déplacement
demeure mal connue dans le détail. Pour les hommes au contraire, les lieux
sont à la base d’une perception beaucoup plus élaborée du territoire.
La part du savoir cynégétique : lignes et surfaces
Le rapport au territoire tel qu’il se fonde dans le champ du savoir
cynégétique est celui de chasseurs (c’est-à-dire d’hommes qui « pour-
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suivent un gibier qui fuit devant nous » selon la définition donnée par les
Inuit) nomades (c’est-à-dire d’hommes en déplacement). Cela favorise,
dans la perception de l’espace, le développement de deux catégories
opératoires qui viennent s’ajouter à celle analysée ci-dessus.
Des lignes
Les Inuinnait sont d’abord des chasseurs, mais leur pratique de l’espace est
en premier lieu celle de nomades. Les activités cynégétiques impliquent
dans cette société une mobilité à deux échelles : l’échelle régionale de
l’alternance saisonnière, qui impose de longs déplacements à certaines
périodes de l’année ; l’échelle plus locale des déplacements quotidiens
commandés par la poursuite du gibier, et dont l’extension varie du simple au
double selon la saison. Aussi les chasseurs perçoivent-ils le territoire
comme un ensemble d’itinéraires, axes privilégiés qui assurent la mise en
relation des lieux. Ces lignes sont jalonnées par des points de repère qui sont
d’autant plus nombreux que le parcours est familier. Le territoire est ainsi
perçu comme organisé par un réseau de lignes sur lesquelles circulent les
hommes mais aussi le gibier, notamment les caribous, les oies, les canards
et les ombles arctiques, dont les migrations suivent des routes qui ne
changent guère d’une année à l’autre.
Cette perception axiale s’exprime nettement dans les cartes dessinées
par les Inuit à la demande des explorateurs, du XVIe au XXe siècle. Seules
deux cartes dessinées par des Inuinnait ont été publiées (Rasmussen, 1932),
mais l’ethnologue ne précise ni les conditions de leur réalisation, ni si ce
sont là les deux seules cartes qu’il recueillit ou s’il s’agit des plus réussies de
toute une série. R.A. Rundstrom (1987) a consacré sa thèse à l’étude des
cartes ainsi dessinées sur commande par les Inuit de l’Arctique canadien
oriental et central. Trop peu nombreuses, celles recueillies auprès
d’Inuinnait n’ont pas été inclues dans son corpus. Ce géographe insiste
notamment sur la linéarité de l’espace représenté, que l’on retrouve dans les
deux cartes mentionnées ci-dessus. Il remarque également que l’échelle de
représentation varie en fonction du degré d’intimité du cartographe avec
l’espace qu’il représente. Plus ce degré est élevé, plus les détails sont
nombreux et l’échelle grande ; à l’inverse, il ne reste pour les zones moins
connues que quelques lignes de force et la carte passe à une échelle plus
petite. Ce phénomène a également été observé par J.-F. Le Mouël (1978 :
93-94) lors de ses enquêtes toponymiques au Groenland occidental.
Bien que mes enquêtes toponymiques se soient appuyées sur des cartes
d’origine allogène (publiées par le ministère des Mines et des Ressources
Naturelles), elles ont révélé pour les Inuinnait une perception de l’espace
semblable. La lecture de la carte suit des lignes imprimées dans la mémoire
du voyageur. Il confronte, au fur et à mesure qu’il avance, son image
mentale des paysages à leur représentation cartographique, en prenant
appui sur les lieux qui jalonnent ses itinéraires. Déroulant un chapelet de
toponymes entre deux lieux plus importants, il s’applique ensuite à les
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retrouver sur la carte topographique, grâce au dessin du trait de côte, aux
îles, aux vallées et aux lacs. Les courbes de niveaux ne sont utilisées que
lorsqu’il y a un doute. À partir de leur perception linéaire, les Inuinnait ont
mis au point leur propre méthode de lecture des cartes imprimées, sur
lesquelles ils se repèrent sans problème majeur. Hommes et femmes lisent
ces documents qu’ils ont adoptés dans les années 1970 suivant la même
méthode, mais les femmes ont une perception des lignes plus vague que
celle des hommes.
La perception linéaire est par ailleurs renforcée par certaines techniques
de mémorisation qui sont également organisées sur un mode axial. Il existe
ainsi des chants qui énumèrent les entités – parfois les toponymes – qui
jalonnent tel ou tel itinéraire. Trois d’entre eux m’ont été signalés (et
chantés) à Cambridge Bay et deux à Kugluktuk. L’un d’eux était connu par
certains Aînés de ces deux villages. S’ils n’ont jamais été signalés, mes
observations me portent à penser que les Kangiryuarmiut utilisent
également des chants de route. D’après R.ARundstrom (1987), les groupes
plus orientaux de l’Arctique central avaient eux aussi des chants de ce type.
Des surfaces
La mobilité des Inuinnait est une réponse aux besoins d’un peuple chasseur.
Les pratiques cynégétiques en tant que telles impliquent une autre
perception du territoire qui vient s’ajouter à la précédente. Pour le chasseur,
le territoire n’est plus lignes mais surfaces sur lesquelles le gibier se répartit.
Trois types de surfaces s’opposent nettement : nuna (« la terre »), hiku (« le
couvert glacé », la banquise) et tariuq (« le sel », « la mer »). Hiku est une
surface particulière, en ce qu’elle est temporaire et n’est habitée par aucun
gibier particulier.
Les discussions avec les chasseurs comme leurs commentaires des cartes
au 1/250 000e, ont révélé qu’aux lignes qui articulent les points du territoire
s’ajoutent des zones caractérisées par le gibier que l’on y trouve. La plupart
d’entre eux insistaient pour que je note bien l’extension et les caractères
giboyeux de chacune d’elles. Il était pour eux impossible de dissocier la
faune des autres connaissances relatives au territoire. À l’évidence, elle
entre dans ce qu’ils considèrent comme géographique, elle est comprise
dans leur connaissance des écosystèmes. Les zones sans gibier, quant à
elles, sont peu fréquentées et ne retiennent pas l’attention des chasseurs. En
quelque sorte, pour eux, elles n’existent pas, elles sont pratiquement
occultées.
Les zones habituellement giboyeuses ne remplissent pas tout l’espace
compris entre deux lignes ; elles ne sont pas disposées dans les intervalles
dessinés par les axes. Au contraire, d’extension souvent limitée, elles sont
en général articulées par une ou plusieurs lignes qui passent plus ou moins
en leur centre. Il n’y a pas de continuum de ces surfaces sur l’ensemble du
territoire : si elles se jouxtent parfois, elles peuvent aussi être séparées par
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des vides, eux-mêmes éventuellement traversés par une ligne, axe de
circulation le long duquel on ne s’arrête normalement pas.
À l’issue de cette enquête sur la perception inuinnait du territoire ce
dernier se révèle fait de vides et de pleins. Les vides sont des parties qui ne
sont pas parcourues et qui sont comme en dehors du territoire, même si
certains se trouvent au centre de celui-ci. Ils n’entrent pas vraiment dans la
perception de l’espace et sont plutôt ignorés. Lorsqu’ils forment un môle au
milieu de l’espace pratiqué, ils sont autant de ruptures dans la continuité de
l’espace humanisé. Les pleins sont le vrai territoire. Celui-ci se fonde sur
des points qui sont mis en relation par des lignes, qui organisent un réseau de
circulation. L’absence de trace au sol de ces axes n’a pas d’incidence sur
leur perception et leur efficacité en tant qu’articulations du territoire : ils
existent dans les cartes mentales des Inuinnait et dans leurs discours.
Autour de ces axes se dessinent des surfaces (prairies, vallées, grands
lacs… ) qui ne valent que par le gibier qu’elles portent.
La part de la mémoire : de l’espace parcours à l’espace historique
Les Eskimo, comme nous-mêmes, éprouvent ce sentiment
indéfinissable d’être chez soi dans la région qu’ils connaissent
depuis leur enfance. Certains des indigènes qui passèrent l’été
dans la partie Sud-Ouest de l’île Victoria avaient vécu pendant les
deux ou trois dernières années dans le golfe du Couronnement.
Voyageant avec eux, je fus profondément touché par la joie avec
laquelle ils reconnaissaient chaque lac important et chaque colline
proéminente, et par la façon dont ils se remémoraient les souvenirs
des jours anciens avec lesquels ces points de repères étaient
associés. L’un de leur parent était décédé dans cette région et ils
pleurèrent lorsqu’ils passèrent près de sa tombe. Et quelques-uns,
après que la pêche fut terminée, retournèrent sur les lieux où ils
passèrent la nuit à le pleurer. (Jenness, 1922 : 32-33, traduction
libre)
La perception de l’espace a jusqu’ici été analysée sur un plan
« horizontal », qui rend compte d’un espace parcouru. Pourtant, il faut aussi
considérer le plan « vertical », celui de l’enracinement dans le territoire. La
perception se nourrit ici de la tradition orale qui, en tant que mémoire du
groupe, ancre points, lignes et surfaces dans une histoire.
Sur ce plan vertical, le territoire n’est plus appréhendé globalement mais
localement, par les éléments qui composent chaque paysage. Ce sont donc
les points qui sont ici privilégiés. Sous l’effet des récits leur perception se
modifie : ce ne sont plus des falaises et des lacs qui sont vus, mais la falaise
où tel parent se cassa la clavicule, le lac où tel autre perdit son couteau, le
cadavre d’Uvayuq, si évident que l’on peut encore compter les côtes du
malheureux (Jenness, 1924 : récit 69). D’un désert où seule la topographie
peut donner des points de repères on passe, grâce à la mémoire, à un milieu
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humanisé, à un memoryscape comme l’appelle l’anthropologue Mark
Nuttall (1992 : 51). Le territoire est un monde plein, non point tant
d’hommes vivants – qui restent peu nombreux – mais de leurs ancêtres, de
leurs aventures et mésaventures, de leurs ossements et de leurs esprits. Il
faut encore y ajouter la faune, la mémoire des premiers Inuit et des monstres
de ce temps-là, leurs esprits et ceux de certains animaux, les esprits
surnaturels enfin. Autant d’habitants de la toundra et de l’océan dont la
présence est rappelée par la tradition orale et qui se manifestent – sous la
forme d’esprits – à qui sait les percevoir.
À cause de cette seconde dimension, il n’y a pas, il ne peut pas y avoir, de
désert rebelle à toute humanisation. Il y a en revanche un milieu physique
certes difficile mais propice au développement d’une société humaine
épanouie, en harmonie avec les écosystèmes grâce à une expérience
marquée par la complicité avec les éléments naturels. S’il les subit parfois,
« l’homme par excellence » les utilise aussi, conjuguant son intelligence à
leur force. Rien ne lui est plus étranger que l’image de l’Eskimo bravant
chaque jour un milieu hostile pour assurer tout juste sa survie.
Pour comprendre la part qui revient à l’appréhension verticale dans la
perception de l’espace, il faut voyager avec des Inuinnait. La lecture des
cartes permet de la deviner, mais c’est sur le terrain, en situation, que l’on
comprend que les lieux se transforment au fur et à mesure que les récits qui
les concernent sont déployés. Si cela est surtout évident lors des
déplacements en traîneau ou en bateau, survoler l’Arctique en avion permet
de faire les mêmes observations : chacun se penche par le hublot pour
repérer un ancien camp, un itinéraire, ou encore une moto-neige ou un ours
polaire. Il ne viendrait à personne l’idée saugrenue que l’on contemple là la
« désolation » des étendues glacées, tant ce substantif est dénué de tout sens
lorsqu’il s’agit du territoire. Les Inuit le réservent aux descriptions de nos
grandes villes, qui leur paraissent infiniment plus hostiles et désolés que la
toundra et la banquise.
S’il faut voyager avec eux, il faut aussi écouter les Inuinnait lorsqu’ils se
laissent aller à leurs souvenirs, lorsqu’ils entreprennent de raconter leur vie,
ou leurs rêves. On saisit alors que c’est d’abord sur ces expériences – réelles
ou rêvées – que s’est construite leur perception du territoire comme un
milieu humanisé, débordant de vies sous toutes les formes (animaux,
hommes, esprits). Si les Inuinnait discutent peu ils racontent beaucoup, et
leurs narrations sont toujours situées dans des lieux concrets, qu’il s’agisse
de rapporter des actions ou des rêves. C’est ainsi que l’espace-parcours
devient territoire historique.
La tradition orale est bien l’artisan principal de la construction du
territoire et de l’affiliation des Inuinnait à ce dernier. Le plan horizontal de la
perception est un schéma mental que les Inuinnait transposent, lorsqu’ils se
déplacent, à tous les nouveaux espaces qu’ils découvrent. En revanche, le
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plan vertical de la perception n’est pas directement transposable. Il
nécessite du temps, pour historiciser l’espace et le rendre familier.
Notes
*
Extrait tiré de Les Inuit, ce qu’ils savent du territoire. Béatrice Collignon. 1996.
Paris : L’Harmattan, coll. Géographie et Cultures.
Une version anglaise, revue et corrigée, est parue au printemps 2006 : Knowing
Places: The Inuinnait, Landscapes and the Environment. Edmonton: University
of Alberta, CCI Press, Circumpolar Research Series n°10.
1. Dans le contexte territorial d’une culture nomade, l’échelle locale s’applique à
une surface beaucoup plus étendue que dans notre monde de sédentaires. Le local
désigne l’ensemble du territoire régulièrement fréquenté d’une année à l’autre.
Cela souligne l’inadéquation de nos mesures, établies dans un contexte européen
et sédentaire. Pourtant, j’en conserve la formulation car les notions de « général »,
« régional » et « local » font sens aussi pour les Inuinnait, mais avec des ordres de
grandeur différents des nôtres.
2. Ces trois animaux bénéficient d’un statut particulier. Le chien est très proche des
hommes, comme eux, il peut avoir un nom (atiq); l’ours est l’animal par
excellence, le plus fort, le plus rusé, celui dont la viande est la plus énergétique et
la fourrure la plus chaude; le caribou est avec le phoque le gibier le plus courant
et, surtout, il enveloppe et protège l’homme par sa fourrure.
3. Métayer, (1973 : récits 41 et 98, l’homosexualité y est toujours féminine). Le
thème central du premier récit n’est autre que l’origine des relations sexuelles
« normales » : l’arrivée d’un homme dans le camp de trois femmes (« un »
chasseur et deux couturières) met fin à ces pratiques déviantes, qui résultent une
nouvelle fois d’une mauvaise appréciation de la juste distance.
4. D. Jenness (1924 : récit 69), K. Rasmussen (1932 : 256) et notes personnelles de
terrain, Cambridge Bay, 1992.
5. D. Jenness (1924 : récits 68a, b), M. Métayer (1973 : récits 5 et 41) et notes
personnelles de terrain, Kugluktuk, 1991. K. Rasmussen (1932 : 209), qui
recueillit la tradition orale des kiluhikturmiut, publie un récit dans lequel les
circonstances de l’origine des nuages sont exactement les mêmes, mais où le
mythe n’est pas associé à l’apparition de Qurluqtuup kuugaa, sans aucun doute
parce que cette rivière est trop éloignée du territoire de leur territoire, beaucoup
plus oriental.
6. Les Inuinnait d’aujourd’hui ignorent le sens de ce toponyme. Apparemment, ils
l’avaient déjà oublié du temps de M. Métayer, qui n’en propose pas de traduction.
7. D. Jenness (1924 : récit 81), M. Métayer (1973 : récit 90) et notes personnelles,
Ulukhaktok et Kugluktuk, 1991-1992. À Ulukhaktok , Sam Oliktoak me décrivit
même avec beaucoup de précision les deux empreintes du géant imprimées sur
une rive de Nuahungniq, où il avait passé une partie de son enfance.
8. Les Inuinnait campaient souvent sur ces îles au printemps, car les chenaux d’eau
libre s’y forment plus vite et y sont plus nombreux qu’ailleurs et, en cette saison,
les phoques suivent ces chenaux et se hissent sur leurs bords pour prendre des
bains de soleil sur la banquise.
9. Les Inuinnait n’avaient pas de kayaks de mer et ne pouvaient donc vivre de la
chasse au phoque en été.
10. M. Métayer (1973 : récit 34). La paresse est l’un des plus graves défauts que
puisse avoir un Inuk. « On nous disait de ne pas être paresseux » est l’une des
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phrases qui revient le plus souvent lorsque l’on demande aux aînés d’aujourd’hui
de raconter leur jeunesse.
11. Les relations entre Inuit et Indiens sont cependant plus complexes qu’on ne les
présente souvent. Si le sentiment d’hostilité était de règle des deux côtés, dans la
pratique les contacts étaient en général pacifiques, fondés sur l’échange ou
l’ignorance prudente de l’autre. Les épisodes violents étaient plutôt rares et s’ils
ont marqué la tradition orale c’est qu’ils ont frappé les esprits par leur caractère
exceptionnel (voir Arctic Anthropology 1979, 16-2).
12. Parmi tous ces récits, celui du « massacre des chutes du sang » (Bloody falls, qui
doivent justement leur nom anglais à cet épisode) est le plus tragique.
L’explorateur S. Hearne rapporte cet événement dans son récit de voyage (1780).
Sa version des faits est très proche de celle relatée à M. Métayer deux cents ans
plus tard par un Inuinnaq. Plusieurs études des récits de ce massacre ont été
publiées, notamment par I. MacLaren (1991) et R. McGraph (1993).
Références bibliographiques citées
Blaisel, X. & Arnakak, J. 1993. « Trajet rituel: du harponnage à la naissance dans le
mythe d’Arnaqtaaqtuq”. Études/Inuit/Studies. 17(1): 15-46.
Collignon, B. 2001. « Dynamique des lieux et mutations culturelles : les espaces
domestiques en Arctique inuit ». Annales de Géographie – « Espaces
Domestiques ». 110 (620): 383-404.
Hearne, S. 1780. A Journey from Prince of Wales’ Fort in Hudson’s Bay to the Northern
Ocean in the Years 1769, 1770, 1771 and 1772. Toronto: The Champlain Society
[ré-édition : 1911].
Jenness, D. 1922. The life of the Copper Eskimo – Report of the Canadian Arctic
Expedition 1913-1918 – Southern Party 1913-1916. Ottawa: F. A. Acland, vol.
XII-A.
Jenness, D. 1924. Eskimo Folk-lore – Myths and Traditions from Northern Alaska, the
Mackenzie Delta and Coronation Gulf, Report of the Canadian Arctic Expedition
- 1913-18, Southern Party – 1913-16. Ottawa: F. A. Acland, vol. XIII-A.
Le Mouël, J.-F. 1978. « Ceux des Mouettes » – Les Eskimo Naujâmiut, Groenland
Ouest. Paris : Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Mémoires de l’Institut
d’Ethnologie series, XVI.
MacLaren, I.S. 1991. « Samuel Hearne’s accounts of the massacre at Bloody Fall ».
Ariel: A Review of International English Litterature. 22(1): 25-51.
McGraph, R. 1993. « Samuel Hearne and Inuit Oral Tradition ». Studies in Canadian
Literature / Études en littérature canadienne. 18( 2): 94-109.
Métayer, M. 1973. Unipkat – Tradition Esquimaude de Coppermine - Territoires du
Nord-Ouest – Canada. Québec : Université Laval, Centre d’Études Nordiques,
Nordicana series, 40, 3 vol.
Nuttall, M. 1992. Arctic Homeland: Kinship, Community and Development in
Northwest Greenland. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Oosten, J. 1983. « The Incest of Sun and Moon: An examination of the symbolism of
time and space in two Iglukik myths ». Études/Inuit/Studies. 7(1): 143-151.
Rasmussen, K. 1929. Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos – Report of the Fifth
Thule Expedition, 1921-1924, vol VII - 1. Copenhagen : Gyldendalske
Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag.
Rasmussen, K. 1931. The Netsilik Eskimo – Social Life and Spiritual Culture – Report
of the Fifth Thule Expedition, vol. XIII n°1-2. Copenhagen : Gyldendalske
Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag.
Rasmussen, K. 1932. Intellectual Culture of the Copper Eskimos – Report of the Fifth
Thule Expedition 1921-1924, Vol. IX. Copenhagen : Gyldendalske Boghandel,
Nordisk Forlag.
176
Rundstrom, R.A. 1987. Maps, Man and Land in the Cultural Cartography of the
Eskimo (Inuit). Kansas City : University of Kansas, Ph. D. dissertation,
unpublished manuscript.
177
Valerie Alia
Un/Covering the North 1
Abstract
Canada has long been the world leader in both northern and Aboriginal
communications. Although many of the developments in northern
communications have been small-scale and ad hoc, others—such as the
satellite-delivered Television Northern Canada (TVNC) and its nationwide
successor, Aboriginal People’s Television Network (APTN) are ambitious,
far-reaching, and globally influential. This is the first comprehensive study of
northern and Indigenous media. It places Inuit and First Nations media in the
Canadian North in the context of the evolution of Canadian, North American,
and international Aboriginal communications and of northern communications in general.
Résumé
Le Canada est depuis longtemps le chef de file mondial en matière de
communications des Autochtones et dans le Nord. Même si bon nombre des
progrès réalisés dans le domaine des communications dans le Nord ont été à
petite échelle et ponctuels, d’autres—comme le réseau par satellite Television
Northern Canada (TVNC) et son successeur à l’échelle nationale, le Réseau
de télévision des Peuples autochtones (APTN), sont ambitieux, ont une
grande portée et exercent une influence à l’échelle mondiale. Il s’agit de la
première étude exhaustive sur les médias autochtones et du Nord. Elle
replace les médias des Inuits et des Premières nations dans le Nord canadien
dans le contexte de l’évolution des communications autochtones canadiennes,
nord-américaines et internationales et des communications dans le Nord en
général.
The phone lines are down to the Yukon’s most
remote community. The people of Old Crow
won’t have any way of letting the Chief
Returning Officer know who won in their
riding, short of renting a plane and flying the
results in. Those results could be crucial (Ford
1985).
CBC Radio, Whitehorse (Alia 1991f)
33-34, 2006
The results were indeed crucial, and they arrived in a most unusual way. A
ham radio operator picked up the information from a message radioed from
an airplane flying over Old Crow and relayed the information to
Whitehorse (Alia 1991f). That convoluted, but effective, mode of
transporting information may seem unnecessary and peculiar to someone
from Outside. In the North, such occurrences are part of daily life. When it
comes to sending or receiving news, northerners are used to improvising.
In the North, people know they need each other. Communication and
transportation are inseparable; interdependence is not a theory, it is a daily
reality. In northern winter, a breakdown in transportation can be a matter of
life or death. A northerner doesn’t think twice about whether to stop and
help a traveller in trouble. Breakdowns in transportation are not the only
crises. Acommunications breakdown can also mean life or death in a land in
which radio or telephone lines link people with survival, as well as with
each other.
I often call the North a huge small town. Despite the enormous distances,
people know each other. Whenever I land at the airport in Iqaluit,
Whitehorse or Yellowknife, I run into several people I know, and I’m not
even a full-time northern resident. I’m from Outside. In most years, I spend
several months each year “up here,” usually in winter, which keeps me from
being classified as a fair-weather tourist. Like a small town, the North
features friendliness and hostility in nearly equal parts, reflecting that
“family” quality so often seen in small communities, which includes both
sibling rivalry and unconditional love.
I continue to be amazed at the speed with which northern news travels
through the North—and the slowness with which it reaches (non-northern)
people in the South. On a six-seater Piper Navajo headed from Whitehorse
to Juneau, I ran into an acquaintance from Pangnirtung. If you take a look at
Map A, you will see how distant those places are from each other. In a few
minutes, flying between the Yukon and Alaska, I was able to catch up on a
couple of years of gossip from the Baffin region thousands of miles away.
Although the growth of air travel and computers has contributed greatly to
the development of the information network, I suspect that the North’s
small-town-ness has as much to do with widely shared conditions and a
mythos of northernness. Canadian northerners live in communities of fifty
to three thousand or in cities such as Yellowknife or Whitehorse (at 23,474,
the major northern metropolis), still tiny by southern standards. In this
setting communications, politics and policymaking are at once personal,
casual, small-scale and uniquely global—because of the very nature of
circumpolarity.
In this book, “North” refers to those regions which are designated
“Middle North,” “Far North” and “Extreme North” on the map which
follows, which is based on Hamelin’s cartographic visualization of
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Un/Covering the North
Map A. The Circumpolar North
Source: Map adapted from Dorit Olsen, Statistics Greenland, P.S. Box 1025, DK-3900
Nuuk, Greenland. Homepage: www.statgreen.gl. E-mail: [email protected].
Used with permission.
Canadian “nordicity.” The three regions include portions of the provinces
and all of the Yukon and Northwest Territories. As of April 1999 the
Canadian North includes a third territory, Nunavut.
Information about how long First Nations peoples have lived in the North
varies. Figures range from 7,000 to more than 35,000 years (Alia
1991f:107) and some recent research suggests an even wider range. Before
outsiders intervened, community members were related by language, clan
and family; there were no elected chiefs, councils or administrative centres.
Decision-making was consensus-based—a political foundation still
important to northern governments today. First Nations people emphasize
that their governments long preceded any idea of Canada or the United
States.
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Map B. Nordicity Zones
Source: Ontario Royal Commission on the Northern Environment (Alia 1991f:107).
Communications, Transportation and Climate
Foul weather isolates Yukon. Snow storms …
and ice fog have disrupted … flights for nearly
two weeks.
(Buckley 1991:3)
In many places, weather is a subject for small talk. In the North, it is the stuff
of hard news and serious concern. Virtually everyone interviewed said
northern weather and travel conditions are inadequately addressed in
government policy. Again, we see the effects of a multi-layered
colonialism. While everyone experiences the same conditions, Aboriginal
people have fewer resources with which to do their work under these
conditions.
Communication and transportation are inseparable in the North. Many
northerners view government funding initiatives as drop-in-the-bucket
remedies for ocean-sized problems. It is difficult to imagine having to
charter a helicopter or airplane merely to exercise the privilege of voting, or
running for office. It is with good reason that northerners in Yukon,
Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Alaska refer to anywhere else as
“Outside.”
182
I spent the winter of 1991 in the Yukon. January 1991 began with
record-breaking cold. There were days of minus 40s and 50s when
Whitehorse was socked in by ice fog so thick it was hard to see across a
well-lit street. Taxis and trucks gave out. Airplanes were grounded for days.
People were stranded in town or out. The mail went nowhere. In an
unguarded moment, I slipped into Outside mentality. Thinking only of
research deadlines in Ottawa, I dashed across town (48 below, zero
visibility) to the post office to use Priority Post. I was not the only creature of
habit. In the bookstore-office supply store-post office, others were queued
up. I suddenly realized how silly we looked clutching our precious
packages (Alia 1991f:113). It was several days before the mail went out.
There is a mini-van “mail bus” from Whitehorse to Atlin, British
Columbia, just over the Yukon border. I was told of a couple of dogsled mail
runs between small communities. There are no vans or dogsleds to take mail
from Whitehorse to Ottawa. A Yukon journalist said that everything
changes in winter. In many parts of the North (including the northern
Yukon) there is 24-hour darkness, or only a brief period of light. Almost
everywhere there is wind, and extreme cold. “If it’s minus 45 or 50 you
don’t drive at all. If you get stuck somewhere, you die (Alia 1991f:113-14).”
Familiarity with conditions in Nunavut, where the only access to
communities is slow travel by snowmobile, dogsled or all-terrain vehicle,
or (usually faster) travel by air, led me to wrongly assume that (Yukon)
roads meant greater access. Until I wintered in the Yukon, I was unaware
that road access and the absence of roads meant little in winter. I had no
understanding of what happens to a vehicle at minus 45 degrees until I spent
part of New Year’s Eve in a deceased Whitehorse taxi. In the city,
breakdowns and delays are a nuisance. In remote locations, they are deadly.
Aboriginal Broadcasting in International Context
The first Aboriginal broadcasts in North America were heard on Alaskan
radio in the 1930s, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) did
not get involved until the late 1950s. Despite Alaska’s nearly thirty-year
head start, the United States has moved all too slowly to support Aboriginal
media. Once Aboriginal people began to broadcast in Canada, things
progressed rapidly and indigenous media—particularly the oral-culturefriendly medium of radio—were soon spread across the land. Canada
remains the world leader in Aboriginal broadcasting worldwide. It now has
several hundred local Aboriginal radio stations, 11 regional radio networks,
“the beginnings of a national Aboriginal radio network, six television
production outlets” and TVNC (MacQuarrie 1992 in RCAP 1997).
Considering its far greater population and far-ranging collection of
diverse indigenous communities, the United States figures are particulary
disappointing—according to Gordon Regguinti of the Native American
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Journalists’ Association, there are “about 30 Native American radio
stations nationwide—”22-24 in the lower states" and a handful in Alaska
(Gordon Regguinti 1998). The Native Media Resource Center figures
concur. The Center lists 21 stations in the “lower 48 states” and ten in
Alaska. The Alaska stations are run by Yupik, Aleut, Inupiat, Athabaskan,
and “urban Alaska Natives” in Anchorage (Native Media Resource Center
1998; Native Media Resource Center 1996). A fairly recent development is
a 24-hour a day distribution service via AIROS, the American Indian Radio
on Satellite network distribution system which sends programming over
the Internet and public radio to tribal communities throughout the United
States (AIROS 1998). One of the stations which send programming
through AIROS is a native American music program, “Different Drums,”
which originates at KBBI in Homer, Alaska.
There is a scattering of stations which provide Sami programming in
Finland, Norway and Sweden, and Sami Radio has its own channel, based
in Finland. It broadcasts in three Sami languages—North Sami, Inari Sami
and Skolt Sami, and works closely with Sami Radio in Sweden and Norway.
The goal is to have a joint digital channel of multiple services by 2000 (Sami
Radio 1998).
New Zealand has 21 Maori radio stations linked by Ruia Mai—the
national Maori radio service; founded in 1990, the service began
broadcasting in stereo in 1996. The Maori and the New Zealand
government are currently discussing ways to improve the promotion of
Maori language through broadcasting (Maori Radio Network 1996; Office
of the Minister of Maori Affairs and Office of the Minister of
Communications 1998).
Not until late 1985 did the first exclusively Aboriginal station in
Australia begin broadcasting at Alice Springs. Australia’s Northern
Territory is akin to Canada’s North—vast spaces, small communities,
several languages. As of 1998 there are three exclusively indigenous radio
stations at Alice Springs, Brisbane and Townsville, and one indigenous
community television station at Alice Springs. The National Indigenous
Media Association of Australia (NIMAA) has a membership of 136
community broadcasting groups, suggesting a growing commitment to
indigenous broadcasting (Brisbane Indigenous Media Association 1998).
Despite frequent and extensive funding cuts to Aboriginal
communications, Canada still has the lead. One reason the media survive is
that there is an extensive network of volunteers who either supplement paid
staff or run the media by themselves. For example, in Fort McPherson,
NWT the community radio station is run by a group of volunteers guided by
a volunteer committee. Founded in 1983, it is linked to the Native
Communications Society of the Western Arctic. Its annual budget of
approximately $6,000 is raised through bingo games, with a regular
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Monday evening radio bingo helping to fill the pot. In addition to regularly
scheduled programming,
There are other times the station is on the air for other organizations
and just to provide music and messages to those people who are out
on the land.
The station broadcasts in Gwich’in and English (Svendsen 1991). In
Tuktoyaktuk, NWT the radio station was founded in 1970 and is also run
entirely by volunteers. They are supervised by elected officers of the
Tuk-Tuk Communications society and broadcast in English and
Inuvialuktun (Testart 1991).
Marginalization: Communications and the Hierarchies of Power
There is a frustrating contradiction in northern communications: At the
same time that northern leaders and community members have benefited
from extensive access to technological breakthroughs in mass media, those
outside the North appear to have received little benefit from the same
technologies. Jim Butler, editor of the Whitehorse Star, has often lamented
the lack of coverage of northern issues and perspectives in the southern
media.
The southern media’s coverage … [is] largely limited to occasions
when northern politicians thrust themselves into major southern
spotlights habitually patrolled by the media. These ranged from
the Supreme Court of Canada to [Yukon Premier Tony] Penikett’s
memorable blast of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney on live
television at the first minister’s conference of the fall of 1987 …
(Butler 1990:17).
Tony Penikett’s New Democratic Party (NDP) government was elected
in the Yukon in May 1985. Yet Butler said “it took the 1988 death of the NDP
government in Manitoba for the Globe and Mail to stop calling Howard
[Pawley’s] crew ‘Canada’s only NDP government’.” (Butler 1990:17)
Butler said the Whitehorse Star is the only Yukon paper which files stories
with Canadian Press (CP), which ended its brief experiment with a
Yellowknife bureau in the 1980s. For a time, the Globe and Mail ran a
Yukon column on its “Nation” page every second Saturday, but the column
was canceled in 1985, “along with columns from other remote areas of
Canada, as a cost-cutting measure.” (Butler 1990:17)
Coverage of northern issues remains so scarce, and so poor, that the ease
of information access seems to have had no impact at all. This underscores
an urgent problem which I think has more to do with power than with
technology. As Elizabeth Janeway explained, “the powerful still retain the
power to define what is happening, even when they too are confused and
disoriented because their own interpretations of events are based on archaic
social myth …” (Janeway 1980:251)
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While the process of social mythologizing is discussed at length below,
we should consider here, one of Janeway’s additional concerns: “Beyond
the damage that methods of using power as prescribed by the powerful do to
the weak is the harm that they do to the powerful.” (Janeway 1980:251)
There is no such thing as a one-way process. It is inadequate and distorting
to attribute patterns of northern communication to the existence of
dominant and subordinate social groups. Such differences in power are
relevant, but are not sufficient to describe or explain all that has happened.
And as Janeway points out, the damage affects everyone.
In terms of northern communications, I am convinced that although
“access” is often constructed as meaning simply the availability of
technology, it is really about hierarchies of power. Northerners are
informationally disadvantaged. Knowing this, they make extensive use of
communication technologies to improve their access to what is happening
at the country’s core—“core” being a political construction which
identifies patterns of power reaching outward from Ottawa and the centres
of provincial government. Yukoner Adam Killick points out one of the
many absurdities in this situation, in an amusing opinion column. In 1995,
YukonNet joined the information universe. While Yukoners could now
access the World Wide Web, the twice-weekly Yukon News could be found
on-line before it hit the local newsstands.
I find it ironic that even though I live in a small community in a
remote corner of the planet, somebody in New Zealand can read
my local newspaper on the World Wide Web before I can get it
from across the street. For information to flow like this in major
urban centres may be commonplace; but here in Whitehorse,
where people still talk to each other on the street … the delivery of
our community broadsheet via cyberspace seems absolutely
Orwellian …
Perhaps the most salient benefit from the Internet’s arrival here is
not that we can access [the Web] but that the Web can access us
(Killick 1996).
It is a truism that Canadians know more about the United States than
Americans know about Canada. Steeped in the superpower mythos, U.S.
citizens seldom consider it urgent to know much about Canada unless they
see a direct impact on U.S. defence, trade, economic or military policy,
tourism or politics. Canadians, on the other hand, make it their business to
stay abreast of developments in the United States. In a similar way, northern
Canadians are marginalized with respect to the Canadian core (and as
Killick points out, much of the rest of the world). Sheer physical distance
and conditions of climate and terrain compound the psychological distance
between North and South, and the distance between southern economies
and the economic realities northerners face.
186
Northern Political Life
By the early 1960s there were two northern geopolitical units, the Yukon
Territory and the Northwest Territories, each represented in the federal
Parliament in Ottawa and each having its own Council-run government.
Through a process called devolution, their administration was gradually
transferred from the federal government to the territorial governments. In
1967, the Northwest Territories Council moved from Ottawa to
Yellowknife, and the federal government (which at that point retained
control of territorial infrastructures) appointed an Inuk and a Dene
councillor. The appointments signalled the official start of formal
participation by Aboriginal people not only in their own communities, but
in the Canadian-run regional government and administration. The
appointed council would later be replaced by an elected council, giving
northerners still more control over their own political lives. Apart from
changing patterns of governance and administration, the territories
themselves underwent a number of geographical changes. The following
map shows the evolution of the boundaries of the Northwest Territories,
which as of 1999, include the new territory of Nunavut.
In northern Aboriginal communities, communications and politics have
an intimate and interesting history. They are linked, not just in the usual
ways (for example, the coverage of politicians and issues by news media).
In a sense, the media have been training grounds for Aboriginal politicians
and other leaders. I have always been struck by the fact that many, perhaps
most northern leaders have at one time or another worked as journalists. I
think this goes beyond the usual border-crossing seen in many professions,
but it does bear some relationship to the broader context in which
Euro-American journalism evolved.
In the early years of newspaper history—from the 1600s until the early
twentieth century—this was the way newspapers in North America usually
worked. There was a time when newspaper owners and politicians were
often the same people and no one batted an eye. Although official attitudes
and principles have changed, journalism careers are seldom as pure as some
would have us believe. Before and after (and, less often, during) their
journalistic lives, they are employed as speech writers, political advisors
and sometimes even politicians. Former politicians become journalists or
owners of media organizations. Apart from this general pattern, it is also the
case that a number of Aboriginal leaders in southern regions have
backgrounds in journalism. However, I do not think this occurs on the same
scale as in the North; more often, southern leaders have legal rather than
journalistic training.
Among the prominent northern journalist-leaders are Rosemarie
Kuptana, President of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and Inuit Tapirisat
of Canada (ITC); Mary Simon, the former ICC President who in 1994 was
187
appointed Canada’s first Ambassador for Circumpolar Affairs; Jose
Kusugak, a Nunavut Implementation Commission (NIC) Commissioner
and President of Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated (NTI); and Peter Ernerk,
a former legislator and current NIC Commissioner. Among other things, all
of them have worked for CBC.
This is not merely a coincidence. Leadership requires communication
skills and the job of getting elected and staying in office requires an learning
to manipulate mass media and public opinion. I suspect that the increased
proportion of communications experience to leadership is related to the
relative disadvantage northerners experience in gaining access to the
machinery of politics and public policy. Communications, especially
broadcasting, provides access to news and information on a national and
global scale. It provides access to crucial networks of policy and power.
Access to communication diminishes geographical and intellectual
remoteness. Because of its very remoteness, the North has often been ahead
of the rest of the country in developing and exploring new communication
technologies—a fact which is seldom communicated to Outsiders. On my
first trip North in 1984, I was surprised to find that people in small Baffin
communities were far more skilled at using long-distance computer
linkages than the people I knew in Toronto (myself included). Adult
education and other programs often relied on community-to-community
computer hookups. In retrospect, I wonder why I was surprised.
The following chapters explore the history, development, and current
state of Aboriginal media in the North. Chapter Two looks at portrayals of
northern people, issues and land by people from inside and Outside the
North. Chapter Three examines the relationship between communications
and language, literacy, politics and education. Chapter Four is a historical
survey of northern communications in Canada. Chapter Five looks at the
impact of technology on “the circumpolar village,” the development of
television and Internet resources and the directions in which northern
communications are headed. Chapters Six and Seven are case studies — of
communications in the Yukon, and of newspaper coverage of northern
people and issues.
The Yukon case study was undertaken for several reasons. I wanted an
opportunity to observe one region at close hand, over time. As Yukoners are
often heard to say, the Yukon is almost always given short shrift (and is
sometimes omitted entirely) in studies which purport to “cover the North.”
It is doubly marginalized, as a northern region and as a northern region
which is not considered a significant part of “the North,” perhaps because of
its small population and its location to the west of everywhere else, at the
Alaska and BC borders. It has produced a disproportionate number of
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal leaders and leading programs in politics,
journalism, film, literature and the arts. It has developed a government with
188
close ties to Aboriginal communities and to Ottawa. Unlike the NWT and
Nunavut, the Yukon territorial government looks strikingly like those of the
provinces. The Council for Yukon First Nations has been a leader in
coalition-building between First Nations and Metis people. Northern
Native Broadcasting, Yukon has produced some of the most creative and
influential programming in the North, and its leaders (e.g., Ken Kane and
George Henry) have been at the centre of the development of the
ground-breaking coalition, Television Northern Canada (TVNC). The
other reason was my ignorance of the Yukon and desire to learn. Chapter
Eight is a brief excursion into speculation about what this all means, and
where northern communications might be going.
***
Old Patterns Future Directions (Chapter 7)
We have seen that the northern communications picture is full of
contradictions, that northerners are both privileged and disadvantaged in
terms of media coverage and media access. Although at one time or another,
all of the northern territories and provinces experience similar problems in
negotiating time, travel, climate, topography, budgets and other conditions,
there are significant differences in the ways in which the various peoples
and regions address those problems.
The best way to see where northern communications are headed is to
rewind and then fast-forward—to first review where we have been. Much
has changed, but many of yesterday’s themes return—in neo-colonial
portrayals and in policies and programs which begin as reactions to old
themes and attempts to change colonialist patterns. Slowly, northern
communications is pushing past this reactive state, and proactive programs
are taking over. Today’s generation of media producers remembers less the
representations of old films than the emergence of aboriginal broadcasting
and exhilaration of knowing what technology can do when it is consciously
used to promote cultural survival.
In the changing political picture—especially the emergence of Nunavut
Territory—northerners are becoming national and global newsmakers in
their own right, instead of colonized peoples who are primarily represented
to the “Outside” world by others. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC)
—the international organization of Inuit—has had considerable influence
on the various circumpolar governments. While the governments still
marginalize Inuit, the reality is that Inuit pushed governments to pursue
cooperative interests and develop or expand Arctic policies. The 1998 ICC
General Assembly held in Nuuk, Greenland marked yet another milestone
in the organization’s history. The delegates committed themselves to
strengthening programs and policies in areas crucial to the future of Arctic
journalism, communications, culture and education.
189
Carl Christian Olsen, who headed the Greenland delegation, has been
involved in Greenlandic and international indigenous cultural policy,
education and politics for many years. He helped to found Ilisimatusarfik
—the University of Greenland, where he is a professor and is currently
researching international language policy and laying the foundation for a
Greenland Language Secretariat under the Greenland Home Rule
Government. In August 1998, he sent me an E-mail outlining the latest
developments in ICC.
We just finalized our ICC General Assembly here in Nuuk, where I
was Chairman of [the] Greenland delegation. We are all very
satisfied with the results. We will establish [an] ICC Commission
on Language and Communications and [an] Inuit Press Agency …
We will also investigate indigenous participation [in the
development of] the proposed University of the Arctic under the
Arctic Council (Olsen 1998).
The more vocal northerners become, the stronger will be the challenge to
conventional colonial thinking. I think the coming decades will see an
increase in the visibility (and audibility) of northerners. Let us consider how
far things have come since 1943, when an optimistic headline in the April 3
Financial Post heralded the joyous consequences of World War II: “War
Unlocks Our Last Frontier—Canada’s Northern Opportunity (Grant
1988:121),” and the produced the movie, “Look to the North,” narrated by
the warm, authoritative voice of Lorne Greene. The film “minimized the
dominant American presence, highlighted the ‘joint co-operation’ aspect,
and particularly stressed the opportunities provided for the postwar
development (Grant 1988:149).”
More than twenty years later, in April 1969, the New York Times sent a
reporter to join an 18-stop, two-week (public relations junket?) tour of the
eastern Arctic. In Igloolik the reporter heard Inuit at a “town meeting”
express concern “that they are losing their own culture.” Like many others
before and since, the reporter depicted the Inuit as “caught between two
cultures” which he defined as “his (sic) own leisurely one of hunting,
socializing and living by the season and the white man’s structured style of
schools, jobs and living by the clock (Walz 1969).”
Only a person out of touch with what it takes to hunt in the Arctic would
call the hunter’s life “leisurely!” Perhaps the reporter thought Inuit hunters
worked for recreation, rather than for their family’s food. Also that year, the
New York Times headline, “Canada Promotes Nationalism in the Arctic,”
topped a story by the same reporter, about Governor General Roland
Michener’s trip to Chesterfield Inlet. The reporter’s observations make it
clear that the Inuit weren’t as keen about the trip as the government was.
When he ventured higher into the Arctic Circle … the Governor
General found evidence of Eskimos who think of themselves as
190
Eskimos and not Canadians … Before an elementary class in
Resolute Bay … Mr. Michener got not one word of response when
he asked the children ‘Do you know who I am?’ …
[The Governor General’s visit] coincided with a special effort by
[Prime Minister Pierre Elliott] Trudeau to secure Canadian
sovereignty in the north (Walz 1969:14).
A year later, the reporter again went North to cover the royal tour.
Queen Elizabeth of Canada travelled 5,000 miles across the Arctic
this week impressing on Canadians that their big, rich northland is
their inheritance to develop and protect.
The trip, while following the familiar routine of a royal tour, was in
fact a demonstration of Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic (Walz
1970:8).
In a radio message broadcast from Yellowknife, Her Majesty said, “It is
most important to bear in mind that thoughtless meddling and
ill-considered exploitation is just as bad as wanton destruction (Walz:8).”
The week-long royal tour cost the Canadian Government $750,000. A year
later, in 1971, Northwest Territories Commissioner Stuart Hodgson was
awarded the Medal of Service of the Order of Canada, for “the part he had
played in moving the Territorial Government from Ottawa to the new
capital of Yellowknife in 1967,” and for his work in the intervening years,
helping to establish “an effective public service in the North to serve the
people (Ernerk February 1971:4)”.
A New York Times article written in 1970 was almost as patronizing (not
to mention mistaken) as the 1946 photo caption mentioned earlier,
describing the “happy, childlike” Eskimo. Neglecting the lessons of the
70s, it followed established noble-savage tradition in praising the “natural”
attributes of Inuit, and heralding “progress.”
Dishonesty is almost foreign to the Eskimo’s nature … Since the
Canadian Government made the Eskimo a ward of the state much
of the primitive way of life has vanished. The overnight hunt is a
thing of the past and the tent has been replaced by box-like
structures with oil stove heat.
This would be news to Inuit who still use their summer camps, hunt and fish
in winter. As for Inuit women, they are entirely absent from the story. It
would be comforting to discover that such opinions belong entirely to the
past. Sadly, this is not the case. In 1997, Marc G. Stevenson (who has
worked for northern government and served as a consultant to aboriginal
organizations) produced a study which claimed to address “cultural
persistence” and “Central Inuit social organization” in general, but
virtually ignored Inuit women. This purportedly comprehensive study
relies entirely on interviews with men and mentions women only in passing
191
—implying that the whole of Inuit social organization and culture can be
understood through male eyes and men’s lives (Stevenson 1997).
In 1972, after having spent ten years in the Canadian Arctic, Dr. Gordon
C. Butler glibly told the New York Times reporter that “the Eskimos never
had a way of life … only a way of survival (Walz 1972:9).” Twenty-five
years later, Stevenson writes:
Most Inuit, and even some lay preachers, failed to grasp throughly
(sic) many of the basic concepts of Christianity. For example,
Angmarlik at Kekerten in 1902 preached a religious doctrine that
fused many elements of the old religious order with the new
ideology (Stevenson 1997:127).
This analysis of Inuit-missionary relations contradicts information which
was given to me in interviews and discussions with the same informant on
whom Stevenson relies—Etuangat, the distinguished Pangnirtung elder.
Stevenson contends that Inuit fused tradition and Christian ideology
because they “failed to grasp” Christian concepts, rather than (as Etuangat,
Jose Kusugak and other Inuit have told me) from a conscious and deliberate
effort to assure cultural continuity. Thus, we are led to believe that Inuit
were incapable of understanding the difference between Inuit spiritual
traditions and Christian doctrine, rather than determined to maintain their
culture in the face of incursions from Outside. It is an attitude which
persists, despite all the years of changes and challenges, in the northern
scholarship and journalism of today.
Filmmaker Loretta Todd says she is weary of the persistence of colonial
thinking. “It is time for Canadian society to view us not as dying cultures,
but dynamic cultures. Despite policies of assimilation, we have survived
(Todd 1991).” When I first went North in the early 1980s, I expected to find
journalism vastly improved from the early coverage I had followed, in the
libraries and archives of Ottawa and Toronto. I was soon jolted into a more
accurate awareness of the realities. Some of this awareness is reflected in
the entries to my journals:
In one community, I meet a journalist from a prominent
publication. He clutches a Ken Kesey novel and speaks with the
self assurance of one who has, in three days, become an expert.
The jokes about this are so rampant it’s hard to believe he hasn’t
heard them. He tells me he will write about the beauty of his hike
and “the lifestyle changes of the Inuit people.” He rejects the offer
of names [of people in the community to interview]: “I don’t need
to talk to anyone else, I’m leaving tomorrow. I had two Inuit guides
on the hike, I’ve already talked to two of the Native people … ”
Two men for a portrait of “the Inuit lifestyle”—never mind
women, children, other men, other generations. Having hiked
outside the community, he has returned to wall himself into a
building and watch movies. “I’ve met two Natives,” he says again.
192
It is not just Aboriginal northerners who are in need of more accurate
representation, although they have long been the primary victims of
journalistic misrepresentation of the North. All northerners are
misrepresented at one time or another, in one way or another. The North
continues to be exoticized, romanticized and distanced (not just
geographically) from the rest of the world. Northerners in general continue
to be portrayed as a special breed of people (the very persistence of the word
“breed” suggests something apart from humanity). As we observed earlier
on, there are layers of misrepresentation—of northerners, Aboriginal
northerners, northern and Aboriginal women.
Native people are not just passive recipients of media misrepresentation.
They have pioneered important media initiatives and brought their own
voices to an ever widening public. Increasingly, they have taken over the
representation of themselves—in print, in radio and on television. Northern
first peoples have not just been victims in the centuries-long process of
colonizing communications, they have been energetic agents of
decolonization and constructive change. Roth reminds us that, among other
revolutionary developments in northern communications, the Northern
Broadcasting Policy
was the result of a concerted pressure group strategy by Northern
First Nations communities and their supporters. Until the early
eighties, a variety of experimental domestic satellite-access
projects demonstrated First Peoples’ skills in organization,
management, design and administration of training programs, and
maintenance of complex broadcasting undertakings. By 1983, the
federal government had issued broadcasting licenses to 13
regional Native Communication Societies in the North (Roth
1996).
Setbacks and frustrations continue to accompany each forward move. It
is impossible to avoid the conclusion that northern news media should be
strengthened and their services expanded. Despite considerable ingenuity
in retaining media and programs, the 1990 cutbacks resulted in severely
curtailed—or lost—services to people who often felt that they were already
receiving inadequate services before the cutbacks.
The Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal northerners I have interviewed or
encountered over the years have spoken passionately and frequently of the
need for increased Aboriginal participation in the processes of
communication and government. As was discussed in detail in earlier
chapters, there is widespread support for more, and improved, Aboriginal
language resources in the North. There is consensus among the Aboriginal
political and community leaders who were interviewed, that more materials
and programs should be available, in all living languages. Not everyone
agrees on the nature or extent of the programs. A Yukon Aboriginal
politician, and a community leader with expertise in Aboriginal languages,
193
both felt that the Yukon would be ill-advised to adopt the Northwest
Territories language policy.
I think the direction we’ll go in, in Yukon, is more like the Chinese
Canadian community. We will keep our languages for community
support and our families. But seven different languages in this tiny
territory. We can’t afford to keep them official (Geddes 1990).
Chartier stressed the need for a carefully balanced language policy,
developed in concert with Aboriginal people.
… some of the [political] parties are making special effort … to
involve aboriginal people. But we also see a danger in that … we
don’t want as aboriginal people to be co-opted. First of all, we
don’t want to be assimilated. We do want to work at a degree of
integration which is suitable to us and to Canadian society
(Morin/Chartier/Campone 1990:171).
Gail Guthrie Valaskakis clarifies the intricate relationship between
tradition and transformation, colonizer and colonized.
In the writing of outsiders, native American traditional practice is
often misunderstood as feathers and fantasy or, worse, as
oppressive reification of the distant past. But Indian traditionalism
is not these; nor is it lost in transformation or revived as a
privileged expression of resistance. It is an instrumental code to
action knitted into the fabric of everyday life … (Valaskakis
1988:268)
Past and present are inseparable. Valaskakis’ eloquent description of her
Lac du Flambeau Chippewa childhood reflects the experiences of Inuit and
other colonized peoples.
We were very young when we began to live the ambivalence of our
reality. My marble-playing, bicycle-riding, king-of-the-royalmountain days were etched with the presence of unexplained
identity and power. I knew as I sat in the cramped desks of the
Indian school that wigwams could shake with the rhythm of a
Midewiwin ceremonial drum, fireballs could spring from the
whispers of a windless night, and Bert Skye could (without
warning) transform himself into a dog. I knew that my greatgrandmother moved past the Catholic altar in her house with her
hair dish in her hand to place greying combings of her hair in the
first fire of the day, securing them from evil spirits … we were
equally and irrevocably harnessed to each other … I was both an
Indian and an outsider (Valaskakis 1988:268).
Concluding Thoughts: New Technologies, Old Values
These days, the biggest noise is being made by the creators and marketers of
new technologies, or more sophisticated versions of old technologies. In
194
1994 Nunatsiaq News published a twelve-page “Special Report on
Telecommunications” (Nunatsiaq News 1994). Although not clearly
identified as an advertising supplement, the “Report” (which featured
stories by Nunatsiaq News staff) was in reality an advertisement for
NorthwesTel. Two years later, in 1996, NorthwesTel introduced its new
satellite phone service “for the Great Canadian Workplace.”
The full-page black and white advertisement in Nunatsiaq News featured
a photo-collage of a small portable phone superimposed on a photograph of
an idyllic, misted mountain landscape, with a pair of worn leather hiking
boots in one corner. The ad, which was obviously intended to be published
in a variety of publications and locations, used pseudo-northern imagery
inappropriate to the region served by Nunatsiaq News. At the centre of the
page, the mountain landscape features a foreground consisting of a large
stand of tall evergreens. On another part of the page, a pine cone sits
suspended between segments of white space and text.
Virtually all of Nunavut is above the treeline. There are no pine cones
here. The poetically constructed text exacerbates the error.
Making a call from your desk downtown is one thing.
But what if your desk is a tree stump in the back of beyond?
No problem. Our new satellite mobile phone service extends to
virtually every square inch of the continent (NorthwesTel
1996a:11).
However meaningful the technology may be for the people of Nunavut—
and I suspect that it will eventually be quite useful—the representation of
the advertiser’s interpretation of “every square inch of the continent” is
closer to historical colonial-romanticism, than to the future of this Inuitdominated region. The boots are the kind worn by outdoor workers, hikers
or explorers. The leap from “downtown” to “a tree stump in the back of
beyond” suggests a backpacking holiday in the wilderness, not a life of
survival on the (treeless) land. I doubt that this is a coincidence, nor do I
think it entirely unintentional. It is likely that more backpackers than
Nunavut residents will be able to afford this new technology, at least in its
early years.
I have no wish to minimize the importance of the new satellite phones. If,
as promised, they are superior to the old bush radio, they may well enhance
the safety of people who live and work out on the land. Perhaps someone at
Advertising Central will catch up to the realities of Nunavut, and learn to
pitch their product to the people who really live here.
In 1996, NorthwesTel staged NorCOM’96, Bringing the World to You
(NorthwesTel 1996b:13), an exposition in Iqaluit which hyped the Internet,
video conferencing, ATM (asynchronous transfer mode), satellites and
195
other technological developments and included a satellite-transmitted trip
to the Calgary Zoo.
The “Information Superhighway” and other technological
breakthroughs and evolutions will continue to extend the possibilities for
northern communications, and for north-south, and circumpolarinternational connections. However, we must remember that it will not
make the connections for us—between people and media outlets,
journalism and literacy, language and power. It will not be a panacea for
accuracy in representation—there are no guarantees as to the accuracy of
the information which is carried in print, on line, in the air.
In 1997, the Nunavut Implementation Commission came up with an idea
for putting new technologies to work for the people of Nunavut. Their
proposal will use communications technology to support the decentralized
government most Inuit want. Their plan is to develop “community
teleservice centres.” Each community would have its own centre, which
would provide access for all residents to free or low-cost use of electronic
communication equipment, including computers and modems, fax
machines, scanners and videoconference equipment. Paid staff would
maintain the equipment and train people in its use. The centres would be
large enough to accommodate community-wide videoconferences (Bell
1997:E7).
NIC researcher Randy Ames said most electronic communications have
flowed into Nunavut from the South. The new service would utilize a
broadband telecommunications system to send information from North to
South. “For example … an elder in Pond Inlet could be paid to give a lecture
in Inuktitut to a university class in the South” (Bell 1997:E7). In addition to
equipment, each centre would have a meeting room for community
gatherings and videoconferences, a separate room for training, washrooms,
kitchen and child care facilities (Nunatsiaq News 1997:E7).
One of the assumptions of old-order colonial thinking is that
“peripheral” people learn from “core” people and not the other way around.
The time is long overdue to break that ethnocentric paradigm. The
exceptional development of northern communications suggests a way out
—and a way to develop more progressive paradigms. We have seen that
despite its marginalization, and for a variety of reasons (including “national
security” and profit-motivated outside development, as well as the desire to
better serve northern people) northern communications are among the most
highly developed in the world. The Nunavut core is likely to be less
centrally located (both ideologically and spatially). Projects such as the
proposed teleservice centres will enable Nunavut residents to interact and
govern themselves without relegating some people and communities to the
margins. In this way, Nunavut may provide a useful model for
decentralizing power and administration in other governments and regions.
196
It is unfortunate that most of today’s public discussion of new
information technologies is focused on technological change, as if it were
occurring in a human-free vacuum; as if the information were emerging on
its own and were not generated, created or selected by people with various
experiences, biases and agendas.
That is a dangerous pretence, not only for the North but for the
communication universe as a whole. There is a desperate need for attention
to the impact of new technologies on questions of ethics and human rights,
and on people. No matter how sophisticated the technology, nothing can
replace the responsible work of responsible journalists. No technology can
provide universal access to all people, without prejudice to where they live
or how much they earn. These are the real challenges for the northern
communicators of the future.
In the final analysis, this picture—and the book you have just read—is
not just about northern communications. The North contains our entire
communications future in microcosm. Our well-being, and perhaps our
survival, will depend on our ability to abandon the obsession with how to
send the information out, and to pay careful attention to what messages are
sent, and by whom.
Note
1.
This work is updated and placed in international context in my new book, The
New Media Nation: Indigenous Peoples and Global Communication, to be
published in 2008 or 2009 by Berghahn (New York and Oxford).
197
Leslie Choquette
Religious Diversity:
Protestants, Jews, and Catholics
Abstract
The book Frenchmen into Peasants examines the origins of French emigrants
to Canada in the 17th and 18th centuries, arguing that they were
uncharacteristic of la France profonde. Cities and towns made a contribution
far out of proportion with their weight in the population, and rural areas
contributed insofar as they were integrated into the Atlantic economy.
Religious nonconformity, the subject of the following excerpt, proved more
important than expected in an officially Catholic colony, and Catholic piety
less pronounced. A spirit of independence and adventure could be discerned
in the words and deeds of individual emigrants, most of whom were young,
single adults.
Résumé
L’ouvrage Frenchmen into Peasants porte sur les origines des émigrants
français au Canada aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. On y soutient qu’ils n’étaient
pas représentatifs de la France profonde. Les villes et villages ont apporté
une contribution hors de toute proportion avec leur poids dans la population,
et les régions rurales y ont contribué dans la mesure où elles étaient intégrées
à l’économie de l’Atlantique. Le non-conformisme religieux, sujet de l’extrait
suivant, s’est révélé plus important que prévu dans une colonie officiellement
catholique, et la piété catholique moins prononcée. On pouvait discerner un
esprit d’indépendance et d’aventure dans les paroles et les actions de chacun
des émigrants, dont la plupart étaient de jeunes adultes célibataires.
Just as their regional and social origins marked French emigrants to Canada
as essentially modern, so too did their religious origins, which were
characterized by diversity. The presence of religious minorities in New
France, while numerically small and legally tenuous, characterized the
entire French Regime and presented an ongoing challenge to the monolithic
conceptions of the colony’s administrators. The changing ideological
climate in France determined whether the Canadians actually tolerated or
simply refused to acknowledge the scattered, unconverted Protestants in
their midst. Unconverted Jews, on the other hand, could at no time declare
their faith openly and remain in Canada.
For the most part, civil and religious authorities succeeded in obtaining
conformity to Catholic practice from French emigrants regardless of their
religious backgrounds, and any significance that minority backgrounds
33-34, 2006
retained was probably cultural. The cultural component alone, however,
justifies an examination of the emigrants whose religious antecedents
distanced them from mainstream French society. For example, whether in
France or the diaspora, Huguenot identity often persisted despite religious
conformity.1
As for the Catholics, the main question concerns the roots of their
subsequent history of legendary orthodoxy. Yet it does not appear that most
ordinary emigrants were especially pious, and, indeed, there are several
indications to the contrary. Missionary zeal seems to have been confined
instead to relatively few proponents of the Catholic Reformation, most of
them religious. Furthermore, even among this group, a number of women
stood out for their strikingly modern notions of the irrelevance of gender to
evangelical enterprise.
Protestants
Beginning in 1627, French law explicitly forbade Protestants to settle
permanently in Canada. Early attempts at ecumenical colonization had
raised a certain amount of havoc, particularly in Acadia, as described by
Samuel de Champlain:
I have seen the Minister and our Curé get into fistfights over the
difference in religion. I do not know who was the most valiant, and
who threw the best punch, but I know very well that the Minister
complained sometimes to Sieur de Mons [the king’s lieutenantgeneral, himself a Protestant] of having been beaten, and resolved
the points of controversy in this fashion. I leave to you to think
whether that was fair to see; the Savages were sometimes on one
side, sometimes the other, and the French, mingled according to
their diverse belief, said abominable things of both religions,
although Sieur de Mons made peace as best he could.2
This particular dispute continued into the following year, 1605, when
both clergymen were stricken with scurvy. They died within days of each
other, and, according to Marc Lescarbot, the Picard lawyer who became the
first chronicler of the colony, the sailors “put them both into the same grave,
to see whether dead they would live in peace, since living they had never
been able to agree.”3
The charter of the Compagnie des Cent Associés, promulgated by
Cardinal Richelieu in 1627, stipulated in article 2:
Without it being permitted, however, for the said associates and
others to send any foreigners to the said places, thus to people the
said colony with native French Catholics, and those who command
in New France shall be enjoined to see that the present article be
executed exactly as written, not suffering it to be contravened for
any reason or occasion, lest they answer for it personally.4
200
This exclusion, which, it should be noted, applied to those emigrants
recruited with a view toward peopling the colony, remained in force
throughout the French Regime.5 Richelieu put it into effect for several
reasons, not least among them the internal dissensions described above. He
could not but have been aware of them, for, in 1616, the Catholic hierarchy
inaugurated a sustained anti-Protestant lobbying campaign complete with
book burnings and vitriolic pamphlets. In 1626, for example, the Récollet
Joseph Le Caron wrote that
those who say derisively that what our priests consecrate at the
altar is a White John, that his Holiness is the Antichrist, that if they
could get their hands on the God of the papists, they would strangle
him, … [and] on the last monk, they would eat him, who say that
the … antiphons we sing in honor of the Virgin Mary are
hangman’s songs, are not suited to execute such a design [to plant
the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, plus to discover,
people, build, clear, and maintain there all native Frenchmen who
would like to live there].6
Nonetheless, that Richelieu proved susceptible to this propaganda
speaks less to his ideological commitment than to his political concerns.
The charter of the Cent Associés became operative on 6 May 1627, at a time
when the threat of Protestant treason weighed heavily on Richelieu’s mind.
Indeed, the final ratification took place outside of La Rochelle preparatory
to the yearlong siege that deprived the Protestants of the last of the fortified
cities granted to them by the Edict of Nantes.7 In the case of North America,
external considerations in the form of the neighboring English
compounded the danger posed by potential Protestant disloyalty. Religious
ties had outweighed national allegiance more than once in recent memory,
and Richelieu refused to risk a mass defection of French Protestants to the
thirteen colonies or, even worse, a takeover of New France engineered by
the English with Protestant complicity.
The charter of the Cent Associés did not put an end to the Protestant
presence in Canada, owing partly to its own ambiguity and partly to
lackadaisical enforcement. Lucien Campeau has shown that the period
from 1627 to 1663 witnessed the arrival in the colony of “a good many by
the vessels of the company,” although his qualification, “without, to our
knowledge, ever having been disturbed” is more dubious.8 One thinks, for
example, of the case of Daniel Vuil, the only emigrant executed for the
crime of sorcery under the French Regime. Vuil was a Huguenot miller who
arrived in Canada in 1659, the same year as Bishop Laval, and who abjured
his religion in order to marry an adolescent whom he had met on the voyage.
The girl’s parents, alleging his “bad morals,” refused their consent, and
shortly thereafter accused him of employing malefice to torment their
daughter with demons and specters. Laval took it upon himself to
investigate, and the dossier he compiled contains a revelatory “permission
201
to inform against Vuril [sic], who, relapsed into heresy, nonetheless abuses
the sacraments.”9
Vuil’s execution notwithstanding, Protestants continued to arrive in the
colony. In 1670 Laval addressed a memorandum to the king accusing them
of holding “seductive discourses,” distributing books, and assembling
amongst themselves “to celebrate the religion.” Six years later, the Conseil
supérieur de Québec remained concerned enough about the situation to
promulgate a law stipulating that “Protestants do not have the right to
assemble for the exercise of their religion under pain of chastisement,” but
adding that “Protestants can come to the colony during the summer,” and
even spend the winter, provided that they live “as Catholics without
scandal.”10
The Conseil’s distinction between temporary and permanent migration
and its willingness, however reluctant, to condone the former were implied
by the original wording of the exclusion, and this interpretation of it
prevailed for most of the French Regime. In the 1740s, for example,
Protestant merchants from Montauban, La Rochelle, and Rouen sojourned
unmolested in the colony, some for a season, others for several, and still
others for many years. The Rouennais merchant house of Dugard,
nominally Catholic itself, maintained two permanent factors in Quebec in
the decades prior to the conquest, and both of these men, François Havy and
his cousin Jean Lefebvre, were Protestants from the pays de Caux.11
Protestants also figured among the crew members who each season laid
anchor in the port of Quebec.12
The only period during which de facto toleration of temporary Protestant
migration did not exist was, predictably, between 1685 and 1715. As
Marc-André Bédard has pointed out, though, the hostile ideological climate
did not alone account for the almost total disappearance of Protestant
merchants from the colony; economic difficulties, specifically, the
disruption of commerce in the wake of virtually continuous warfare, made
the Canadian trade a less than attractive proposition.13
Protestant settlement, as alluded to above, was another matter
altogether; from 1627 on, permanent residents of Quebec and Acadia were
required to be Catholic. Nonetheless, Protestants and emigrants of
Protestant background did establish themselves during the French Regime.
Bédard’s research has yielded, in addition to 231 Protestant prisoners of
whom little is known, 477 Protestants who settled more or less definitively
in New France. Of these, some 232 were either French Huguenots or else
European Protestants (Swiss and Germans primarily) who arrived as
soldiers of the French army; the rest appear to have made their way to
Canada, either voluntarily or under duress, from the Anglo-American
colonies. The emigrant sample considered here included 110 of the 233
European expatriates mentioned by Bédard, as well as 51 others.14 Since
202
these last, 37 men and 14 women, also, for the most part, settled in Quebec, I
can estimate the domiciled Protestant population at about 300, exclusive of
the Anglo-Dutch element. This number is by no means insignificant,
especially when one considers that it is roughly equivalent to the number of
Percheron or Angevin colonists from the same period.
The regional origins
The regional origins of the Protestant emigrants in my sample do not
accurately reflect the implantation of Protestantism in France as a whole.
The Atlantic provinces dominated Protestant emigration as they did
Catholic, and the eastern provinces sent few Protestants in spite of their
strong reformed traditions. Only within the Atlantic provinces did the
distribution of Protestant emigrants more or less resemble that of the
religion itself.
More than three-fifths of the Protestants came from the central-western
provinces of Aunis, Saintonge, and Angoumois. Curiously, the sample did
not include any Poitevins, although Protestantism was important in Lower
Poitou, and even more so in the Niortais.15 Poitou’s Protestants did not, in
principle, refrain from emigration; of the 26 indentured servants who left
Chef-Boutonne (Deux-Sevres) for the Antilles between 1643 and 1714, 3
came from Protestant families and 2 from families that were divided along
religious lines.16 Bédard, moreover, listed 7 Poitevins in his sample, so
their absence from this one may have been purely coincidental (see Table
5.1).
After the Center-west, Canada’s Protestants stemmed preferentially
from Normandy, Guyenne, and Languedoc. The parts of these provinces
that were involved were noteworthy as Protestant strongholds, if not for
their ties with Canada. Périgord and Quercy were more important than
Guyenne proper, and 5 of the 7 Languedociens came from Gard or Ardèche
rather than Toulousain. Generally speaking, the figures of Bédard were in
agreement with mine. The central-western provinces claimed an even
greater share of the total in his sample than in mine, but in neither did the
Swiss and German border regions (as opposed to Switzerland and Germany
proper) provide more than a token contribution.
203
Table 5.1
Provincial origins of Protestant emigrants to Canada
Province
My sample
Bédard’s sample
Aunis
79
80
Normandy
16
15
Saintonge
11
16
Guyenne
9
13
Languedoc
7
5
Brittany
3
3
Alsace
2
3
Angoumois
2
5
Gascony
2
1
Ile-de-France
2
5
Béarn
1
0
Comtat
1
0
Dauphiné
1
0
Foix
1
0
Poitou
0
7
Provence
0
2
Touraine
0
1
Total
137
156
The social origins of Protestants were also uncharacteristic-first of all,
because they were better known. Asocial class could be attributed to 102, or
nearly two-thirds, of the Protestants in the sample; of these, there were 9
nobles, 33 bourgeois, 4 peasants, 21 laborers, and 35 artisans. It is difficult
to draw firm conclusions from such small numbers, but the one that does
emerge is the relatively elevated social status of Protestants as a group.
More than a quarter of all Protestants belonged to the elites, and close to a
tenth were actually noble. Like their French counterparts, Canadian
Protestants constituted an economically privileged, if legally
disadvantaged, population.
The occupational structure of this population is fairly clear, with
information available for more than four-fifths of the emigrants.19 The most
important category, soldiers and officers, accounted for a similar
percentage of Protestant as of overall emigration, just under one-third.
Corvisier’s observation that in France “the proportion of Protestants in the
army was much higher than what it was in the population” does not apply to
the Canadian troops; the figure in both cases was about 1 percent. Though in
some regions the army may have provided Protestants with a refuge and
even facilitated their emigration, those regions clearly did not include the
major source of Protestant emigration to Canada, the Center-west.20
204
Other branches of activity peopled by Protestants in my sample included
commerce, carpentry, the maritime trades, and the clothing industry.
Commerce did not predominate over the other options, but it might have
had the sample included temporary emigrants more consistently.
Regardless of the prohibition against Protestant settlement, at least 11
Protestants arrived as indentured servants. Religious controls in the exit
ports must sometimes have been lax, or perhaps the demand for colonial
labor provided sufficient incentive to circumvent them.
The sex ratio within this emigrant group was quite unusual: 1 in every 4
Protestants was female, as opposed to 1 in every 8 emigrants overall.21 Most
of these women emigrated as filles à marier, but there were also 5 married
women, 2 domestic servants, and 1 child under the age of fifteen. The
reasons for this enhanced female presence are not entirely clear. Perhaps, as
Louis Pérouas has suggested, women were simply more amenable to
conversion than men.22 Emigrants must have been aware that residing in
Canada would require outward conformity to Catholicism, at the very least;
and such a prospect may well have elicited different responses from the two
sexes. Asecond possibility has recently been suggested by Nelson Dawson,
who believes that French ecclesiastics sometimes dumped on the colony
impoverished young women whom they had “saved” from Protestantism
and placed in institutions. In shipping them to Canada, so the argument
goes, they hoped to prevent these women from returning to their Protestant
milieu, while at the same time freeing themselves from the obligation to
support them.23
Jews
French Jews did not benefit from religious toleration, even before the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The limited toleration
promulgated by the edict applied to Protestants alone—a fact made
painfully explicit by the renewed expulsion of French Jews in 1615:
Considering that the Christian Kings, we read in Isambert, viewed
with horror all enemy nations of this name and especially that of
the Jews, whom they never wanted to suffer in their kingdom … ,
and since we have been informed that in contravention of the edicts
and ordinances of our said predecessors, the said Jews have for
several years been spreading, disguised, into several places of this
our kingdom … We have … declared:
That all Jews who are in this our kingdom shall be held on
pain of death and confiscation of all their property to vacate
and withdraw from the same, forthwith, and this within a
month’s time.24
In actuality, the Jewish communities of Bayonne, Bordeaux, and Metz
escaped the consequences of this edict, but its implications for Jewish
settlement in Canada were clear. If Jews could not legally inhabit France,
205
still less could they expect toleration in the most rigidly orthodox of French
colonies.
There are only two recorded cases of emigrants who avowed their
Judaism publicly during the French Regime, one in Acadia and one in
Québec. The Acadian example concerns a Dutch Jew who embarked for
Québec in 1752; why and for how long is unknown. His religion first came
to the attention of his fellow passengers in midocean, and they responded by
performing a preliminary baptism aboard ship, repeating it with due
solemnity during a stopover in Louisbourg. According to Louisbourg’s
chaplain,
the first of April of the year 1752, the man named Joseph Moïse Kel
by the baptism he received on the royal frigate La Friponne bound
for Québec, in the supplements to baptism that were solemnly
supplied in the royal chapel of St. Louis … , was given the name of
Jean Antoine Moïse, born in Mastrait [Maastricht] in Dutch
Brabant, aged forty-eight years and three months, Jewish by
nation. Who, after having been instructed in the truth of the
Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, and having recognized
the falsity and horror of the Judaizing religion in which lie had
lived until the present, renounced this religion, and promised, by
oath on these holy gospels, that he would faithfully uphold all the
duties of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion for the rest of
his life; in consequence of which … I, the undersigned,
administered to him the ceremonies of baptism, and received his
solemn abjuration, and absolved him of the excommunication
incurred by him. He had for sponsors messire Jean Louis Comte de
Raymond, chevalier, seigneur of Ayx, La Cour, and other places,
brigadier in the King’s armies, His Majesty’s lieutenant for the
town and château of Angoulême, Governor and Commander of Ile
Royale, Ile Saint-Jean and their dependencies, and dame
Marguerite Elizabeth de Degannes, wife of messire Louis
Boisseau, chevalier of the military order of St. Louis, … naval
lieutenant.25
One may surmise that this hapless Jew intended to engage in trade,
particularly since the Jewish merchant firm of Abraham Gradis dominated
Canadian commerce in the final years of the colony. The exceptional nature
of the story nonetheless implies that Gradis would generally have employed
Christian factors to handle his Canadian business. One doubts that many
Jewish merchants, particularly prominent ones, would have willingly
risked such scenes of forced conversion as the one described above. As for
Kel himself, neither the vital records nor the hospital registers of Québec
provide any indication of his passage or continuing residence there.
The other case, which preoccupied officials in both France and Québec
for an entire year, has become a near legend among Canadian historians.
206
The episode began in September of 1738, with a panicked letter from the
intendant of Québec to the naval minister, asking for instructions on how to
deal with a particularly troublesome emigrant. He identified the culprit as
one Esther Brandeau, “about twenty years old, who embarked in the quality
of passenger in boy’s clothing under the name of Jacques Lafargue.”
According to the intendant, Esther, who claimed to be the “daughter of
David Brandeau, Jewish by nation, merchant in Saint-Esprit Diocese of
Dax near Bayonne,” explained the circumstances surrounding her
untoward arrival in the colony as follows:
Five years ago her father and mother put her aboard a ship in the
said place … to send her to Amsterdam to one of her aunts and her
brother; … the ship having been lost on the Bayonne sandbar in …
1733, she fortunately escaped to land with one of the crew
members; … she was taken in by … [a] widow living in Biarritz; …
two weeks later she left, dressed as a man, for Bordeaux, where she
embarked in the capacity of ship’s cook, under the name of Pierre
Mansiette, on a small boat … destined for Nantes; she returned on
the same vessel to Bordeaux, where she embarked once more in the
same capacity on a Spanish vessel … that was leaving for Nantes;
… upon arrival in Nantes she deserted and went to Rennes where
she placed herself in the capacity of journeyman in a tailor’s shop
… where she remained six months; … from Rennes she went to
Clisson, where she entered into the service of the Récollet Fathers
in the capacity of domestic servant and errand boy; … she
remained for three months in this convent, which she left without
warning to go to Saint-Malo, where she found asylum with a
baker’s wife … with whom she remained for five months,
rendering a few services for the lady; … she went next to Vitré to
look for a post; there she went into service … [with a] former
infantry captain of the Queen’s Regiment whom she served for ten
or eleven months in the capacity of lackey; … she left this post
because her health did not permit her to continue caring for the said
gentleman … ; the said Esther, returning to Nantes … , was taken
for a thief and arrested by the constabulary of the said place and led
to the prison of Noisel, from which she was released after
twenty-four hours because they realized their mistake; she went
then to La Rochelle, where having taken the name of Jacques
Lafargue, she embarked as a passenger.26
The French authorities ratified the intendant’s decision to place Esther in
the Hôpital général, but insinuated that her continued presence in the colony
would be contingent on conversion. In the meantime they contacted her
father, who declined to intervene, stating “that he still had eight children at
home, and that his other children were dead.” The matter remained
unresolved until September 1739, when the intendant wrote once again to
inform his superiors of Esther’s refusal to cooperate and imminent
deportation:
207
She is so flighty that she has not been able to adjust either to the
Hôpital général or to several other private homes where I had her
placed. The concierge of the prison took charge of her in the last
instance … She has not conducted herself absolutely badly, but she
is so flighty that she was at different times as docile as she was surly
toward the instruction that zealous Churchmen wanted to give her;
I have no other choice than to send her back.27
Esther embarked for La Rochelle in the fall of 1739, and by the following
May the case was closed to everyone’s satisfaction. Everyone’s, that is,
except Esther’s. Unfortunately, nothing is known of the young woman’s
subsequent existence.
Esther’s adventures are doubly interesting to the historian because of her
unabashed defiance of two sets of norms, the religious and the sexual.
Transvestism of the sort practiced by Esther was not unheard of during the
Ancien Régime, and it seems to have been surprisingly successful. While
the women whose stories have been preserved were, like Esther, eventually
found out, many of them inhabited the male world unimpeded for
considerable lengths of time. Their most daring field of endeavor was
perhaps the army, in which at least 15 women enlisted and served in the
eighteenth century.28
The rigid separation between male and female spheres of activity worked
to the advantage of these transvestite women. By simply engaging in
activities such as soldiering and sailoring that were reserved exclusively for
men, they compelled society to view them as such. Discovery occurred only
when they lost their nerve, committed sexual indiscretions, or found
themselves in an environment as well policed as Canada.
Canadian officials were nearly as concerned with Esther Brandeau’s
unfeminine behavior as with her religion, and they asked her about it
point-blank. Her explanation, however, did not allude to her sex at all, but
rather presented her conduct as the result of a religious choice:
Having requested the said Esther Brandeau to tell us what reason
she had to disguise her sex thus for five years, … she told us that
having escaped the shipwreck in Bayonne, she ended up in the
home of Catherine Churiau, … that she gave her pork to eat and
other meats that are forbidden among the Jews, and that she
resolved at this time never to return to her father and mother in
order to enjoy the same freedom as the Christians.29
Esther’s rebellion against the sexual roles available to her appears
virtually total today, yet she herself viewed it as incidental to her true
rebellion, her rejection of the constraints imposed upon her by religion.
The unequivocal refusal of administrators to sanction the presence of
avowed Jews in Canada did not necessarily extend to those willing to
208
embrace the Christian faith. The conversion of Joseph Moïse Kel
presumably enabled him to continue on to Québec, and even the
incorrigible Esther received a yearlong grace period in which to mend her
ways. By the same token, the arrival of Marranos in the colony seems to
have passed unremarked. Protestantism was the real threat to religious
orthodoxy in the eyes of the authorities, and their suspicions fell upon the
emigrants from La Rochelle to the exclusion of those from Bordeaux and
Bayonne.
Most of the evidence about Marrano emigrants is conjectural, including
any estimation of their numbers. Joseph da Silva dit Le Portuguais, a
creditor of the New French government resident in Montréal, was almost
certainly a Jew; Joseph Costes, a wine merchant from Gaillac (Tarn), and
Jacob Coste (Costa) may have been as well. Genealogical research has
revealed that Etienne Gélineau (Gélinas) and his son Jean, carpenters who
embarked for Canada in 1658, were of Jewish origin. At the time of their
departure, they resided in the hamlet of Tasdon, outside of La Rochelle, but
Etienne was raised in Saint-Vivien of Pons (Saintonge), an ancient Jewish
quarter. Although the family had been nominally Christian since 1558, “the
Canadian Gelinases preserved numerous Jewish traditions like
circumcision, the laying on of hands, the paternal blessing, and the familial
Saturday evening [sic] supper.”30 In the words of Benjamin Sack,
although these are isolated instances, it is nevertheless abundantly
clear that the descendants of former Marranos who had renounced
Judaism were to be found in Canada at various periods of French
sovereignty. We are therefore led to conclude positively that even
those of Jewish origin were well received in the colony, providing
that they desired and were able to embrace Catholicism. Their
numbers must have been quite small. It need hardly be added that
in every case they lived in harmony with the other colonists and
intermarried with them.31
Between avowed Jews, on the one hand, and Marranos on the other, there
existed an intermediate category of Jews who simply remained silent about
their religion. Joseph Daniel Hardiment, a French sailor who lived in
Quebec from at least 1758 until 1760, is the one Canadian example of an
emigrant from this category. The document containing his story, an
unpublished testimonial of freedom at marriage that has not before come to
the attention of historians, deserves to be quoted at length.
The second of June 1767, appeared before us Marie Joseph Fornel,
orphaned daughter of the late Joseph Fornel and Josette Pelletier,
native of the seigneurie of Neuville, parish of Saint-François-deSales, about twenty-two years old, currently living in
Saint-François on Lake Saint-Pierre; who, desiring to marry in the
said place, declared to us that at the age of about thirteen, she was
taken clandestinely and without the consent of her parents by a
certain man whom she knew was named Joseph Daniel Hardiment,
209
sailor by occupation, absent from this country for seven years, and
this for the space of two days, but having been informed that the
said man was Jewish by nation, she left him immediately and
withdrew to her parents’ home in Pointe-aux-Trembles; … she
produced a document drawn up by Master Luet de Lanquinet,
royal notary in Québec, dated 1 June 1767, and left in our hands, in
which two men named Didier Degres and Antoine Rouillard, day
laborers living in this town, attested to having known the said
Daniel Hardiment well for having helped him abduct the above
mentioned Marie Joseph Fornel and having heard him, the said
Daniel Hardiment, tell her that he was Jewish by nation and
religion, having informed the said Marie Joseph Fornel of which,
she withdrew from him and went to live in Pointe-aux-Trembles
…; taking into account the said document and the abovementioned declaration, we delivered a certificate of liberty to the
above-mentioned Marie Joseph Fornel and gave permission to
publish the marriage bans in Québec. [Signed] Perrault, canon,
vicar general.32
Hardiment clearly considered himself a Jew and opted not to conceal the
fact from his lover or his two close friends. His occupation, which entailed
long shipboard stays and visits to places without organized Jewish
communities, must have prevented him from observing his religion, but this
suspension of observance should not be equated with conversion.
Hardiment’s elopement differed from the prevailing Canadian pattern in
that it did not involve even the semblance of a Christian ceremony. In
general, illegitimate couples preferred to contract marriages “à la
gaumine”; that is, they “would go to the church in secret, accompanied by
two witnesses, during the mass celebrated by the parish priest. At the
solemn moment of consecration, they would loudly declare that they took
each other for man and wife, without further ceremony.”33
Hardiment’s two accomplices could easily have served as witnesses, but
there is no evidence that they in fact did so. Indeed, it is possible that
Hardiment’s confession and his subsequent estrangement from Marie
Joseph Fornel were triggered by her demand for a marriage à la gaumine
and his refusal to undergo one. All this is mere speculation; what emerges
clearly from the document is that Hardiment remained in the colony
unmolested for about two years following his unfortunate escapade.
Catholics
The Catholic majority of New France lived, in the seventeenth century, in
an atmosphere of missionary zeal. In the eighteenth century, the attachment
to Catholicism was strong enough, despite the abatement of religious
enthusiasm, to survive the English conquest; and well into the twentieth
century, it successfully resisted competition from secular ideologies. Yet it
would be a mistake to assume that French Canadians inherited their
210
Catholic fidelity from an idealized feudal past, rather than adopted it
through historical circumstance. For among lay emigrants, neither the
common folk nor the colony’s leaders were particularly inclined to rigorist
devotion. On the contrary, a measure of popular indifference was evident in
proscribed behavior, or even outright anticlericalism, and a modern
mentality was often visible among the administrative elite. Catholic zeal
was thus largely confined to the missionaries, some of whom themselves
espoused untraditional ideas about gender that were quite alarming to the
Catholic Church.
Complaints about the religious and moral laxity of French emigrants
made themselves heard throughout the French Regime. In 1664, for
instance, Colbert received an anonymous memorandum claiming that “the
people taken at La Rochelle are for the most part of little conscience and
nearly without religion, lazy and very slack at work, and very poorly suited
to settle a country, deceitful, debauched, blaspheming.”34 The memorandum’s author, whom the perspicacious minister assumed to be Bishop
Laval,35 was obviously motivated by fear of Protestantism; but since fewer
than a tenth of the city’s emigrants were of Huguenot background, his
blanket condemnation also indicted a great many Catholics.36
Emigrants recruited with a view toward evangelical settlement might be
expected to have been different, but even here testimony is ambiguous. La
Dauversière’s levy in La Flèche for Ville-Marie initially gave some concern
to the religious establishment; however, the secular missionary (and saint)
Marguerite Bourgeoys succeeded in converting them. “Shortly after their
arrival in Québec,” wrote the good sister, “these hundred men were changed
like the linen one puts in the wash.”37
The baron de La Hontan, a young army officer who served in Canada in
the 1680s and 1690s, did not hesitate to describe Montréal as a clerical
police state. In a letter home, he wrote peevishly:
At least in Europe you have the amusements of Carnival, but here it
is a perpetual Lent. We have a bigot of a pastor whose inquisition is
entirely misanthropic. One must not think, under his spiritual
despotism, either of games, or of seeing the ladies, or of any party
of honest pleasure. Everything is scandal and mortal sin to this
surly creature.38
Particularly galling to him was the mutilation by this pastor (who had
entered his room without permission) of a fine edition of Petronius.
Yet La Hontan’s own writings also provide a second and quite different
perspective on life in late-seventeenth-century Montréal. For one thing,
there was an escape valve for men in the form of the fur trade, which took
them deep into the forests and far beyond the reach of any clerical meddling.
La Hontan himself spent much of the winter of 1685 with an Algonquin
211
hunting party, reading Homer, Anacreon, and his “dear Lucian,” escapees
of the mishap that had befallen Petronius.39
Worse yet in the eyes of the clergy, the fur traders brought their
untrammeled spirits back with them when they returned to the city. “They
plunge up to the neck into voluptuousness,” La Hontan wrote. “Good
living, women, gaming, drink, everything goes.”40 Behavior was, if
anything, more boisterous when Indian traders came to town; rumors of
their sexual contacts with French women may well have hastened the
construction of the church’s Jericho Prison “for women and girls of Ill
repute” in Montréal in 1686.41
The rapid descent of Ville-Marie into decadence is confirmed by the
judicial archives. In the seventeenth century, nearly 60 percent of all morals
cases were tried within the jurisdiction of Montreal. Overall, there were
about 150 cases of public debauchery, seduction, rape, prostitution,
solicitation, adultery, bigamy, concubinage, and sodomy in the Saint
Lawrence Valley before 1700, involving some 400 men and women from
some twenty-five provinces and countries. 42 Meanwhile, rates of
illegitimacy and prenuptial conceptions were consistent with French
norms, despite a lopsided sex ratio favoring very quick marriages.43
Missionaries notwithstanding, the behavior of the first French Canadians
was no more profoundly Catholic than their urban and commercial origins
might lead one to suspect.
More surprising are the expressions of overt anticlericalism, for such
challenges to spiritual authority could have capital consequences even in
France, where the influence of the Counter-Reformation was less
ubiquitous. La Hontan, whose pre-Enlightenment attitudes are striking,
was merely a bird of passage, if a socially prominent one. On the other hand,
he surely spent enough years in the colony to make his opinions known, and
he surely encountered some like-minded souls among the permanent
colonists. He may, for instance, have frequented the popular tavern of Anne
Lamarque dite La Folleville, who had already publicized her religious
sentiments two years before La Hontan’s arrival.
La Folleville, who was one of the few women to emigrate from
Bordeaux44 was thirty-three years old and a highly successful innkeeper
when, in 1682, Montreal’s pastor (the same one who would so antagonize
La Hontan) demanded a criminal investigation of her enterprise. The most
insistent charges against her were adultery, promiscuity, and operating a
house of prostitution, but there were ancillary suggestions of sorcery,
abortion, and, not least, anticlericalism.45 In the course of her trial, it
became clear that she had neglected her paschal duty for years, and that she
had no use for priests, Montréal’s in particular. She reportedly cried for all to
hear “that the best of priests was worth nothing,” and that the pastor “was
212
not worthy to say mass and that he committed so much sacrilege, being in
mortal sin, that she threatened to beat him like a dog and tear his robe.”46
An even more shocking case occurred in Montréal a few years later,
when the merchant Jean Boudor provided some unorthodox theatrical
entertainment to a select group of guests.47 His soirée—which was attended
by Catherine Le Gardeur de Repentigny, the wife of the civil and criminal
judge of Montréal; her daughters Catherine and Bathe d’Ailleboust, aged
twenty and twenty-six; Louise Bissot de la Rivière, the daughter of a
seigneur; Marie Couillard, the wife of a lieutenant; and her daughter
Marie-Anne Margane de la Valtrie, aged twenty, a goddaughter of
Governor de Courcelles—was carefully planned at the tavern of Mathurin
Guilhet by Boudor, his wife, and several officers of the Montréal garrison.
As described in the court record, it involved Boudor “having purposely and
wantonly gotten his factor and clerk drunk, intoxicated, and in a state of
oblivion all the better to succeed in the infidelity he wished to commit by
mimicking the holy ceremonies of the Church.” Specifically, Boudor had
seized his said clerk in this state of drunkenness, put him on a tray
for serving beer, … a blanket on top for a burial shroud, six bottles
around, with lit candles inside, in place of candelabra and liturgical
candles, a wooden cross on the said drunken clerk, a bucket full of
water for holy water, and a bottle full of wine for a censer, and with
this apparatus and equipment the said Boudor and several
assistants chanted the Libera and other holy prayers of the Church
in mockery and derision of our holy religion.
As if that were not enough, a witness noted that one member “of the
company had pissed in the mouth of the said clerk.”48
This performance was remarkable in many ways, but the strangest thing
about it was not that it occurred at all, nor that it was actually rehearsed, nor
even that it was staged for the ladies of the colony and their marriageable
daughters. It was that Jean Boudor, like La Folleville before him, got away
with it, and got away with it in Sulpician Montréal, at a time when people in
France were being drawn, quartered, tortured, and burned at the stake for
lesser offenses. Montréal’s “bigot of a pastor” was free to inform on people,
and even to force them to defend themselves in court. But their punishment
depended not on him, but on royal administrators who were clearly not of
the same mind. The impunity of La Folleville and Boudor was perhaps
exceptional, in that they both belonged to well-connected merchant
families whom officials were reluctant to antagonize. A brief survey of
church-state relations in New France nonetheless suggests that the king’s
representatives were, from beginning to end, more likely to oppose clerical
demands than indulge them.
213
Bishop Laval’s Arrival in Québec
Bishop Laval’s arrival in Québec in1659 immediately sparked a series of
disputes with the governor that boded ill for the political influence of the
Canadian clergy. The earliest “quarrels of precedence,” in which the two
men jockeyed for power over such symbolic issues as church pews,
incense, the host, and kneeling cushions, are often portrayed as typical
Ancien Régime slapstick; yet they also illustrate the state’s determined
opposition to Laval’s theocratic ambitions. That the governor would retain
the upper hand became clear during the more serious dispute over the Indian
liquor trade, which continued despite Laval’s excommunication of
virtually the entire merchant elite in 1663.49
Clerical power ebbed yet again when Louis XIV took direct control of the
colony, for Colbert disliked Laval and wanted him subservient.50 In the
1680s and 1690s, Governor Frontenac opposed the church on a number of
issues, going so far as to abolish Montréal’s prison for loose women after
the inhabitants complained of clerical excesses.51
In the eighteenth century, according to Gustave Lanctôt, “the prestige
and influence of the bishop and the clergy were at such a low ebb” that the
king authorized the searching of religious houses and removed religious
cases from the ecclesiastical tribunal to the civil courts.52 The situation was
even more extreme in Louisbourg, a city that grew to 8,000 inhabitants
without ever possessing a parish church, and whose administrators
exhibited a tolerant cast of mind, as evidenced in the sacrilege trial of
Yacinthe Gabriel Lebon.53
Lebon, unlike La Folleville or Jean Boudor, was a penniless (though
educated) recent emigrant when he was charged with sacrilege in 1753. One
night while extremely drunk, he had entered the military chapel and begun
fumbling with one of the niches in what he later described as an urge to
redecorate. Of course, he succeeded only in knocking it down, cutting
himself in the process, so he took a piece of altar cloth to bind up his wound
and grabbed a couple of tapers in the vain hope of making it out past the
sentinels. Although he was condemned to death at his first trial, the
advocate in charge of his appeal made such a strong plea for leniency that
Lebon was acquitted by the Conseil superieur in 1754.54
Thus, neither Canada’s habitants nor its administrators gave particular
satisfaction to their spiritual leaders, who would probably be shocked by
their posthumous reputation of sanctity. For the clergy of New France,
imposing rigorist norms was an uphill battle, and despite their commitment
to their mission, some singularly advanced notions were put forward there
with complete impunity.
214
A final example of religious modernity
A final example of religious modernity comes from within the ranks of the
Catholic missionaries themselves. It concerns the single women of
bourgeois and aristocratic lineage who not only demanded to emigrate on
their own initiative but did so in the face of suspicion or even
straightforward opposition from the religious establishment.
The eagerness of women religious to pursue their vocations in Canada
was evident from the early years of the colony. “What amazes me,” the
Jesuit superior Paul Le Jeune wrote from Québec in 1635,”is that a great
number of nuns, consecrated to our Lord, want to join the fight,
surmounting the fear natural to their sex to come to the aid of the poor
daughters and poor wives of the Savages. There are so many of them who
write to us, and from so many Monasteries, … that you would say they are
competing to see who can be the first to mock the difficulties of the Sea, the
mutinies of the Ocean, and the barbary of these lands.”55
Pious laywomen apparently shared their impatience, as illustrated by an
incident that occurred in the port of La Rochelle in 1641. According to the
author of Les Véritables Motifs, a missionary tract, “even a virtuous woman
of the place was suddenly so eager to go to Montréal that, nothwithstanding
the difficulty and the remonstrances that were made to her, she entered the
vessel that was leaving the port by force, resolved to go serve God there.”56
The determination of “ces Amazones du grand Dieu,” as Le Jeune termed
them, appears less surprising today than it did to the priest and his
contemporaries.57 Women participated actively, indeed prominently, in the
mystical movement that swept across Europe in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Nuns like Saint Teresa of Avila and laywomen like
Marie Rousseau and the controversial Madame Guyon assumed visible
public roles, even to the point of serving as spiritual directors to prominent
churchmen. Women’s assertive behavior with regard to New France thus
related to their central place within Counter-Reformation piety and their
unwillingness to be excluded from one of its characteristic manifestations:
the attempted conversion of Native Americans.58
Women met with considerable opposition in their bid to become
missionaries in Canada. Mother Marie de 1’Incarnation, a widow from
Tours who exchanged countinghouse for convent in 1631, initially failed to
convince the Jesuits of the need for Canadian Ursulines. In 1635 Le Jeune
counseled her and all those like her to wait:
But in passing I must give this advice to all these good Women, that
they should take great care not to hasten their departure until they
have here a good House, well built and well endowed, otherwise
they would be a burden to our Frenchmen and would accomplish
little for these Peoples. Men manage much better with difficulties,
215
but nuns need a good house, some cleared lands, and a good
income.59
The women, however, persisted, and in 1639 the first Ursulines and
Hospitalières embarked together with Madame de la Peltrie, a lay
missionary. The latter arranged for her departure more easily than the
women religious, for she managed to secure the approval of Saint Vincent
de Paul and of Father Condren, the superior of the Oratoire.60
Even after the initial missionaries established themselves, women
sometimes faced obstacles in their attempt to emigrate. The Jesuits had
acquiesced to their presence, provided they were not too numerous, but
families and communities continued to resist the passage of wellborn
daughters to the wilds of America. When Sister Saint-Augustin, a young
noblewoman from Normandy, announced her intentions to serve in
Canada, her father filed suit in the Parlement of Rouen to prevent her from
leaving the country.61 The Hospitalières of La Flèche, for their part, braved
a full-scale riot while en route for La Rochelle because the inhabitants
refused to believe that women would willingly undertake the Canadian
journey.62
Female missionaries continued to worry the authorities after their arrival
in Canada. Le Jeune had commented four years earlier on their desire to
“submit to work that is surprisingly difficult even for men,” and the threat of
unfeminine behavior remained a leitmotiv of his narratives.63 Madame de la
Peltrie, who, as a laywoman, was not bound by convent discipline,
concerned him particularly. In 1639, the year of her arrival, he reported
somewhat derisively her conversation with a group of Indians:
I have brought scarcely any workmen, but I will do what I can to aid
these good people; Father, she said to me, assure them that if I
could help them with my own hands, I would do it with pleasure, I
will try to plant something for them. These good Savages, hearing
her discourse, began to laugh, saying that grains planted by such
feeble hands would be too tardy.64
The following year Madame de la Peltrie was beginning to learn her
place. In working with the Indians, she told Le Jeune, “my principal
exercise is to dress them, to comb them, and to deck them out; I am not
capable of anything greater.” Her dissatisfaction remained palpable,
however, and in 1641 Le Jeune observed that “she speaks to them with her
eyes, being unable to speak to them with her tongue, and she would speak to
them much more gladly with her hands. If she could exercise the profession
of mason and carpenter to build them little homes and of plowman to help
them cultivate the land, she would employ herself thus with … ardor.”65
Madame de la Peltrie left Montréal in discouragement in 1643 and retired to
the Ursulines of Québec.
216
Missionary women thus succeeded in embarking for the colony through
their own persistence, and once there they played an influential role in its
development. They did not, however, do so on their own terms, but rather
within the limited sphere of autonomy that a cautious ecclesiastical
establishment, prodded by their protests, reluctantly conceded to them.66
Summary
Thanks to the modernity and diversity of the emigrant pool, the status of
religious minorities in French Canada was far more ambiguous in practice
than in principle. Both Protestants and Jews could reside in the colony for
extended periods or even settle there, provided that they eschewed
non-Catholic forms of worship. Protestants could, at most times, identify
themselves without risking deportation. Jews, however, were well advised
to keep their religion a secret. The case of Daniel Hardiment is unusual in
that the revelation of his origins to several of his friends did not immediately
precipitate his flight.
Unlike the British colonies to the south, Canada never provided a
hospitable haven to dissenters of any sort, and the few who ended up there
were in no position to defy authority. Nonetheless, small numbers of
non-Catholics did succeed in carving out a niche for themselves in the long
or short term, and their very presence testifies to the impossibility of
recruiting a completely homogeneous society from a multiethnic and
multireligious metropolis.
The case of Catholic emigrants demonstrates that religious zeal was not
necessarily stronger among them than it was among the Protestants and
Jews who opted for outward conformity to Catholicism. The missionary
élan so celebrated by later generations of clerical French Canadians was
evident only within a privileged minority with ties to the Catholic
Reformation, and even here, as the Amazons of the good Lord could attest,
it sometimes followed untraditional paths that were unsettling to the
religious hierarchy.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
See J.F. Bosher, The Canada Merchants, 1713-1763 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1987) pp. 43, 139, 161; Bernard Cottret, The Huguenots in England:
Immigration and Settlement c. 1550-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991), p. 265; and Patrice Higonnet, “French” in Harvard Encyclopedia of
American Ethnic Groups, ed. Stephan Thernstrom (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, Belknap Press, 1980) p. 383-385.
Cited in Marcel Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France (Montréal: Fides,
1963-1983), 2:25. All translations mine unless otherwise indicated.
Cited ibid., p. 51.
Cited in Marc-André Bédard, Les Protestants en Nouvelle-France, Cahiers
d’histoire, no 31 (Québec Société historique de Québec, 1978), p. 20.
217
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
218
The Jesuit historian Lucien Campeau has provided an alternative reading of the
charter of the Compagnie des Cent Associés, based on the distinction between
“the common and general law, which made the whole country under the authority
of the king a Catholic country, and the exceptional law, which accorded liberty of
conscience to the Huguenots on every territory under royal jurisdiction.”
According to this reading, “it is not true that New France was made off-limits to
the Calvinists in 1627. It could not have been because they were free to live
everywhere in French territory in conformity with their faith. When the charter of
the Compagnie des Cent Associés, fundamental law of New France, prescribed
the establishment of a colony of Catholics, it was simply conforming to the laws
of the realm: every dependency of the French crown was by definition Catholic.
Any exclusion of the Huguenots would have had to be explicit, for the Edict of
Nantes would then have been abrogated on this point” (Lucien Campeau,
Monumenta Novae Franciae [Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 19671994], 2: 100-102. Nonetheless, as Marcel Trudel has pointed out, de facto
revocation is exactly what did take place, legal hairsplitting notwithstanding; see
Marcel Trudel, “Le Protestantisme s’établit au Canada,” Revue de l’Université
Laval, 10 (1955): 3.
Cited in Campeau, Monumenta, 2:105.
The siege itself lasted from November 1627 until October 1628, but Louis XIII
arrived outside the city in October 1627, and Richelieu several months before
that, see Louise Canet, L’Aunis et la Saintonge de Henri IV à la Révolution (La
Rochelle: Pijollet, 1934), p. 24-32.
Campeau, Monumenta, 2:101.
Cited in Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France, 3, pt 1 :318.
Cited in Bédard, Protestants, pp. 29-30.
Beauharnais and Hocquart to the minister, 18 September 1741, AC: C11A, vol.
75, p. 14; Dale Miquelon, Dugard of Rouen: French, Trade to Canada and the
West Indies, 1729-1770 (Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1978), p.
18, 70, 72, 142.
Louis Pérouas, Le Diocèse de La Rochelle de 1648 à 1724: sociologie et
pastorale (Paris: SEVPEN, 1964), p. 136. Sailors and merchants were clearly
temporary emigrants, but the status of engagés was more ambiguous. While
technically recruited as colonists, they could not be termed habitants prior to the
expiration of their contracts, “hence the possibility for Huguenot engagés to
spend several successive winters without being inconvenienced” (Trudel,
Histoire de la Nouvelle-France, 3, pt. 2: 28-29).
Bédard, Protestants, p. 32-35.
The 123 Protestants named by Bédard who were not studied here were mostly
soldiers and merchants whose stays in Canada may or may not have been
temporary.
An estimated 7% of the population of Lower Poitou was made up of Protestants in
1685; see François Baudry, La Révocation de l’Edit de Nantes et le
protestantisme en Bas-Poitou au XVIIIe siècle (Trévoux: Jeannin, 1922),
p. 283-284.
Gabriel Debien, Les Engagés protestants de Chef-Boutonne ou les difficultés de
l’histoire sociale (Poitiers : Oudin, 1956), p. 8-9.
This figure includes 2 foreigners.
Or 78, according to Bédard, Protestants, p. 43.
Bédard’s occupational sample is not directly comparable to mine, because it
includes the British and Anglo-American element; however, our conclusions are
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
not dissimilar. Among the most important categories in his table are the army,
commerce, the maritime trades, and carpentry; see ibid., p. 61.
André Corvisier, L’Armée française de la fin du XVIIe siecle au ministère de
Choiseul: le soldat (Paris: PUF, 1964), 1:288-291 (p. 288 quoted).
Bédard cited only 16 filles à marier for the entire French Regime, whereas my
sample included 41 women. The discrepancy is in part a matter of definition,
since I counted as Protestant some women who may have converted before their
departure. See Bédard, Protestants, p. 54-55.
For example, of the roughly 300 abjurations that occurred in La Rochelle in the
three years following the siege, fully 80% involved women. According to
Pérouas, “the principal explanation of these conversions appears to be the jump in
the birthrate, habitual in the aftermath of hecatombs, doubtless linked to the
disappearance of numerous young Protestant men. Even supposing that the vital
registers are not fully complete, we must admit that the movement toward
conversion barely affected the Huguenot population as a whole” (Louis Pérouas,
“Sur la démographie rochelaise,” Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations, 16
[1961]: 1133-1134). Similarly, among New England captives in New France,
women were far more likely to convert to Catholicism than men; see John Demos,
The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (New York:
Knopf, 1994), p. 79.
Nelson Dawson, “Les Filles à marier envoyées en Nouvelle-France (1632-1685):
une émigration protestante?” Revue d’histoire de 1’Eglise de France, 72 (1986):
286-288. Dawson’s hypothesis, while fascinating and plausible, nonetheless
lacks conclusive proof.
Cited in Denis Vaugeois, Les Juifs et la Nouvelle-France (Trois-Rivières: Boréal
Express, 1968), p. 52.
Vital records of Louisbourg, Baptisms (1752-1754), AC: G1, vols. 408-409.
Hocquart to the minister, 15 September 1738, AC: C11A, vol. 70, p. 129.
Hocquart to the minister, 27 September 1739, ibid., vol. 71, p. 134.
Corvisier, L’Armée française, 1:337. The Canadian archives contain one other
case of transvestism as well, that of the Demoiselle André, whom the authorities
wished to deport to France for bad conduct in 1734. Once embarked, “she found
the means to escape disguised as a man”; however, “uncertain of what to do,” she
sought out the bishop, governor, and intendant the following day. They
convinced her to return to Paris “to go join her family” (Beauharnais and
Hocquart to the Minister, 28 October 1734, AC: C11A, vol. 61, p. 259). For a
general study of transvestism in early modern Europe, see Rudoph Dekke and
Lotte van de Pol, The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989).
AC: C11A, vol. 70, p. 129.
“Rapport des assemblées mensuelles, 1978-1979,” Mémoires de la Société
généalogique canadienne française, 30 (1979): 145.
Benjamin Sack, History of the Jews in Canada from the Earliest Beginnings to
the Present Day (Montréal: Canadian Jewish Congress, 1945), p. 21.
Testimonial of freedom at marriage, 2 June 1767, ASQ: ms. 430.
Raymond Douville and Jacques-Donat Casanova, La Vie quotidienne en
Nouvelle-France: le Canada, de Champlain a Montcalm (Montréal: Hachette,
1982), p. 233.
Cited in Archange Godbout, “Les Emigrants de 1664,” Mémoires de la Société
généalogique canadienne-française, 4 (1951): 224.
219
35. In any case, he wrote to Laval forthwith that the king would desist from recruiting
there. See René Le Tenneur, Les Normands et les origines du Canada français
(Coutances: OCEP, 1973), p. 165.
36. Jacques Mathieu has speculated that up to a quarter of La Rochelle’s emigrants
may have been of Huguenot descent, but even this figure would leave a large
majority of Catholics; see Jacques Mathieu,”Mobilité et sédentarité: stratégies
familiales en Nouvelle-France,” Recherches sociographiques, 28 (1987): 216.
37. Cited in Ed. de Lorière, “Quelques notes sur les émigrants manceaux et
principalement fléchois au Canada pendant le XVIIe siècle,” Annales fléchoises,
9 (1908): 24.
38. François de Nion, ed., Un outre-mer au XVIIe siècle: voyages au Canada du
baron de La Hontan (Paris: Pion, 1900), pp. 102-103.
39. Ibid., p. 139.
40. Ibid., p. 42. This description was echoed a century later by another observer, who
claimed that the traders did not leave the city “until they had expended all the
money from their furs in debauchery” (cited in Robert-Lionel Seguin, La Vie
libertine en Nouvelle-France an XVIIe siecle [Ottawa: Leméac, 1972], 1:68.
41. Nion, Un outre-mer, p. 110-112; Séguin, Vie libertine, 1: 83, 90 (quoted).
42. Séguin, Vie libertine, 2: 503-505, 513, 515. The situation in Acadia was hardly
more edifying. Before the deportation, the colonists built no stone churches, and
there was not a single vocation for the religious life. See Naomi Griffiths, “The
Golden Age: Acadian Life, 1713-1748,” Histoire sociale/Social History, 17
(1984): 33, and Séguin, La Vie libertine, 1:43.
43. Réal Bates, “Les Conceptions prénuptiales dans la vallée du Saint-Laurent avant
1725,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, 40 (1986): 253-272; Lyne
Paquette and Réal Bates, “Les Naissances illégitimes sur les rives du SaintLaurent avant 1730,” ibid., 40 (1986): 239-252.
44. Her father was a merchant in the well-to-do parish of Saint-André. Her brother
Jacques became a merchant in Montréal, where she joined him while still in her
midteens. Both of them married there into a prominent merchant family from
Rouen. See René Jetté, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec des
origines à 1730 (Montreal: PUM, 1983), p. 636, 1070.
45. Séguin, Vie libertine, 1: 79, 85, 116-139, 276-279.
46. Cited ibid., p. 138.
47. Since the performance occurred on February 15, it may have been a novel way to
celebrate Mardi Gras. The pastor had, in any case, forbidden traditional
celebrations with masks. See Nion, Un outre-mer, p. 103, and Séguin, Vie
libertine, 1: 207-211.
48. Cited in Séguin, Vie libertine, 1: 209, 211.
49. Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France, 3, pt. 1: 308-316, 323-330.
50. W. J. Eccles, France in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 71. The
new royal government was also responsible for lowering the tithe from
one-thirteenth to one twenty-sixth, an arrangement that persisted through the
French Regime. Even this lower rate was optimistic, since there were too few
priests to supervise the collection. See Cornelius Jaenen, The Role of the Church
in New France (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1976), p. 84-89, and Louise
Dechêne, Habitants et marchands de Montréal au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Plon,
1974), p. 251-252.
51. Séguin, Vie libertine, 1:84.
220
52. Gustave Lanctôt, A History of Canada from the Treaty of Utrecht to the Treaty of
Paris, 1713-1763, trans. Margaret Cameron (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1965), p. 126-127.
53. There was no parish church in Louisbourg because inhabitants refused to pay the
tithe. One result of this lack of religious infrastructure was an illegitimacy rate
four times the Laurentian norm and a double rate of prenuptial conceptions. See
A. J. B. Johnston, Religion in Life at Louisbourg, 1713-1758 (Montréal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1984), p. 22, 134, 153.
54. Trial of Yacinthe Gabriel Lebon, Conseil supérieur of Louisbourg (1753-1754),
AC: G2, vol. 189, p. 148-269.
55. Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels
and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791
(Cleveland, 1896-1901), 7:256.
56. “Les Véritables Motifs de messieurs et dames de la Société Notre-Dame de
Montréal pour la conversion des sauvages de Nouvelle-France,” Mémoires de la
Société historique de Montréal, 9 (1880): 17. Although published anonymously
in 1643, this tract was probably written by Abbé Jean-Jacques Olier, the founder
of Saint-Sulpice.
57. Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 7:260.
58. Women did not, it should be noted, increase their religious authority without cost
to themselves. The years of the great dévotes were also those of frequent witch
burnings and exorcisms. The famous possédées of Loudun (1631-1638) were the
persecuted counterparts to the spiritual pionnières of Canada.
60. Georges Goyau, Les Origines religieuses du Canada: une épopée mystique
(Montréal: Fides, 1951), p. 140.
61. Eventually, he dropped the suit, having been inspired by the Jesuit Relations (and
a lettre de cachet of the queen). Sister Saint-Augustin arrived in Canada in 1648.
See Françoise Juchereau de Saint-Ignace, Histoire de l’Hôtel-Dieu de Québec
(Montauban, 1751), p. 71.
62. François Dollier de Casson, Histoire de Montréal, ed. Marcel Trudel and Marie
Baboyant (Montréal: Hurtubise HMH, 1992), p. 201-202.
64. Ibid., 15:282.
65. Ibid., 19:56; 20: 138, 140.
66. For a more detailed discussion of sexual politics among the missionaries of New
France, see Leslie Choquette, “Ces Amazones du Grand Dieu: Women and
Mission in Seventeenth-Century Canada,” French Historical Studies, 17 (1992):
627-655.
221
Masako Iino
A History of Japanese Canadians:
Swayed by Canada-Japan Relations
Abstract
This chapter deals with the Japanese Canadians (Nikkei) who had been
forced to leave their home in British Columbia when World War II broke out
and, after the war, had to choose a place for their home east of the Rockies,
not allowed to return to BC. The case study of their resettlement in Montreal,
Quebec, and the Canadian government’s unique policy of dispersing the
Nikkei throughout Canada are the major focus in this chapter. The
resettlement process of the Nikkei in Montreal is another illustration to show
how the treatment of Nikkei in Canada differed from that in the U.S., which is
the theme of the book. This text was translated from Japanese to English.
Résumé
Ce chapitre porte sur les Canadiens japonais (Nikkei) qui ont été obligés de
quitter leur maison en Colombie-Britannique au moment du déclenchement
de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale et qui, après la guerre, ont dû choisir un
endroit pour s’installer à l’est des Rocheuses, parce qu’ils n’avaient pas le
droit de retourner en C.-B. Ce chapitre concerne surtout l’étude de cas sur
leur réinstallation à Montréal (Québec) et la politique unique du
gouvernement canadien consistant à disperser les Nikkei dans tout le
Canada. Le processus de réinstallation des Nikkei à Montréal est une autre
illustration du traitement différent accordé aux Nikkei au Canada par rapport
au sort réservé aux Japonais aux États-Unis, qui est le thème du livre. Ce texte
a été traduit du japonais vers l’anglais.
Introduction
The difference discussed in the previous chapter (chapter 4 in the book) is
how the United States and Canada treated people of Japanese descent
(Nikkei) during the war is also evident in how post-war resettlement
occurred in the two countries. “Resettlement” is the migration from the
place to which people were taken in the forced eviction during the war to
their new place, often far away. As we have already seen, plans for
resettlement had been in place and action had already started during the war,
but it was only after the war ended that effects could be seen. In Canada, the
33-34, 2006
Nikkei were forbidden from returning to British Columbia, which before
the war was home to more than ninety percent of these people. In 1947, the
federal parliament voted for a one-year extension to a cabinet decree
designating British Columbia as a defense zone. Ian Mackenzie’s slogan,
“We don’t want a single Jap between here and the Rockies1,” was still alive
in both political and public fronts. This was a major difference from the
United States, and a likely reason for the different speeds of improvement in
the post-war social and economical status of the Nikkei in the two countries.
In this chapter, we will use a case study of the easterly migration from
British Columbia to faraway Montreal to study the resettlement of the
Nikkei and the Canadian government’s strikingly unique policy of
dispersing the Nikkei throughout Canada.
Review of the Resettlement Plan
The plan to migrate east was not as fruitful as the government had hoped
because, while the government promoted resettlement in the East, the East
did not provide the necessary conditions for settlement. The government
appears to have recognized this: In April of 1946, it increased the
resettlement aid funding, citing the goal of closing inland internment camps
as quickly as possible and to that end promoting the Nikkei’s easterly
migration. The funds paid out to singles of age 16 or older were increased
from $35 to $45 per person, and the amount for married couples was
increased from $60 to $120. They also provided eight dollars per person for
meals during travel. During this year, as many as 4,700 Nikkei left B.C., of
which 75% headed to Eastern Canada and 25% went to the Prairies. The
Nikkei population in the East increased significantly, to 7,880 in the five
eastern provinces and 5,871 in the Prairie Provinces in 1947, while the
population in the internment camps decreased to 9002. This is likely not so
much due to the increase in aid, but more because people were forced to
make a decision by the sequence of events starting from Prime Minister
Mackenzie King’s announcement of the Nikkei dispersal plan in August of
1944 to the Loyalty Assessment and ensuing deportation plan (Figure 3).
However, problems in areas receiving the Nikkei continued. Even
around this time, anti-Japanese sentiment did not weaken with distance
from B.C., and “hostility towards the evicted people” could be seen in many
parts of the East. Some farms employed the Nikkei from shortage of labour,
but there were city councils that voted to ban the Nikkei from their cities
despite the labour shortage, citing that it is a problem to have the Nikkei in
workplaces to where their young would return from battle. A near-riot
occurred in a fertilizer plant in Ontario that employed seven secondgeneration Nikkei, and police had to be called in to settle things down.
Toronto, which was to have the greatest concentration of Nikkei in post-war
Canada, closed its doors to them during this time because of its military
industries with the exception a temporary acceptance period in the spring of
224
Figure 3.
Comparison of the population distribution of
Nikkei Canadians
1942. Ottawa and the affluent suburbs of Toronto banned Nikkei women
from working as maids3.
Even among those employed, some could not dismiss the notion that the
Nikkei were “the last to be hired and first to be fired.” The United Church
continued to assist the Nikkei resettlement, and sent clergymen to the
eastern cities as counselors. Rev. Shimizu, one of those who were sent,
writes as follows:
These people, because of continued frustration, have unwittingly
become a bit reckless. A surprising number had the “why bother?”
attitude. “We worked hard, obeyed the law, and tried to be loyal,
good Canadian citizens, but we are viewed as foreign enemies4.”
Resettlement in the United States
On December 17, 1944, the United States Department of War announced
that they will retract the evacuation order effective January 2 of the
following year. People were allowed to return to their pre-evacuation
homes. On the 18th of that month, the WRA announced the closing of all
relocation centres by end of 1945, and the closure of all WRA plans by June
30, 1946. The policy was to proceed with these plans regardless of the
complexity of the war because it was easier for returnees to find work and
housing during the war. The WRA encouraged the 80,000 Nikkei still in
relocation centres to return, announcing that regional offices will be
225
established to help in the return to the once evacuated regions of the West
Coast, that they intended to assist in the resettlement in areas outside of the
West Coast as well, and that public sentiment towards the Nikkei had
improved. Even though public sentiment in the West Coast was still
unstable and returning required some courage, by end of June 1945 half of
the evacuees had returned to the West Coast, and by October 90% had
returned5. Upon their long-awaited return, their jobs and assets were often
gone. Personal assets held in government storage or by acquaintances were
seldom returned. In addition, prejudice had not disappeared. The largest
obstacle was housing; in one case, the WRA provided army facilities as
temporary accommodation for the returnees, and in another an employer
provided trailer homes. The Nikkei were sometimes subject to
discrimination in acquiring licenses needed for certain types of profession.
While the WRA tackled these issues, churches and humanitarian groups
helped6.
The interns at Tule Lake were said to have a loyalty problem and were not
permitted to leave the camp yet. Many were submitting their Citizenship
Resignation Form based on the Denationalization Law passed by congress
in 1944. About 5,700 submissions were made, but around the time of
Japan’s surrender in August of 1945, many applied for cancellation or
reassessment. In the end, only 4,724 were deported to Japan. The final
detainee was reassessed and dismissed from Tule Lake on March 20, 1946.
Looking at the distribution of the Nikkei population at the time, about
57,000 had returned to the East Coast area from which they were evicted,
and around 52,000 had resettled elsewhere. The number of Nikkei
resettling in the West Coast was more than the WRAhad anticipated, but the
resulting Nikkei population was still less than it was before the war7.
The plan to resettle people inland began while the evictees were still
waiting for their unknown fate in the internment camp, but it was not until
the first local WRA office, in charge of the mid-west resettlement, was
opened in Chicago in January of 1943 that the plan started in earnest. In
addition to employment and housing, the office was charged with creating a
favorable climate within the receiving communities. Local offices were
opened in Cleveland, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Denver, New York, Little
Rock as well. The post-war labour shortage made it relatively easy to find
employers. In particular, a large number of Nikkei headed for the Chicago
area increasing the Nikkei population in Illinois from 462 in 1940 to 11,646
in 1950, making it the state with the second largest Nikkei population after
California. The announcement in December of 1945 that return to
California will be permitted starting the following year, however, caused
some of the Nikkei already resettled in the east or mid-west to head back to
the West Coast8.
The greatest success in inland resettlement appears to have been with
students. While the eviction deprived approximately 3,500 Nisei of their
226
opportunity for post-secondary education, the Student Relocation Council
was created as early as March of 1942 and encouraged inland schools to
accept the Nikkei students. In May of the same year, the National Student
Relocation Council was formed, and persuaded many universities to accept
the Nikkei students. The WRA also conducted an investigation with the
War and Navy Departments and assisted the resettlement of students. By
the end of the project, approximately 4,300 students were accepted in
universities, far exceeding the pre-war figures. WRA director Dillon S.
Meyer recognized this increase in university entrance as an important factor
in furthering subsequent resettlement. It is to be noted, however, that the
WRA only paid travel expenses for the students, so continuation of their
studies depended on other means such as scholarships or grants from
religious organizations. The students were generally accepted favorably
within the university, but sensing the anti-Japanese climate outside, they
felt as if they were representing the Nikkei people. It is said that the Nikkei
students had good scores because of this sense of responsibility9.
Resettlement in Canada differed dramatically from that of the United
States on this point. The University of British Columbia had the largest
number of Nikkei students at the start of the war, and the Nikkei students
there were excluded from the military training. When the eviction order was
issued, these students were asked to move to other universities, but
acceptance was poor. The decision to accept the Nikkei students was left up
to each university, but there was a view that the eastern universities should
act with consistency. In this climate, there was a situation where a student
was accepted by a university but could not obtain approval to live in the
area. In the case of McGill University which we will revisit, Nikkei students
were refused entrance until spring of 1945 on the premise that there was
“important strategic research” carried out on-site. As of 1945, the number
of Nikkei students who were resettled in an eastern university was still less
than 100; a remarkable difference from the United States even when
considering the difference between the total Nikkei populations of the two
countries10.
“To the East of the Rockies”
As an example of resettlement, let us consider the example of the migration
to Montreal, Quebec, the largest Canadian city at the time. Being far from
British Columbia, Quebec easily satisfied the criteria of the government’s
slogan, “To the East of the Rockies,” but it was never a destination of choice
from the time of the first Japanese immigrants to Canada. Quebec had no
sugar beet farms or road construction sites, which in other regions were
employers of Nikkei labour during the times of eviction. The province
continues to have a small Nikkei population to this day (2655 in the
province of Quebec and 2265 in Montreal according to the 1991 census).
Despite the small population, however, when we look at the history of the
Nikkei population in the province of Quebec and in Montreal, where most
227
of Quebec’s Nikkei reside, we see a sharp increase occurring at the time of
World War II (see Table 3). This jump in Montreal’s Nikkei population is
clearly the effect of the Canadian government’s dispersal policy.
Table 3 Nikkei Population per Province (1901-1991)
(unit: people)
Year
Newfoundland
Prince
Edward
Island
Nova
Scotia
New
Brunswick
Quebec
Ontario
Manitoba
1901
-
-
1
-
9
29
4
1911
-
-
4
-
12
35
5
1921
-
-
3
3
32
161
53
1931
-
-
4
-
43
220
51
1941
-
-
2
3
48
234
42
1951
2
6
4
7
1,137
8,581
1,161
1961
3
-
28
18
1,459
11,870
1,296
1971
20
15
85
40
1,745
15,600
1,335
1981
25
5
40
30
1,395
16,685
1,300
1991
30
55
310
145
2,680
24,380
1,555
Year
Saskatchewan
Alberta
British
Columbia
Yukon
NWT
Total Nikkei
Population
Total
Canadian
Population
1901
1
13
4,597
84
-
4,738
5,371,315
1911
57
247
8,587
74
-
9,021
7,206,643
1921
109
473
15,006
28
-
15,868
8,787,949
1931
114
652
22,205
52
1
23,342
10,376,786
1941
105
578
22,096
41
-
23,149
11,506,655
1951
225
3,336
7,169
23
12
21,663
14,009,429
1961
280
3,721
10,424
32
26
29,157
18,238,247
1971
315
4,460
13,585
40
15
37,255
21,568,310
1981
205
5,225
16,040
30
10
40,990
24,083,500
1991
770
8,745
27,145
90
60
65,965
27,296,855
Source: Statistics Canada, Census of Canada, 1991.
It is said that Montreal was friendlier to the incoming Nikkei than other
eastern regions. At the end of May of 1942, the Japanese-Canadian
newspaper The New Canadian ran an article about Montreal as a
destination for resettlement, introducing it as a “big city” that is “very
different from Vancouver,” that it has a history of 300 years as opposed to
Vancouver’s 60 years, that living costs were expensive, and that “girls can
find work” because there were many housekeeping and maid opportunities.
Montreal had always been a city with a mix of ethnic groups, so, unlike in
228
Vancouver and as the Nikkei found from their own experience, here the
people were more tolerant of race differences. It is easy to understand how
prejudice towards the Japanese was virtually non-existent because the
number of Japanese in Montreal at the time of the Pearl Harbour attack was
less than 5011.
What prompted the Nikkei in British Columbia to decide to move to
Montreal was, first and foremost, the information that there was abundant
work, and The New Canadian provided much of that information. In June of
1943, we can see a few articles with titles along the lines of, “Montreal, the
number one city in Canada with plenty of job opportunities in various
fields,” which were written by Tom Shoyama sent to investigate the east by
BCSC. Rev. Shimizu, who was sent to the East as a counselor by the United
Church, also contributed a number of articles to The New Canadian about
his impressions of Montreal. In November of 1943, he reported of the
expanding range of the Nikkei’s professions, citing a Nikkei employed as a
certified accountant and a Nisei woman who became director of the
preschool department of a daycare centre, both in Montreal. He presented
his view that,
There were obstacles such as ignorance or skepticism of the
employers towards the Nikkei, opposition by white employers,
and instances of some fellow Nikkei who refused to cooperate, but
these have been removed in time and a future that looks promising
in all regards is unfolding12.
We cannot deny that The New Canadian articles were motivated by a
desire to persuade the Nikkei in British Columbia to migrate to the East. The
Nikkei population of the various eastern regions did in fact start increasing
around this time. A report at the beginning of 1944 showed that the Nikkei
population in Montreal already exceeded 500, of which 240 were
employed. According to this report, there were as many as 20 fields of
employment, and the largest number of people was in “domestic chores”
and chefs, which totaled 74 men and women, of which 45 worked in a home.
Of those who started their own business, “dress store,” “radio shop,” and
“importer” could be seen13.
Koryu Shimotakahara and his family, the first Nikkei family to move to
Montreal from British Columbia, is an example of business success.
Having to close his women’s clothing store in Vancouver with the onset of
the Pacific War, Shimotakahara sent letters to several cities to inquire about
starting anew. The result was that only Montreal sent a reply of acceptance.
Shortly after arriving at Montreal, he opened a store similar to the one he ran
in Vancouver in Montreal’s shopping district. According to one Nisei, it
may not have worked out had it not been Montreal14.
Of course, not all Nikkei who moved to Montreal experienced a smooth
resettlement like Shimotakahara. One Nisei vividly recalls how difficult it
229
was to find even the most menial work after arriving in Montreal. He claims
that the reason he couldn’t find employment was “not a legitimate one like
lack of certification, but just because I was a Nikkei … the employers
thought that it was inappropriate to hire Japs while Canada was at war with
Japan … they were afraid to hire me.” In May of 1944, The Montreal Star, a
major Montreal newspaper, printed an article titled, “Sweep out the Nikkei
from Canada.” The article argued that all Nikkei are Japanese spies, and that
shrot of “completely uprooting this dangerous threat,” Canadian interests
will be at risk. We do not know to what extent this article reflected the
sentiments of the people of Montreal, but it is not difficult to imagine how
hurtful it was to the local Nikkei people15.
In June of 1944, The New Canadian studied the employment status of the
Nikkei population in Montreal. According to this study, the people who
moved in during the past year reportedly had “a better job” than before the
move. In a repeat study conducted in November of that year, it was reported
that “Montreal validates the theory of moving the Nikkei from the West
Coast and scattering them across the country.” The report argues that the
progress of the area’s Nikkei community is proof that the Nikkei can spread
both geographically and professionally as long as prejudice is absent. The
report does not, however, indicate whether the Nikkei were received in a
socially satisfactory state. Nevertheless, at least the variety of professions
had increased. Compared to a survey from a year earlier, those employed in
a home had decreased, and the categories of “factory workers (clothing,
furniture, locks, pipes, etc.)” and “labour, general help” totaled 90, making
them the largest groups (there were 550 residents in Montreal, out of which
400 were working). Around autumn of 1944, The New Canadian printed
voices of the Nikkei. A Nikkei in Montreal wrote of being happy for not
being discriminated against and that the new place offered a stable life and
optimism for a future. Another message conveyed excitement over casting
a vote for the first time in one’s life in the general provincial election and
enjoying “justice and fairness in real terms16.”
In 1944, Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis announced that Quebec’s
provincial government was opposed to accepting the Nikkei from British
Columbia, and that measures must be put in place to prevent them from
being established. However, legislation to prevent the influx of the Nikkei
never materialized, and Montreal’s Nikkei population climbed sharply
from 1946 through 1947. This obviously reflects a change in policy of the
Canadian government, but it is also likely that the introduction of
conditions in Montreal through personal letters and The New Canadian and
the fact that the early settlers’ living conditions were stabilizing were also
contributing factors.
Around 1946, articles on the attractiveness of Montreal had evolved
from dreams and optimism to dealing with very concrete facts. For
example, not only did Montreal offer a wide range of employment
230
opportunities, one could even find white collar jobs or become lawyers and
pharmacists, which would have been impossible in British Columbia.
Moreover, the Nikkei faced no unfair disadvantage in pay, women’s pay
was a few times that of British Columbia, people with specialized skills
were able to find suitable high-paying jobs, and the list goes on.
Den Sato, a long-time Japanese language educator in British Columbia,
traveled to Eastern Canada around this time and observed that, due to the
favorable conditions of the Nikkei in Montreal, the “feeling of inferiority
and servility from the past were fading and that self-respect as a human
being … was starting to appear17.”
Organizations and Projects that Helped Resettlement
In addition to these several factors that accelerated resettlement to
Montreal, another important factor was the organizations that helped in the
resettlement. There were many types of organizations that helped the
Nikkei, including church and political groups. The pioneering organization
was the “Nisei Assistance Committees” centered around “churches and
social workers with a passion for philanthropy.” Established as early as
1942 according to a proposal by the government’s Japanese Placement
Agency, this organization aimed to assist the Nikkei in finding employment
and housing while encouraging their participation in various community
activities. The agency, with Mrs. Canon Powles, Missionary of the
Methodist Church, at its centre, performed outstandingly, and held the
“enviable record” of welcoming every Nikkei who arrived at Montreal
during those times18.
In February of 1943, 15 Canadians including some Nikkei created an
organization called “The International Fellowship Society” to help the
Nikkei in Montreal adapt to society and to provide an opportunity “for even
the shy ones to socialize with other Canadians.” The main purpose was to
socialize through the Christian religion, so the semi-monthly gatherings
invariably started with a mass. The minutes of these meetings remain today
and show repeated discussions on the importance of the Nikkei’s
assimilation into Canadian society. For example, a discussion was held on
whether the existence of the organization in itself would cause people to
assume that the Japanese have not yet assimilated. In another case, “a short
skit was performed by the members to demonstrate the notable flaws of the
Nikkei, for example the tendency to give up before trying, shyness,
gossiping, lack of sophistication,” so that the Nikkei could use it for
self-improvement. There was also a case in which the Nikkei would warn
each other against doing conspicuous things in public or give “a bad
impression19.” Through these efforts, the organization contributed to the
acceptance of the Nikkei into the society of Montreal.
231
In 1945, the organization sent a petition to Prime Minister King
requesting an amendment to the federal government’s resettlement policy.
The petition called for removal of current legal and economic
discriminations imposed on the Nikkei in purchase of real estate or opening
of a business, and for active economic support for those in such adversity
that they are unable to relocate or resettle. It argued that, through these
measures, the Nikkei’s rights would be recovered leading the way to a
permanent and independent settlement. This is an example of an effort to
assist the Nikkei resettlement from a legal point of view, and serves as a
prelude to the compensation demands made later in reference to the forced
eviction.
In 1944, the Nikkei themselves created an organization called the
“Nikkei Permanent Committee.” The scope of this organization was not
limited to Montreal, and its aim was “to resolve the emergency situation that
affects all Nikkei throughout Canada,” in other words, to raise funds needed
to counter the federal government’s Mass Nikkei Eviction Policy. In 1946,
the committee issued a newsletter called the “Montreal News Bulletin” in
both English and in Japanese, and aimed for cooperation with other similar
organizations across Canada. The newsletter had a section called “Hello
Montreal,” which introduced a Nikkei newcomer to Montreal by name in
every issue. Occasionally, a letter from a Nisei who had gone back to Japan
described the circumstances in Japan. In the summer of 1946, the newsletter
ran entire letters written by Nikkei who returned to Japan addressed to the
Nikkei living in Montreal. One letter strongly insisted, “Japan is not a good
place to come back to now!” and another wrote, “At this time, life in Japan is
very difficult. I think it was a good thing that you left for Montreal without
signing the Japan Deportation Application.” The letters vividly convey the
woeful circumstances of Japan at that time. There was also advice to take
care to be “in sync with white co-workers” to ensure the Nikkei in Montreal
are not antagonized as they were in British Columbia20. The organization
was not only interested in the issue of rights, but also considered the smooth
execution of resettlement to be important.
In April of 1946, a highly politically-charged organization called the
“Nikkei Canadian Welfare Coalition” was formed. In August, this merged
with the “Nikkei Permanent Committee” to form the “Nikkei Canadian
Welfare Coalition of Montreal.” The new goal set forth at the time of the
merger was to deepen mutual understanding with other ethnic groups and to
become better citizens. To this end, job one was to assist in improving the
lives of the resettlers21. This organization was the basis for the “All Canada
Nikkei Citizen Association Quebec Chapter” formed later. In addition to
these organizations in which the Nikkei were directly involved, the Roman
Catholic Church contributed to the resettlement by providing lodging until
homes were found, or by offering meeting space for the Nikkei
232
organizations. An example of this is the “St. Rafael House,” which helped
by lodging many single Nikkei women.
More help for the resettlement of the Nikkei in Montreal was provided by
a hostel built in the suburbs of Montreal as part of the government’s
dispersal plan. Thinking they would like to move the Nikkei from the inland
internment centre as early as possible and thinking that at least 300 Nikkei
could be hired in farms in the outskirts of Montreal, the BCSC met in April
of 1945 with farm owners in the Eastern Townships, which span the south
side of Montreal. The farm owners, however, were not cooperative, and the
conclusion was reached that the “problem was not so much employment as
lodging.” In a study conducted at the same time, a building suitable for a
hostel was found in Terrebonne, a small town with a population of 2,000 in
the agricultural area 15 miles south of the centre of Montreal. Thinking, “In
order to convince the people in the internment centre to move to the east …
this place needs an emergency hostel,” a project to construct the hostel was
started. However, the project met with strong opposition from nearby
residents and was cancelled in June22.
In April of 1946, after a careful site-selection process so as not to repeat
the mistake made in Terrebonne, a project was initiated to use the building
of a former German prison camp in Farnham to create a hostel for the
Nikkei. The hostel opened in June. The government’s plan was to
temporarily lodge the Nikkei from British Columbia in this hostel and to use
it as a “resettlement distribution centre,” or a “manning pool” to allocate
them to farms or factories. The facility had a capacity of about 200. In order
to prevent people from staying long without being able to find a job, some
care was taken such as limiting admission to no more than 15 to 20 families
at any one time or making sure the conditions are not too comfortable.
During the first three months, 173 people (approximately 40 families)
stayed at the Farnham Hostel, of which 49 found a job and 21 worked in
farms while still staying at the hostel and were planning to move into their
respective farms shortly. The Farnham Hostel served as “a shared facility
where evictees could stay until they are assigned to a job and reasonably
independent.” We can say that the hostel helped the resettlement by
providing the evictees with a comfort of sorts23.
There are no records to show just how much the Nikkei in Montreal
contributed to the establishment of such government facilities, but The
Montreal News Bulletin had a level-headed view of things. For example, the
June 1946 issue ran a long front-page article of the Farnham Hostel, but the
following statement is included at the end of only the Japanese version.
When many friends and families start using the Farnham Hostel as their
temporary homes, we should “refrain from visiting unless for a good
reason.” If we give a “bad impression” to the residents of Farnham, it may
lead to closure of the hostel, and it “would be a pity if that would close the
door on the people who want to move east24.” This statement could be taken
233
as a cold reception towards the Nikkei who use the hostel in their
resettlement effort, but at the very least we can see a prudence to ensure the
Nikkei is not seen to be concentrating in one place.
Lastly, we will study a case in which an act that was originally intended
more to prevent rather than to support the influx of the Nikkei ended up
supporting the resettlement. This is the case in which McGill University,
one of Canada’s most reputable universities, banned Nikkei students. In
September of 1943, McGill University’s advisory committee voted for
accepting Japanese students at a slim margin of 11 to 10. But in October,
merely one month later, the decision is withdrawn. Given the reason for not
admitting the Nikkei was that, since the Nikkei were not allowed to serve in
the military, admitting them would be unfair to those in the military;
moreover, during this time, the only justification for a university was its
contribution to the war. There was also the view that the Nikkei should not
be allowed near a military factory, and that since McGill University
conducted important military research, they should not be allowed
entrance25.
Ayear later, the Nikkei ban is discussed again by the advisory committee,
but in December of 1944, a decision is made not to lift the ban. However,
criticism and objections toward the advisory committee began to appear
around this time. Individuals, the church, and the student committee took
action in an effort to overturn the decision of the advisory committee.
Students held frequent meetings and adopted a resolution to oppose the
advisory committee’s decision. The campus newsletter Daily McGill not
only reported such resolutions, but presented arguments against the
advisory committee’s decision. Even The New Canadian, which had
always been receptive to government policy, was shocked at the decision
and suggested that the university’s argument is an “extremely weak attempt
to hide the intent of racial discrimination” and that this behavior was “in no
way justified particularly coming from a prestigious university26.”
Among the many letters of protest sent by church-related organizations,
some used strong language. For example, one stated: “Racial
discrimination goes against the principle of god … It is our hope that the
halls of learning, which share with the church the great tradition of freedom,
open their doors to people of all races.” In a speech to teachers and students
in Montreal, M. J. Caldwell, the leader of the socialist-oriented
Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), referring to the decision
by McGill to ban Nikkei students stated: “To do something like this
amounts to forfeiting its right to its university status27.”
It was more than a half year later, in July of 1945, that Nikkei students
were allowed to attend McGill University. It is possible to argue that this
incident delayed the Nikkei’s easterly resettlement. At the very least,
Nikkei students were not allowed in McGill University for two years, and
234
while other universities in Montreal accepted Nikkei students, the number
of students resettled in eastern universities by 1945 was less than 100. On
the other hand, one could say that the effect of the ban on other students and
on the general public was more important than the number of banned
students, for it planted antagonism towards racism and gave rise to acts of
Nikkei acceptance.
Conclusion
Despite examples of rejection of the Nikkei by Quebec Premier Duplessis
and McGill University, resettlement in Montreal is generally considered to
have gone well. This success if likely attributable to the existence of
organizations supporting the resettlement as mentioned earlier and
Montreal’s liberal attitude toward the Nikkei driven from the cities already
multicultural makeup. Another important reason for this succes is the small
volume of the Nikkei migration to Montreal. If a large number moves in at
once, the receiving society will inevitably experience unrest and
skepticism. Montreal’s long distance from British Columbia, its totally
different climate, and its small Nikkei population prior to the war all worked
against motivating the Nikkei to migrate, but we could say that those factors
worked in favor of those who went through with the move. The fact that the
Canadian’ government’s dispersal plan did not proceed as quickly as the
government had hoped was also beneficial, because it meant the Nikkei
population in Montreal did not grow as rapidly. The small Nikkei
population was not intentional during the early stages, but in time the
Nikkei intentionally started to avoid concentrating in any given place as we
saw in the reaction of the Japanese organization in the opening of the
Farnham Hostel. This shows that efforts were made by the Nikkei
themselves to make the resettlement a success.
Sure enough, the Nikkei in Montreal tried. The Nisei who created the
“Nisei Fellowship Group” were concerned even about meeting. Even
though the organization was intended to promote assimilation, they were
worried the existence of the organization in itself may be seen as evidence
that assimilation has not been achieved. From their experience in British
Columbia, the Nikkei despised the idea of being rejected from society on
criticism that they are forming groups. If was more important for them to
gain stability as a low-key existence.
Avoiding formation of groups was not the only thing they were careful
about. There are many examples that show an effort to try to give a good
impression on others and to improve the Nikkei’s image. In Montreal as in
other places, the road to a stable life was to first find a job and then to keep it.
To this end, what they deemed most important was to be recognized by their
employers and at the same time to not be viewed as competition from the
white people around them. The Nisei were particularly conscious of this
point, and this is most evident in the Nikkei community newspaper The New
235
Canadian, which was permitted to continue publication during the war
albeit under surveillance by the Canadian government. We could say that
The New Canadian accepted Canadian government policy and accordingly
provided a guidance of sorts for the Nikkei to accomplish successful
resettlement. In other words, they presented the view that the only way to be
accepted successfully in Canadian society was to find a job and keep it, to be
low-key as an ethnic group, to foster friendship with fellow Canadians, and
to remove themselves from the Japanese language and culture as much as
possible, and promoted this view among the Nikkei at large. Of course, not
all Nikkei blindly followed this direction; in fact, one could say that it was
used more as a strategy to handle their new circumstance. And in the case of
Montreal, this strategy was very effective. This strategy was not only very
important in severing old ties and opening up a new world in a place where
Nikkei were scarce, but was also easily executed in such a place.
Restrictions on the Nikkei’s return to British Columbia were lifted in
1949, but the Nikkei population in British Columbia did not show a
significant increase even into the 1960s, at only 36% of the entire Nikkei
population in Canada. A reason for this is the popularity of Ontario as a
destination for the new post-war immigrants, but we also see that most of
the eastern resettlers never returned. The Nikkei in Montreal still live within
the fabric of Canadian society, without clustering in housing, work, or
school28.
Notes
1.
Carol F. Lee, “The Road to Enfranchisement: Chinese and Japanese in BC,” BC
Studies 30 (1976) p. 55.
2. Department of Labour, Report on the Re-establishment of Japanese in Canada,
1944-46 (1947) p. 18.
3. The New Canadian, Sept. 2, 1944; The Vancouver Province, Sept. 25, 1944.
4. Nisei Affairs, Sept. 2, 1944 ; The Vancouver Province, Sept. 25, 1944.
5. WRA, U. S. Department of Interior, WRA: A History of Human Conservation
(U.S. GPO, 1944) p. 151-152.
6. Noriko Shimada, The Pacific War for the Japanese Americans, Liber Press, 1995,
Chapters 4 and 6 mention organizations that provided assistance.
7. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal
Justice Denied (U.S. GPO, 1982) p. 151-152, 262. This included 1949 minors.
Most of the 1116 people who disclaimed their citizenship returned to the U.S.
8. Ibid., p. 132 ; WRA, The Evacuated People: A Quantitative Description (U.S.
GPO, 1946).
9. Personal Justice Denied, op. cit., p. 180; Robert W. O’Brien, The College Nisei
(Arno Press, 1949; rpt., 1978) p. 60, 88-91.
10. F. Q. Osborn, Queen’s University II, 1917-1965: To Serve Yet Be Free (Montreal,
1983) p. 198 ; Elaine Bernard, “A University at War: Japanese Canadians at UBC
During WW II,” BC Studies 35 (1977) p. 55.
11. The New Canadian, May 30, 1942; Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre of
Montreal, Repartirà Zero, p. 15.
12. The New Canadian, June 12, Nov. 20, 1943.
236
13. Ibid., Feb. 19, 1944.
14. Toyo Takata, Nikkei Legacy: The Story of Japanese Canadians from Settlement
to Today (Toronto: NC Press, 1983) p. 156.
15. JCCCM, Repartir, op. cit. p. 14.
16. The New Canadian, Oct. 21, 1944.
17. The New Canadian, Apr. 20, Aug. 31, Nov. 16, Nov. 23, Nov. 30, and Dec. 7,
1946.
18. The Minutes of the Canadian Fellowship Group, June 3, 1943.
19. Ibid., Mar. 18, 30 & 31, 1943, May 20, 1944.
20. Montreal News Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 5 (July 1947), Vol. 1, No. 6 (Aug. 1946),
Vol. 2, No. 3 (Mar. 1947).
21. Ibid., Vol. 1, No. 7 (Sept. 1946).
22. J. O. Beaudet, Placement Officer, to T. B. Pickersgill, Chief of Commissioner,
BCSC, Apr. 18, 1945, Public Archives Records, RG 27, Vol. 644, File 23-2-35-2, Part 1; A. H. Brown, Assistant Deputy Minister, Department of Labour, to A.
McNamara, Apr 9. 1945, Public Archives Records, RG 27, Vol. 644, File
23-2-3-5-2, Part 1; MacTavish, Eastern Regional Supervisor, to Pickersgill,
Chief Commissioner, June 8, 1945, Public Archives Records, RG 27, Vol. 644,
File 23-2-3-5-2, Part 1.
23. J. O. Beaudet to A. H. Brown, Apr. 23, 1946, Ibid.; A. Ross, Deputy Minister of
National Defence, to E. F. Thompson, Secretary, Apr. 27, 1946, Ibid.; J. O.
Beaudet to A. H. Brown, Apr. 23 & A. H. Brown to McTavish, May 3, 1946,
Public Archives Records, RG 27, Vol. 644, File 12-2-35-2, Part 1; A. H. Brown,
“Operation of Japanese Hostel at Farnam [sic], Quebec,” Public Archives
Records, RG 27, Vol. 644, File 23-2-3-5-2, Part 1 ; The New Canadian, May 25 &
June 15, 1946.
24. Montreal New Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 4 (June 1946).
25. “Summary of Senate Discussions re Japanese Students” & “Report to the Board
of Governors of the Conference Committee Appointed to the Recommendations
from the Senate Regarding the Admission of Canadian-born Japanese Students to
McGill University during the Period of the Present War.” McGill University
Archives Records.
26. The McGill Daily, Nov. 9, 10, & 13, 1946; The New Canadian, Nov. 18, 1944.
27. “Summary of Senate Discussions re Japanese Students,” McGill University
Archives Records; The New Canadian, Nov. 11, 1944.
28. Interview by the author of Nikkei living in Montreal, and discussions in the
General Meeting of the Japanese Canadian Citizens League, Quebec Chapter.
(October 1988 and April 1989.)
237
Anthony Sayers
Candidate Nomination
Abstract
The selection of candidates to contest elections and the prosecution of
election campaigns remain largely the prerogative of the local constituency
associations of political parties in Canada. This localism marks Canada as
something of an exception among modern representative democracies and
reflects the deep character of the Canadian polity. Lacking a critical event – a
revolutionary moment or a civil war – that might have bound it more tightly
together, Canada remains a regionally and ethno-linguistically complex
society; a community of communities. The local selection of candidates is a
monument to the subversion of the centralizing forces of modernity by local
peculiarity.
Résumé
Au Canada, la sélection des candidats aux élections et l’organisation des
campagnes électorales demeurent en grande partie la prérogative des
associations locales des partis politiques dans les circonscriptions. En raison
de ce caractère local, le Canada fait exception à la règle en vigueur dans les
démocraties représentatives modernes, et cela reflète la profondeur du
régime politique canadien. Comme il n’y a pas eu d’événement marquant, de
révolution ou de guerre civile au Canada, qui aurait pu cimenter davantage
notre pays, le Canada demeure une société complexe sur les plans régional et
ethnolinguistique, une communauté de communautés. La sélection locale des
candidats est un monument à la subversion des forces centralisatrices de la
modernité par les particularités locales.
The local associations that organize nominations to select national election
candidates in Canada lie at the intersection of two political worlds: the first
is that of the local riding, the second is that of their own political parties.
Although the rules governing nominations are relatively consistent across
parties and ridings, the form these contests take can vary in response to the
idiosyncratic mix of riding and partisan forces at work in each association
(Carty and Erickson 1991). Viewed from the perspective of the national
party, riding-centred forces tend to produce variation in the style of
nominations within the same party. Conversely, from the perspective of any
one riding, local circumstances appear to generate homogeneity, while it is
partisan forces that seem to be the source of variation in the nomination
experiences of the several local associations.
33-34, 2006
Below I explore how competitiveness, party organizational style
(whether cadre or mass), and local conditions shape nominations in
Canada. Although there are variations in the form nominations take, there
are consistencies in the way they function that reflect the nature of the riding
as well as the partisanship and competitive position of the local association.
As the candidate and the team of supporters he or she can muster are
paramount in deciding the style and content of any local election campaign,
these forces play a critical role in shaping the nature of that campaign.
Nominations can be classified according to whether or not they are
contested, and by the type of candidate that is successful. The intensity of
competition for the nomination is important in shaping the resources
brought to bear by candidates and determining the criteria for success. It
reflects the attraction the nomination holds for candidates and the ease with
which candidates can gain access to the nomination. As the product of this
process, the successful candidate (nominee) embodies the particular
constellation of forces that shape the nomination contest. The appeal a
nomination holds for candidates, and the access they have to the
nomination, determine both how contested a nomination is and the type of
candidate that is successful.
Appeal and access can be thought of as filters that define the terms of the
local nomination contest. Association competitiveness is a large
component of the appeal a nomination holds for prospective candidates.
But competitiveness does not always have a predictable impact on the
nature of nominations. While competitive associations often experience
contested nominations, some have uncontested nominations while some
apparently uncompetitive associations have contested nominations.
Moreover, perceptions of competitiveness may be influenced by a number
of factors – for example, the organizational structures of individual
associations and the strength of the national parties – and can be
manipulated by party members and officials.
Access can be thought of as having two components: the first is the
organizational permeability of the association; the second is the type of
candidate search conducted by the association. Permeability refers to the
ease with which members can enter and leave the association. This is related
to the organizational coherence of the association, which is determined
both by competitiveness and partisan ethos. The criteria an association
adopts in searching out potential candidates bear directly on who gains
access to the nomination. Both appeal and access have a qualitative and
quantitative dimension; they determine how many and what types of
candidates contest the nomination, and through this, the criteria for success.
It should be noted that the qualitative and quantitative dimensions of these
filters are inextricably linked. For example, there may be only one
candidate who meets the criteria set by the search committee.
240
In most cases, these filters remove all but one candidate, who is then
acclaimed the nominee. In such cases, appeal and access are quite emphatic
in deciding the form of the local contest. Less often, a number of candidates
reach the nomination meeting, and one wins on the first ballot. In even
fewer instances, the winner will have had to negotiate several ballots.1
Depending on the nature and intensity of each of these filters, they produce
four general types of nominations, each of which can be distinguished by
the appeal they hold for potential candidates and the access such candidates
have to the contest. Put differently, nominations can be classified by the
degree to which they are open or closed to potential candidates (are
candidates attracted to the nomination and can they gain access?), and
whether or not they are contested (is there more than one candidate at the
nomination meeting?). In a few cases, some apparently contested
nominations are in fact not true contests, as one candidate has managed
somehow to secure victory prior to the vote. The following elaborates the
logic of these nomination filters and outlines the four archetypal
nominations that they produce.
Association Appeal
The competitiveness of an association is the main quantitative dimension of
appeal. The chance to win a seat is a strong attraction for most potential
candidates. As well, the support a competitive nonlocal party can offer, or
the chance to be on a winning team, can add to a nomination’s appeal. A
competitive party is in a better position to offer rewards to losing candidates
and is a vehicle for a candidate who wishes to sit on the government
benches. Of course, perceptions of the appeal of a local association may not
be well founded and are sometimes manipulated by party members in order
to attract candidates. This may include making exaggerated claims about
the competitive position of the association (perhaps citing internal party
polling), the strength of the association, or the help that a candidate can
expect to receive from the party. Moreover, anything that creates
uncertainty about the electoral outcome in a riding – such as new
boundaries – may in fact or appearance alter the competitive position of
local associations, thus altering their appeal.
The qualitative dimension of appeal also has a number of aspects. A
party’s ideological complexion influences the sort of candidate that is
attracted to its nominations. Even within a single party, the ideological
character of riding associations varies and may work to shape the sorts of
candidates that are attracted to a particular nomination. Finally,
high-profile ridings have a special appeal that has a strong qualitative
dimension. Aspiring candidates who see themselves as important public
figures, or those who wish to take advantage of the notoriety of contesting a
high-profile riding, can be attracted to such contests. Moreover, parties are
inclined to try to find well-qualified candidates to run in these ridings. Most
such ridings are in metropolitan centres.2
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Competitiveness
As Carty and Erickson note, competitiveness has an objective and
perceptual component (1991, 133). In forming an opinion about the
competitive position of an association, and hence its appeal, a potential
candidate considers both elements. The main objective component of the
competitive position of a local party association is its recent electoral
performance. Associations that have won or come close to winning a riding
are considered to be competitive. Not only does the chance of winning
attract potential candidates, so too does the sheer vibrancy of competitive
associations attract them. A history of strongly contested nominations may
help attract candidates simply on the grounds that local activists interested
in partisan politics are traditionally involved in active associations. The
New Democrat association in the strong union riding of Kootenay
West-Revelstoke, which has been successful in the past but faced a
Conservative incumbent, attracted three times as many candidates as its
NDP counterpart in Fraser Valley West, where the party has never come
close to winning.
What is true for associations is also true for parties. Parties with a history
of forming the government and/or the official opposition have an advantage
in that they have access to greater resources than do other parties, and can
offer a candidate the chance of being a member of the governing party. They
may also be in a position to distribute favours to the party faithful regardless
of local success or failure. These parties also have access to extensive
polling and other technical information, and are able to use this information
as evidence of organizational competence in order to convince potential
candidates of the wisdom of running for them. The associations of parties
that have had little regional success – whether at the provincial or federal
level – are usually weaker. These parties are less able to assist local
associations, and their nominations are thus less appealing.
In deciding whether to enter a nomination contest, potential candidates
take account of factors that may have altered an association’s
competitiveness since the last election. Changes in local and national
circumstances may alter the actual or perceived competitive position of an
association. At the very least, anything that makes local electoral fortunes
less certain provides an opportunity for speculation about future electoral
performance, and can thus affect the appeal of nominations in a riding. The
retirement of an incumbent, new electoral boundaries, or shifts in support
for the national parties can alter either or both the objective or perceived
competitive position of local associations. Moreover, the relatively low
incumbency return rates in Canada have created an environment in which
potential candidates have many good reasons to be generous in assessing
the direction and intensity of changes in association competitiveness
(Blake 1991).
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The retirement of an incumbent may disrupt local political traditions and
may alter the calculations of candidates about the competitiveness of local
associations. Typically, the member has built up some personal following
over his or her tenure that now becomes available to opposing parties. Such
political opportunities invigorate associations, bolstering their appeal and
their capacity to search out good candidates. Despite the potential loss of a
retiring incumbent’s personal vote, the nomination following a retirement
can be especially appealing to prospective candidates. With a history of
competitiveness, and having built up considerable financial and human
resources during the tenure of the incumbent, the association is in a position
to pursue a thorough candidate search and run a strong campaign. Its
strength will appeal to prospective candidates. Given that associations with
incumbents discourage contested nominations, there may also be party
members whose ambitions have been thwarted and who will now seize the
opportunity to contest the nomination. The retirements of Tory members in
Victoria and Vancouver prior to the election managed to boost the
competitiveness of all the major party nominations in these ridings.
On occasion, party officials attempt to manipulate perceptions of
competitiveness to attract candidates. Periods of uncertainty encourage
such manipulation. The promise of substantial assistance from either the
provincial or federal party can play an important role in persuading some
candidates to run. Of course, the credibility of these promises depends on
evidence that the party can deliver the aid. The general condition of a party –
its strength and organizational skills – affects the help it can give, and the
perception that it can fulfil its promises of help. Thus, for long periods in
recent decades, the endemic weakness of the Liberal Party in western
Canada and the Conservative’s long exclusion from Quebec made it much
harder for them to attract good candidates in those regions.
Changed electoral boundaries alter the objective competitiveness of an
association and allow activists and candidates to think their association will
be more competitive in an upcoming election. For example, the addition of
polls from Revelstoke to the old riding of Kootenay West prior to the
election favoured the NDP. Revelstoke has voted strongly NDP over many
elections. This gave a boost to the NDP association, which attracted six
candidates to its nomination, and deflated the incumbent Conservative,
who had barely won the seat in 1984.
This effect can be most pronounced when a new riding is created.
Liberals in the new ridings of Surrey North and Okanagan Centre were
optimistic about their electoral chances even though the party had a poor
record in both areas. This helped motivate association members to seek out
potential candidates and improved the appeal of Liberal nominations.
Association members can claim that any negative voting history attached to
the polls brought into the new riding can be ignored, and that the change
provides an opportunity to recreate the local political landscape. On
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occasion, a lack of previous success can be an advantage for an association
if voters are perceived as being willing to vote against incumbent
politicians.
New boundaries can also dash the hopes of local associations. The
growth of Vancouver has meant that new suburbs regularly encroach into
ridings on the periphery of the greater metropolitan area. In BC ridings that
are usually NDP-versus-PC contests, this is generally believed to favour the
NDP. However, the 1987 redistribution moved the boundaries of Fraser
Valley West eastward, away from Vancouver, to include more of the less
densely populated and conservative Fraser Valley. This helped protect the
incumbent Tory and robbed the New Democrats of a potential advantage.
As for the impact of changes in the competitive position of the national
parties on their appeal, NDP associations in British Columbia reported
strong interest in their nominations, driven by the belief that Brian
Mulroney and the Tories were unpopular and that this would help the New
Democrats win seats in British Columbia. Similar perceptions underpinned
the heightened appeal of both Liberal and Reform nominations in 1993.
The actual and perceived competitive positions of an association are
crucial to the appeal a nomination holds for potential candidates. In fact, as
measurement of this objective element becomes more difficult – such as
with changing boundaries – it is reasonable to assume that other factors play
an increasingly important role in shaping these perceptions. This in part
accounts for candidates entering races in associations that with hindsight
appear to have been uncompetitive.
Nomination Profile
The public profile of nominations can vary. Some barely attract attention
within their own community, while others have a regional or national
profile. In particular, nominations in a few ridings seem to have high
profiles from one election to the next. Media attention focused on a riding or
its nominations is the main mechanism by which this public profile is
established. This is the result of media outlets reproducing patterns of
reporting built up over a number of elections, the original impulses for
which are many and varied. These include a tradition of closely contested
elections, a history of sending high-profile members to Ottawa, and the
propinquity of the riding to major media outlets. In some cases, factors
related to a current nomination battle – such as a challenge to an incumbent
– can raise the profile of one or more nominations in a riding.3
The profile of a riding has a mainly qualitative impact on the appeal of a
nomination. Candidates with a public profile seem to be attracted to
nominations in ridings that have a history of sending high-profile
candidates to Ottawa and that have been regularly represented by cabinet
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ministers. As party strategists believe that reports of a strong performance
in these ridings – in terms of finding good candidates and running a
competitive campaign – can help the party elsewhere, they often encourage
this trend.
In general, city ridings tend to have a higher profile than either suburban
or country ridings. This is so for a number of reasons. Many of the
institutions and infrastructures of social life and communications are
located in city ridings. Important political, business, cultural, and sporting
events have their focus in such centres. For example, influential news
media are based in large metropolitan centres and find it easy to elicit
comments from local candidates. Because of the centrality and
cosmopolitan nature of these ridings, local candidates are drawn into wider
debates, and they and their politics are projected well outside the riding via
the major news media that report their comments. They may become either
the informal or formal spokespeople for their parties, as did the major party
candidates John Brewin, Geoff Young, and Michael O’Connor in Victoria.
Some individuals – notably those with a public profile – are attracted by
the opportunity to play such a leading role in the media and their own party.
Because parties can be expected to want high-profile candidates in these
ridings, they may try to ensure this type of candidate wins by limiting
competition for the nomination. So although high-profile ridings maybe
more appealing to candidates, nominations in these ridings are often
uncontested because of efforts by party strategists to ensure a particular
candidate wins their party’s nomination. Good examples are the
nomination of NDP president Johanna den Hertog and ex-provincial MLA
Kim Campbell in Vancouver Centre.
Unlike their city counterparts, country and suburban nominations rarely
have a profile outside of the local riding. Of the two, rural nominations seem
to have a greater notoriety within local communities. Self-contained rural
ridings have a basic level of local media and often have a more coherent
sense of themselves. Local nomination contests and campaigns have a
public profile and attract candidates well known in the local community.
Thus, nominations in country ridings such as Kootenay West-Revelstoke
and Okanagan Centre are very prominent in the local media.
Suburban ridings on the other hand often have very few local media
organizations, and associations find it difficult to gain the attention of
city-based outlets. This lack of a mechanism for generating publicity
combined with a self-image based on the nebulous set of characteristics
associated with suburbia can mean these nominations are lost in the
preelection hubbub of a big city. In Surrey North, local newspaper editors
could not always name the major party candidates two years after the
election. On occasion, the intensity of previous electoral contests, a high
profile candidate, or a controversial nomination attracts the attention of the
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city media. As a result, some suburban contests are plucked from obscurity.
Liberal and Conservative nominations in Svend Robinson’s riding of
Burnaby-Kingsway fell into this category, in part as a result of his high
public profile. So too did those 1993 Liberal nominations in which Jean
Chrétien intervened in favour of his preferred candidate.
Ideology
Party ideology also has a largely qualitative impact on the appeal of a
nomination. Nominations in any one party are appealing to some people but
repel others. Such limits on who is likely to run in a nomination obviously
have profound implications for the type of candidates that are likely to be
successful in nominations in a particular party. The main divide in Canada
is between mass and cadre-style parties. Unionists are more likely to run for
the mass-party New Democrats than are business managers; the reverse is
true for the cadre-style Conservatives and Liberals.
As well as this general effect, there is also a more localized or riding
effect, which shapes the sorts of candidates that contest nominations. It is
noticeable that candidates in city ridings speak to a wider range of often
national issues and appear to be more liberal about social policy than their
country counterparts. Candidates in country ridings often focus primarily
on local economic issues. To some degree then, local concerns may cut
across party lines, foreshortening the ideological distance between the
associations and candidates of different parties in that riding. Tory Kim
Campbell was closer to her New Democrat opponent Johanna den Hertog in
Vancouver Centre on the question of abortion than she was with many other
candidates from her own party. The NDP candidate in Kootenay WestRevelstoke, Lyle Kristiansen, shared the concerns of his Conservative
opponent Bob Brisco about local economic development, and had
relatively little interest in the social policy issues that fascinated den
Hertog. These differences have their roots in local economic and social
circumstances that shape riding agendas, and influence the types of
candidates that are attracted to nominations or sought out by associations.
City ridings might attract candidates interested in social policy and with a
liberal predisposition, while country nominations attract those interested in
local economic development with a somewhat more conservative bent.
A special case of the role of ideology are the insurgent campaigns run by
interest groups. If a party – notably the governing party, for it can be held
responsible for public policy outcomes – has failed to live up to its
promises, interest groups may target its nominations with their own
candidates. All the contested Conservative nominations in this study
experienced insurgent nomination campaigns by pro-life candidates
backed by organized interest groups. In fact, pro-life candidates won
nominations in both Burnaby-Kingsway and Surrey North. In NDP
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associations, battles between candidates supported by groupings of
unionists, feminists, or environmentalists were common.
Competitiveness, riding profile, and ideology determine nomination
appeal directly and indirectly. This appeal is important in flushing out
candidates. But wanting to be a candidate is not always enough to ensure an
individual will gain access to a nomination. Heightened association
competitiveness and greater appeal do not always produce nominations that
have large numbers of candidates. Sometimes access to a nomination is
restricted because the organizational structure of the association repels
potential candidates, or party members make an effort to limit the number of
candidates.
Association Permeability
Permeability refers to the ease with which potential candidates and new
members can gain access to an association and positions of influence within
it. The less permeable an association, the less likely it is that potential
candidates will see a means by which they can gain access to the nomination
or the critical resources needed to win it. All things being equal, the more
permeable an association, the greater the number of candidates that contest
the nomination.
Prospective candidates thinking of entering a nomination will attempt to
assess their chances of winning. If there are few existing members, it may
seem possible to sign up enough new recruits to ensure a majority at the
nomination meeting. If there is a sizeable coterie of members, the potential
candidate must consider his or her chances of garnering the support of
existing members, or overcoming them with new recruits. Anything that
makes existing members suspicious of outsiders, or makes it difficult for
candidates to recruit new members in order to win the nomination, has a
negative impact on entry into the contest, meaning fewer candidates are
likely to enter the nomination.
Given that the formal rules governing membership are usually
promiscuous (Carty and Erickson 1991, 112), the organizational style of a
local association is critical in determining its permeability. The main
determinant of this is the organizational ethos of the party. As well, factors
that affect the strength and continuity of an association and its capacity to
develop rules of behaviour – such as its electoral performance and changing
riding boundaries – can also influence its permeability. The restructuring of
associations following changes to riding boundaries is likely to weaken
them and alter their permeability. This can be offset if the new boundaries
strengthen the electoral position and membership of an association.
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Mass versus Cadre-Style Parties
Mass parties such as the NDP expect candidates and members in general to
display a relatively high level of commitment to the party (Ward 1964, 191;
Young 1983, 92; Morley 1984). This expectation raises barriers to potential
candidates, increasing the impermeability of NDP associations. On the
other hand, cadre-style parties such as the Liberals and Conservatives
expect less of potential candidates and new recruits, which eases access to
their nominations.
The impermeability of NDP associations is a corollary of the party’s
commitment to organizational solidarity that is rooted in the very nature of
mass parties. The party’s links with the union movement serve to highlight
the importance of solidarity, the central principle of unionism. This
commitment finds expression in the continuous existence of many New
Democrat associations. Members share a sense of comradeship, and as with
any community, the rules of behaviour that develop help them distinguish
themselves from outsiders. Local New Democrat associations often share
members and organizational arrangements with their provincial and
municipal counterparts in the party, and members may work on provincial
and municipal elections interposed between federal elections. Because of
this continuity, NDP associations make longer term demands of their
members.4 These demands can be very intense, particularly when, as was
true for this study, there is a coincidence of elections at two different levels
of government, in this case, municipal and federal.
Members of associations that exhibit a high degree of solidarity are likely
to have a well-defined and shared definition of politics. They look for
nomination candidates among existing members and consider service to the
association or the union movement to be a prerequisite for both entering and
winning the nomination. Because it is expected that candidates be members
in good standing, NDP nominations are more often contested among
existing party members than either Liberal or Conservative nominations. In
fact, all the New Democrat election candidates in this study had worked for
the party and/or the union movement, whereas eight of the fourteen
successful Tory and Liberal candidates had only recently become party
members.
Candidates contemplating contesting such a nomination face a
membership that often has its own, exclusionary, definition of a preferred
candidate. If they fall outside this definition, they can expect to gain little
support from existing members. In this case, the only route available to the
would-be candidate is to recruit enough new members to overcome the
existing membership. They may find signing new recruits to an NDP
association that has a history of demanding high levels of commitment from
its members quite difficult in comparison to signing members to cadre-style
associations that regularly expand and contract in size, and expect only a
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small fraction of new members to be actively involved in running the
association. Such nominations are unlikely to appeal to insurgent
candidates.5 Even marginally competitive NDP associations can be less
permeable than their Liberal and Conservative counterparts, particularly in
provinces where the NDP is strong.
Even strong Tory associations seem organizationally loose in
comparison with NDP associations. In Surrey North, despite a history of
success before the riding boundaries were changed in 1987, there was no
formal effort to construct a Tory association until the time came to organize
the nomination. In contrast, the local NDP association had been organizing
for nearly a year. This pattern was repeated in other ridings.
Although not linked via a permanent association, members of
cadre-style parties are often interconnected through a range of other social
institutions. This allows members to stay in touch between elections when
there is no effective association. In British Columbia, the membership of
the Socreds provides such a forum for some Liberal and Tory activists. In
Victoria, both the Liberal and Conservative candidates relied on
acquaintances from the Socred party to help run their campaigns. In the
Okanagan, where there are many active Conservative supporters, the local
association was a collection of individuals who interacted in many other
forums, such as the local chamber of commerce and even local sporting
clubs. The Tory association is simply the particular form these relations
take at election time. When Tex Enemark decided to run for the Liberals in
Vancouver Centre, he called on a group of friends in the local business
community who knew each other and had been Liberal members in the past,
rather than rely on the weak Vancouver Centre Liberal association.
Association Continuity
Whether because of electoral success or organizational commitment,
association continuity plays a key role in the development of the informal
norms of behaviour that can repel outside candidates, increasing the
impermeability of an association. Conversely, anything that disrupts the
organizational life of an association, such as changes to constituency
boundaries, may well increase its permeability.
The persistence of NDPassociations between elections rests on the belief
in the value of organization commonly found in mass parties. This gives
members time to build up a repertoire of organizational norms of behaviour,
such as expectations as to what constitutes a good candidate. Given the
importance of organization in mass parties, evidence of a long-term
commitment to party work is likely to be a prerequisite for success, thus
increasing the impermeability of the association. In general, cadre-style
associations are less likely to build such strong organizational mores and to
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expect potential candidates to have exhibited long-term commitment to the
party, and are thus more permeable.
Competitive associations are often larger and stronger than their
uncompetitive counterparts and more likely to persist between elections,
providing an opportunity for members to influence the form of the
nomination process. This is true for both cadre-style and mass-party
associations (Carty 1991a, 30-9, 110-7; Carty and Erickson 1991, 116-29).
But while competitiveness heightens the existing impermeability of
mass-party associations, it is often the main cause of impermeability in
cadre-style associations. Such associations regularly have a small coterie of
long-term members with shared beliefs and idiosyncratic modes of
organizational behaviour. The association revives quickly from the relative
dormancy of the interelection period to place its imprimatur on the
nomination process. Thus, experienced members in strong Liberal and
Conservative associations act as gatekeepers for the nomination process.
They decide on the formal and informal rules that govern the nomination,
such as whether there will be a search committee and how it will be
organized. As cadre-style party members are often uncertain of the rules of
the game, since they are not exposed to them on a regular basis (compared
with members in the NDP), they defer to more experienced members. This
is consistent with the greater use of informal search committees in Liberal
and Tory associations.
The greater impermeability of competitive associations may be balanced
by their heightened appeal, which encourages potential candidates to make
great efforts to gain access to these nominations. Competitiveness can
offset the impact of even high levels of impermeability, making
nominations in different parties appear more similar. But being larger, they
present a greater challenge to a candidate who may have to recruit new
members in order to overcome the existing membership at a nomination
meeting.
Associations with incumbents are special instances of strong local
organizations (Carty 1991a, 39-42). While formally separate, the MP’s
constituency office and the local party organization are often closely
connected. Membership lists and other resources important to the local
association can be held at the MP’s office. This brings some interelection
continuity to the life of the association. In contrast to loosely organized
associations, these resources are readily mobilized when an election is
announced. As well, incumbents have a vested interest in making the
association less permeable in order to restrict access to the nomination, and
may try to ensure that supporters hold important positions in the
association. This combination makes for relatively impermeable
associations, even in cadre-style parties. Nevertheless, the formal
independence of associations means that local party members are not
beholden to an incumbent. Although not common, incumbents are
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regularly challenged for the party nomination, as was Bob Wenman in
Fraser Valley West.
Uncompetitive associations always struggle to maintain some formal
structures. Through most of the 1980s, the Liberal association in Kootenay
West-Revelstoke did not exist. The NDP and Conservatives divided the
political spectrum in two. Local doctor Garry Jenkins managed to sign up
enough new members to create an association. But there were few formal
structures, and the association was an extension of Jenkins’s personality. He
went on to run as its candidate.
Changes in local electoral boundaries disrupt the life of local
associations. This can seriously weaken associations, breaking up teams of
members who have worked on a number of elections and putting together
members who are unfamiliar to each other. Moreover, rearranging
members and financial resources can lead to bitter disputes and may distract
members from the task of organizing a nomination. The patterns of
behaviour that directed the organization of the nomination and helped
dictate access to the contest are lost, making it more permeable. Liberals in
the Fraser Valley complained about the way in which assets were divided
among the new associations in the area following the redrawing of
boundaries. They felt this division had increased the association’s
vulnerability to insurgent candidates.
The retirement of an incumbent can likewise upset local associations and
alter their permeability. Local Tory organizer Bea Holland notes this effect
in Victoria: “In part, the ability of the pro-life candidate to recruit new
members and nearly win the nomination was due to the uncertainty created
by the retirement of our incumbent Allan McKinnon.” The direction once
provided by the incumbent and his office was lost, leaving a competitive
association vulnerable to insurgent candidates. The disruption caused by
candidates recruiting many new members not only caught the association
off guard, reducing its ability to direct events, but it also meant that the
dynamics of the nomination meeting favoured those candidates who could
rely on well organized support during the early ballots. Insurgent
candidates backed by interest groups have just this sort of support.
Any strengthening or weakening of the organizational structures of local
associations alters their permeability. Events that affect the persistence of
associations between elections are particularly important, for continuity
permits the development of the patterns of behaviour that determine
permeability. Given that the continuity of mass-party associations such as
those of the NDP is rooted in their organizational style, it is not surprising
that variations in permeability due to other factors such as competitiveness
are more apparent in the more loosely organized cadre-style Liberal and
Conservative associations.
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The permeability of a nomination directly affects both the type and
number of candidates who seek nomination. The candidates who contest
impermeable nominations usually have some standing within the
association and have demonstrated their commitment to the party. They are
likely to be experienced political activists. Nominations in permeable
cadre-style associations are much more attractive to insurgent candidates.
Moreover, these organizations are less inclined to demand proof of
commitment to the party. As a result, permeable associations are much
more likely to select nominees who have had little contact with the party.
Candidate Search
A formal candidate search process allows an association to exercise some
control over which aspiring candidates gain access to their nomination. But
for a variety of reasons, not every association conducts a candidate search,
and those that do may approach the task in different ways. The criteria for
selecting candidates may focus on their electability – taking account of
factors such as personal charisma, ability, and capacity to finance and
operate a good campaign – and their suitability in terms of their attitudes,
beliefs, and, on occasion, other personal characteristics. These criteria are
usually unrestrictive, but there are times when associations are highly
selective and attempt to attract a certain type of candidate. This is true of the
NDP’s recent efforts to encourage women to run as candidates (Carty and
Erickson 1991, 149), and where leaders or party elites intervene to ensure
that a certain candidate is successful. The use of a search, the style it takes,
and the criteria it uses to select candidates depend on the competitiveness of
the association, its commitment to structures that demonstrate internal
party democracy (which varies from mass to cadre-style parties), and the
role of nonlocal party strategists in the process.
Competitive Associations
Competitive, strong associations have greater resources with which to
mount a candidate search than do uncompetitive associations, and their
wide contacts in the local community help them identify potential
candidates. Associations with a long history of running second may also be
able to make a credible claim that their candidate will win the election, and
use this to attract candidates. Uncompetitive associations, which are
usually organizationally weak, may lack the members and resources to
mount a search. The task is often left to one or two members of the
executive, who call around in an attempt to find someone to run for the
nomination. And because this weakness is usually a direct result of electoral
failure, these associations have limited access to the local community and
little appeal to potential candidates.
Given that competitive associations are larger and better organized, their
candidate searches tend to be more thorough than those of their
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uncompetitive cousins. Competitive associations usually have good access
to the sources of power and influence in a riding and the social circles from
which candidates are often drawn. This improves their chances of
identifying candidates and convincing them to run. As well, they can afford
to be more demanding in their definition of what constitutes a suitable
candidate. In some cases, particularly in competitive, permeable
associations such as the Surrey North and Okanagan Centre Tories, a search
is a formality, as large numbers of candidates are attracted to the
nomination.
Sometimes a competitive association defers to an influential party
member or local notable and refrains from conducting a search. In Victoria
and Vancouver Centre, it was well known that two NDP stalwarts who had
contested the seats in 1954 would run again, and this all but eliminated the
need for a real candidate search. Similarly, where there is an incumbent, it is
uncommon for even a competitive association to organize a candidate
search, though some do.
In the case of a retiring incumbent, he or she may prefer to be seen
handing the reins to a well-qualified successor. Often, the MP – or
representatives of the party or local constituency office – coordinate the
search for such a candidate. Given that incumbents tend to have developed
strong connections to the national party and party strategists, it is not
uncommon for nonlocal officials to be involved in such a search and to
bring national party objectives to bear on it. On the other hand, they usually
have good contacts among the local political elite. This may result in a
search for a high-profile candidate who is promised easy access to the
nomination, the resources of the retiring incumbent, and perhaps the party
at large with which to conduct a campaign. This severely restricts access to
the nomination. In Victoria, retiring Tory Allan McKinnon tried hard to find
a candidate, but the Tories’ uncertain electoral prospects made his job
difficult, and he eventually let the association search for candidates.
Uncompetitive associations often struggle to find candidates. Weak
NDPassociations do better at organizing nominations than their cadre-style
counterparts. In Kootenay West-Revelstoke and Burnaby-Kingsway, the
uncompetitive Liberals did not conduct a search, yet the weak NDP
association in Fraser Valley West did. Where they do take place, searches in
noncompetitive cadre-style associations are modest. In the Okanagan,
Murli Pendharkar – not a member of any party – was one of a few candidates
asked to run by the handful of local Liberals. Where weak associations are
unable to find a candidate, the party organization may have to provide one.
While competitive associations are usually better organized than their
uncompetitive counterparts and should be more capable of instituting a
candidate search, overall, this is not the case. Partisan organizational styles
affect the propensity of associations to search out candidates.
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Mass versus Cadre-Style Associations
Competitive cadre Liberal and Conservative associations tend to organize
fewer searches than might be expected, while even uncompetitive NDP
associations often organize candidate searches (Carty and Erickson 1991,
Tables 3.17 and 3.42). This is the result of the tendency among cadre-style
associations to rely on informal searches, and the NDP’s greater
commitment to the formal institutions of association democracy.
Because of their commitment to local democracy and institutional
modes of behaviour, New Democrat associations make greater use of
formal search committees than do Liberal and Conservative associations,
even in uncompetitive associations. As well, the manner in which these
committees operate differs as a result of the distinctive organizational styles
of mass and cadre parties. NDP search committees are more formalized,
their work is supervised by the local executive, and they often use selection
criteria that favour existing members over insurgents.
Not surprisingly, all the NDP candidates in the ridings in this study were
party members in good standing. This is less true in cadre-style
associations, where there is often no overview of the process by the local
executive or clear guidelines as to how it should be conducted. Being less
formal, well-organized Liberal and Conservative associations may find it
easier to adopt very strict criteria simply by agreement among the few
executive members who are conducting a relatively informal candidate
search not subject to any form of public scrutiny.
The strength of the NDP’s commitment to forming search committees
somewhat independently of their competitive positions is seen in the fact
that 44 percent of its associations report having a regular candidate search
committee, while 25 percent of Liberal and 17 percent of Tory associations
did likewise (Carty 1991a, Table 5.2). When associations with incumbents
are removed, the percentage of associations reporting having used search
committees is 70, 54, and 51 respectively (Carty and Erickson 1991, Table
3.42). This pattern was evident in all seven ridings in this study. The use of
search committees in even uncompetitive NDP associations inflates the
number of total contested nominations found in uncompetitive
associations.
Given that they tend to have stable memberships, New Democrat
associations are usually successful in identifying potential candidates
within their own ranks. Even in ridings such as Okanagan Centre, where
they had little chance of success, the party was able to identify several good
candidates. This reinforces the impermeability of NDP nominations. It also
increases the number of NDP associations that produce contested
nominations. Only occasionally do New Democrat associations look
outside their membership for candidates, and then only if an association
254
wishes to select a high-profile candidate or to meet some wider objective set
by the party. Even then, New Democrat associations in British Columbia
are connected to a network of party faithful and fellow travellers interested
in political office from which candidates can be drawn. Despite their
ideological commitment to inclusive politics, this impermeability explains
why NDP associations often have fewer links to groups in the local
community than do their cadre-style counterparts.6
For their part, associations in the cadre-style Liberal and Conservative
Parties are more inclined to use a loose collection of experienced local
members to pursue an informal search. Because these parties account for
most of the competitive associations in Canada, this tendency deflates the
number of competitive associations that make use of formal search
committees. Competitive cadre-style associations are also almost always
permeable. Given that they appeal to many prospective candidates and do
not obstruct the candidates’ entry into the contest, these associations may
not need to make much of an effort to search out candidates. As well,
associations in the more successful Liberal and Conservative Parties
account for most cases of retiring incumbents who may try to install a
successor by suppressing competition for the nomination. This is seen in the
weak correlation between electoral competitiveness and the use of formal
search committees (Carty and Erickson 1991).
Cadre-style associations often reach beyond their local membership in
search of suitable candidates. On occasion, nonlocal party officials
encourage this to fulfil a wider strategic objective. Local organizers may
believe that the right candidate can win the riding and that no current
association member fits this bill. Given the cyclical nature of membership,
and the relative lack of solidarity among members of these associations,
associations are less likely to define the suitability of candidates in terms of
demonstrated commitment to the party. Insurgent candidates influence the
character of open searches for candidates in cadre-style parties. They can
recruit new members and in so doing overcome any resistance from
existing members. It is not surprising that over half of the Liberal and
Conservative candidates in this study were new party members.
But there are drawbacks to the loose organizational style of cadre
associations. An insurgent candidate who is hostile to the members of a
permeable association may hijack the nomination. Informal searches
organized by a group of powerful association members may use narrow
criteria for selecting candidates and act to limit competition for the
nomination. And the lack of an imperative to conduct a formal and
accountable search allows cadre-style associations to adopt just such a
search regime. Carty notes that 40 percent of association presidents
nationwide report that an insider group decided who the candidate would be
and worked to get that individual nominated. In 61 percent of these cases,
the candidate was acclaimed, compared with just 44 percent in nominations
255
where no such elite manipulation occurred (1991a, 110-1). Finally,
uncompetitive cadre-style associations often experience uncontested
nominations because they lack the imperative to organize a search, and,
unlike NDP associations, they cannot always rely on members to run as
candidates.
Competitiveness and partisan organizational style help determine the
likelihood that an association will conduct a search and the style that search
takes. Aminimal level of competitiveness allows associations to organize a
search, but it is no guarantee that there will be one. Because of their
organizational style, competitive, permeable associations in cadre-style
parties tend to adopt informal search processes, or eschew them altogether.
This is not true for NDP associations, which have a greater propensity to
organize formal searches irrespective of their competitiveness. In all
parties, the presence of an incumbent or preferred candidate stifles
candidate searches.
Nonlocal Interference
The intervention of regional and national strategists may also shape the
search process. The rare instances of direct interference in riding affairs by
nonlocal party officials occur mainly where a local association has little
appeal for potential candidates and is too weak to organize an effective
candidate search (Carty and Erickson 1991, Table 3.17).7 In fewer cases, it
is the result of some strategic calculation by the party in ridings where it
believes a local campaign, or perhaps its wider national campaign, would
benefit from having a particular type of candidate. Party strategists believe
that running a good candidate in a high-profile riding helps the local and
national campaigns. A party may wish to have a certain number of women
as a matter of principle, or a number of high-profile candidates for its
cabinet if it wins office. Or it may move to protect an incumbent from losing
a nomination (or even being challenged) or attempt to ensure an insurgent
candidate supported by an interest group does not win a nomination.
In most cases of nonlocal involvement, party officials work with local
associations to find candidates. Very occasionally, a party leader vetoes a
candidacy by refusing to allow the party label to be used to identify a
candidate on the voting ballot. This prevents unwanted but successful
candidates from running for the party and may force associations to adopt
preferred candidates. The manner in which parties make their wishes
known or enforce their preferences, and the experience of local associations
in dealing with these demands, vary as a function of the competitive
position and organizational style of associations.
There are distinct regional differences in the level of intervention
practised by the major parties. Regions where parties have been weak, such
as the Atlantic provinces for the NDP and the West for the Liberals, tend to
256
experience high levels of nonlocal interference. NDP headquarters played
little role in the selection of candidates in this study. This reflects the
strength of NDP associations in British Columbia and their ability to
organize formal searches. On the other hand, the Liberal Party had to
appoint a young party worker from Quebec, Sam Stevens, as its candidate in
Burnaby-Kingsway. The more common form of nonlocal intervention is
cooperation between party strategists at various levels in the search for a
candidate. In cases where an incumbent is retiring, his or her relationship
with the national party facilitates cooperation in the search for a
replacement.
Liberal and Conservative nominations in high-profile ridings (in which
these parties are usually competitive) often attract the interest of nonlocal
party strategists. These ridings usually receive inordinate press attention
and may be seen as indicators of a party’s general performance. As such, the
campaigns that are run in these ridings are often integral components of the
national campaign (Sayers 1991, 45). Candidates in these ridings are
expected to be adept at dealing with the media and capable of developing a
positive image for themselves and the party. National party strategists have
an interest in finding good candidates who are offered uncontested rides
through their nominations. This requires restricting access to the
nomination, which can be done either by fiat – the national party leader can
refuse to sign the nomination papers for any other candidate – or through
cooperation with the local association.8 The latter is more common and
requires local and nonlocal party members to agree on the preferred type of
candidate. This is made easier by the fact that cadre-style Tory and Grit
associations regularly pursue informal candidate searches that can be
managed in this way. But even the NDP with its commitment to formal
internal party processes may use this approach in high-profile ridings, in the
hope that the right sort of candidate will assist its cause.
Conservative Kim Campbell and New Democrat Johanna den Hertog in
Vancouver Centre benefited from the support of their respective party
hierarchies. The parties brought direct and indirect pressure to bear to limit
competition for these nominations. Once Campbell agreed to run, the Tory
search committee in Centre, made up of local and nonlocal party members,
refused to allow other candidates access to the nomination. In den Hertog’s
case, the difficulty of competing against the party president was
compounded by clear signals from leader Ed Broadbent’s office that he
would prefer den Hertog as a candidate.
The NDP has fewer competitive associations across the country than
either the Liberals or Conservatives, and there is less outside interference in
the choice of candidates. What interference there is may be driven by
principle rather than strategic calculations, such as attempting to have a
certain proportion of women and minority candidates (Carty and Erickson
1991, Tables 3.28 and 3.29; Carty 1991a, Table 3.21). Cadre-style parties
257
tend to eschew principled intervention. When they do intervene it is for
strategic reasons. Perhaps because of this and a lack of commitment to
formal internal party procedures, they appear more willing than the NDP to
invoke the leader’s veto to impose a preferred candidate. None of the
associations in this study had their first choice for nominee vetoed by the
party. But in 1993 and 1997, Liberal leader Jean Chrétien used this power
(or the threat of veto) to install a number of high-profile candidates across
the country. The usual defence offered for this move was that the party
needed talented MPs to fill cabinet positions. Less frequent mention was
made of any increased chance of winning the ridings into which these
candidates were parachuted.
Depending on the objective of the nonlocal interference, it may increase
or decrease competition for a nomination. In general, nonlocal involvement
occurs more frequently in nominations where there is no contest, but cause
and effect are unclear (Carty 1991b, Table 3.49). Weak associations that
cannot find a candidate, and which rely on the party to provide one, are
included with those where the nonlocal party helps to limit competition for
a sought after nomination to a single candidate. The strategic intervention
found most commonly in Liberal and Progressive Conservative
associations limits competition. This is because the party elites that
intervene in these associations search out specific candidates whom they
believe will help their cause in a particular riding. In Victoria, Michael
O’Connor, the association president, agreed to a request by his friend
Liberal leader John Turner to run for the party.
The NDP’s desire to bring underrepresented groups into politics may
increase competition for a nomination because those candidates are
generally brought into the process without being promised a clear run
through the nomination. The relatively formalized relationship between
various levels of the party encourages shared definitions of politics and
makes local party members more likely to accept the dictates of the party
hierarchy. As such, the objectives of the local search usually reflect the
preferences of the national executive of the party.
The use of a formal candidate search process depends on the
organizational strength of an association and its commitment to
guaranteeing access to all association members who wish to enter the race.
The manner of the search committee and the criteria it uses determine who
has access to the nomination. Formal search committees in NDP
associations focus on attracting existing members, while those in Liberal
and Conservative associations are more willing to look outside the
association for candidates. The presence of an incumbent, or the desire to
find a particular type of candidate – whether local or otherwise – reduces the
chances of a formal search and restricts access to the nomination. Weak
associations that are poorly organized also struggle to arrange a search and
may have to rely on the party to provide a candidate.
258
Figure 3.1
Nomination Filters
Classifying Nominations
The style of a nomination meeting is a function of a set of filters on the
nomination process that define the terms of the local contest. By setting the
criteria for entry to and success at the nomination, these filters determine
whether there is a contest and the type of candidate that wins the
nomination. The filters can be grouped into those that influence the appeal a
nomination holds for potential candidates and those that determine which
candidates have access to the nomination. The particular form these filters
take, and the combination in which they are found in any nomination, is
largely a function of the competitiveness of the association and its
organizational style. Local riding and broader partisan forces shape these
factors.
Different types and mixes of these filters result in distinctive types of
nominations. Figure 3.1 illustrates four distinct nominations and how the
appeal they hold for aspiring candidates and the access these candidates
have to the race shape each contest.
The first type of nomination is open and contested. The association is
permeable, with few if any restrictions placed on entrance to the
nomination. It appeals to prospective candidates and attracts at least two,
but usually more, who participate in a true contest. Such nominations are
most commonly found in competitive, cadre-style associations.
The second type of nomination is closed and contested. Candidates from
outside the association are rare or nonexistent in these contests. Those
candidates who do enter the race are mostly long-time association members
259
and may be representatives of factions within the local association. Because
the nomination has some appeal and attracts several candidates, it is also a
real contest. Most of these nominations are found in impermeable NDP
associations. But even here, the more competitive the association, the more
contested the nomination.
A third type of nomination is open but uncontested or nominally
contested. These nominations have difficulty attracting candidates but are
open to anyone willing to run. Where more than one candidate enters the
race, one-sided nominations often occur in which only one candidate has a
real chance of winning. In some cases, this third type of nomination attracts
no candidates, and the party must appoint a party worker to run in the riding.
In general, uncompetitive cadre-style associations are more prone to these
sorts of nominations because they do not have the organizational
cohesiveness found in even weak NDP associations.
And the fourth type is a closed and uncontested nomination. Despite
being very attractive to potential candidates, only one candidate is allowed
access to the contest by nomination organizers. Nonlocal party strategists
are often involved in helping to find such candidates. On very rare
occasions, more than one candidate gains access to the nomination, but the
result is one-sided. The winner is usually a high-profile candidate who
benefits from the support of the local and often nonlocal party elite. These
nominations occur in competitive associations in high profile ridings.
While it is true that they take place in all parties, cadre-style associations
tend to be more susceptible because of their proclivity to conduct informal
searches that are better suited to ensuring that a single candidate gains
access to the nomination process.
Summary: Four Archetypal Nominations
Candidate nominations in Canadian politics reflect the idiosyncratic
confluence of local riding factors and broader partisan influences.
Nominations are distinctive but can be understood by taking account of the
impact of these factors on the appeal of a nomination and the access
candidates have to it. In this way, a single nomination acts as a lens with
which to view local and nonlocal party organizational and electoral
conditions.
Appeal reflects the competitive position of an association and its
ideological complexion. Judgments about the competitive position of an
association are not unproblematic; changing boundaries, the fortunes of the
wider party, the unrealistic expectations of party members, and the
volatility of the Canadian electorate must all be taken into account.
Ideological judgments may be more certain, but it is still the case that there
is variation within any one party, and associations may be idiosyncratic in
the emphasis they give to party beliefs. This may affect the sorts of
260
candidates that are attracted to a particular nomination. On the whole,
however, unionists will be disproportionately attracted to the NDP while
managers to the Tories.
Access to the nomination process is a function of the permeability of the
association and the manner in which the candidate search is conducted. The
permeability of an association is related to its competitiveness and
organizational ethos. Competitive associations tend to be better organized,
and therefore less permeable than uncompetitive ones. Factors that alter
competitiveness also alter permeability. Mass-party associations have a
greater commitment to organizational solidarity and continuity than their
cadre-style cousins, and thus tend to he less permeable than the latter. This is
reflected in candidate searches as well. While any competitive association
is more able to organize a search, mass parties have a greater commitment to
ensuring such internal party organizational processes are followed than do
cadre-style parties. The latter may adopt informal means for finding
candidates. Furthermore, mass parties are much more likely to look for
candidates from among party members who have proven their commitment
to the cause than are cadre-style parties.
Understanding the functioning of appeal and access in nominating
candidates places factors such as the fortunes of the major parties, changing
electoral boundaries, and voter volatility in a new light, and offers a means
for explaining the persistence of a Canadian political tradition – the
importance of local factors in a relatively stable party system (the election
of 1993 notwithstanding); that is, the capacity for parties and the party
system to absorb and respond to local politics. Associations and
nominations are well adapted to the task of balancing the imperatives of
local and partisan politics.
The four archetypal nominations – open and contested, closed and
contested, open but uncontested, and closed and uncontested – produce
distinctive types of candidates that each attract a particular constellation of
supporters. Together they form the basis of the local campaign team that is a
key element of any local campaign. In balancing local and national political
forces and selecting candidates, associations and nominations play a
central role in Canadian electoral politics.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
Only 35 percent of all nominations nationwide were contested in 1988. Of these,
about 57 percent had only two candidates. The vast majority were won on the first
ballot (Carty and Erickson 1991, 120).
The special attraction of urban ridings for high-profile candidates has long been
noted (Smith 1964, 68; Land 1965, 2).
Although such challenges attract disproportionate media attention, they are rare
(Carty and Erickson 1991, 134). In 1997, two Bloc Québécois, one Liberal, and
261
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
262
one Reform Party candidate were denied renomination by the constituency
associations. In three of these cases, the replacement candidate was successful.
In regions where the party is weak, associations will have a more cyclical
existence and will therefore make fewer long-term demands of members.
Insurgent candidates are defined as those who have had little or no previous
contact with the party and/or local association, and who often have a narrow set of
policy interests.
The lack of links between the NDP and ethnic groups has been noted by Schwartz
(1964, 267-8).
Table 3.17 in Carty and Erickson (1991) does not include associations with
incumbents. This deflates the proportion of competitive associations in the table
that report having no candidate search. In addition, because these are figures for
1988, the number of Conservative incumbents in this category was very high,
reflecting the party’s 1984 performance. As the authors themselves note (109,
133), this confounds the effect of incumbency on candidate searches with that of
Tory partisanship.
In 1988, Brian Mulroney went against the wishes of the local association (and
apparently his own preference) in refusing to sign Sinclair Steven’s papers in
order to appease Quebec MPs annoyed at losing some of their numbers in this
manner. Liberal leader Jean Chrétien appointed a dozen candidates in 1993, and
six in 1997, which in effect vetoed local association candidates.
Teresa Gutiérrez-Haces
Canada et Mexique :
à la recherche d’une origine commune 1
Résumé
Le projet de réciprocité commerciale continentale a débuté dès 1910, au
moment où le gouvernement états-unien proposa deux accords commerciaux
avec le Mexique et le Canada, en se basant sur « les relations particulières »
résultant « de la contiguïté territoriale ». On trouve plusieurs exemples de
tentatives évidentes de créer un marché nord-américain dominé par les
États-Unis. À partir de 1910, cette idée continentale à saveur d’hégémonie
américaine privilégia les aspects purement bilatéraux de la relation que le
Mexique et le Canada entretiennent, chacun séparément, avec les États-Unis.
Ce travail propose au contraire de démontrer qu’il existe de nombreux liens
entre ces deux pays. Ces pays se sont en fait insérés dans un processus de
développement économique de très longue haleine qui, depuis le milieu du
XIXe siècle, a donné lieu à un mouvement graduel, mais non linéaire,
d’intégration vers l’économie états-unienne. En révisant rapidement cette
situation, nous pourrions facilement en déduire que les négociations
commerciales, telles que les traités, avaient peu de chose en commun,
puisqu’il s’agissait de deux pays économiquement différents qui maintenaient
une relation profondément distincte avec les États-Unis. Cependant, une
analyse plus détaillée révèle que depuis cette époque, les États-Unis ayant
développé une même stratégie commerciale pour ses deux voisins, il y eut en
fait comme conséquence de cette stratégie le développement de relations
entre les deux pays hors du contrôle américain.
Sera aussi examinée dans ce chapitre la possibilité que Washington ait suivi
un plan préconçu visant à harmoniser ses intérêts sur les plans économique,
commercial et territorial, dans les deux espaces voisins, de façon à
développer un projet de continentalisation états-unien.
Abstract
The project of commercial continental reciprocity began as early as 1910, a
time when the U.S. government proposed two trade agreements with Mexico
and Canada, based on “particular relationships” resulting from “territorial
contiguity.” Many examples exist that attest to obvious attempts to create a
North American market dominated by the United States. Beginning in 1910,
this continental idea, favoured by American hegemony, privileged the purely
bilateral aspects of the relationship that Mexico and Canada each have with
the U.S. This work proposes to demonstrate, to the contrary, that several links
exist between these two countries. In fact, both countries involved themselves
in the long-range process of economic development—which has given rise,
since the mid-nineteenth century—to a gradual, non linear, movement of
33-34, 2006
integration toward the U.S. economy. A quick revision of this situation might
lead us to easily deduce that commercial negotiations, such as treaties, had
little in common, because they involved two economically different countries
that each maintained a profoundly distinct relationship with the United
States. Nevertheless, a more detailed analysis reveals that since that
time—the United States having developed the same economic strategy for
both its neighbours—the consequence of a single strategy has been that the
two countries have developed relations that are beyond U.S. Control.
This chapter also examines the possibility that Washington has followed a
preconceived plan aimed at harmonizing its economic, commercial, and
territorial interests in both neighbouring spaces, in such a way as to develop a
U.S. project of continentalization.
Introduction
Les pays que nous analyserons ici ont comme trait commun leur
appartenance à un même espace géographique : l’Amérique du Nord. La
particularité de leurs caractéristiques économiques, principalement, fait en
sorte qu’ils appartiennent à ce qui a été nommé la semi-périphérie du
système capitaliste : un sous-système d’organisation économique et
territoriale agissant à l’intérieur d’un espace profondément interdépendant
d’un centre hégémonique représenté dans ce cas par les États-Unis.
Ces nations se caractérisent par leurs économies exportatrices de
ressources naturelles, de matières premières et de produits semi-finis. Leur
développement économique a été conditionné par la dynamique de leur
noyau, qui exerce une énorme force d’attraction.
Tant le Canada que le Mexique ont été soumis, à un moment précoce de
leur existence, à des formes d’intégration formelle et informelle très
spécifiques, à la suite des relations qu’ils ont d’abord nouées avec l’Empire
britannique, puis avec les États-Unis. Ce qui les distingue des autres
espaces semi-périphériques, c’est le caractère quasi exclusif de leurs liens
avec les États-Unis qui sont, par conséquent, enclins à exclure le reste des
pays qui forment d’autres régions de la périphérie.
Cet essai a pour objet d’analyser comment le Canada et le Mexique ont
construit ces relations en partant des diverses tentatives d’intégration
économique, par l’entremise d’accords commerciaux négociés avec les
États-Unis.
Il s’agit également d’une analyse portant sur la façon dont ces
conventions ont influencé la formation de l’État dans ces pays et sur le débat
qu’il a historiquement suscité entre les options protectionnistes et
libre-échangistes, qui sont à la base de la formation de l’État, tant au
Mexique qu’au Canada.
264
Canada et Mexique :
à la recherche d’une origine commune
Ce travail a pour but de modifier la perception préétablie qui tend à
mettre l’accent sur les aspects purement bilatéraux de la relation
qu’entretiennent le Mexique et le Canada avec les États-Unis, chacun
séparément. Il se propose aussi de démontrer qu’il existe de nombreux
vases communicants entre eux, constatation qui nous amène à affirmer que
ces pays se sont insérés dans un processus de développement économique
de très longue haleine qui, depuis le milieu du XIXe siècle, a donné lieu à un
mouvement graduel mais non linéaire d’intégration vers l’économie
états-unienne.
Quelques faits sur la politique économique internationale du
Canada
Le Canada est une nation qui, très tôt, a construit des stratégies de
développement économique basées sur l’exportation. À l’intérieur de ce
projet, l’instrumentation d’une politique commerciale extérieure a occupé
une place centrale comme moteur de l’activité économique du pays.
La formulation des principes économiques et commerciaux qui ont tracé
cette politique a été, dans une grande mesure, le résultat de l’étroite relation
économique qu’a entretenue historiquement le Canada tout d’abord avec
l’Empire britannique et, ensuite, avec les États-Unis.
Il y a déjà lieu d’affirmer que sa politique internationale est d’une façon
générale encline à des négociations multilatérales. Toutefois, accepter cet
aspect comme étant le trait distinctif de sa politique écarterait notre analyse
des autres variables importantes que sont les trois grandes tendances qui ont
influencé sa politique économique. Celles-ci, du fait qu’elles sont
fondamentales tant dans le cadre économique que politique, ont, à de
nombreuses occasions, suscité la confrontation entre la société canadienne
et ses gouvernants.
L’atlantisme, le continentalisme et le nationalisme ayant exercé une
influence sur la formation géoéconomique du Canada, ces tendances ont,
tout au long de son histoire, constitué le fil conducteur du processus de
gestation de sa politique de commerce international.
Par atlantisme, nous comprenons la relation étroite qu’a entretenue le
Canada avec l’Empire britannique depuis ses débuts. Ce dernier a exercé
une énorme influence dans les décisions commerciales du Canada jusque
dans les années 1970, pendant lesquelles l’Angleterre a renversé l’ordre
commercial établi au sein du Commonwealth au moment d’entrer dans le
Marché commun européen (1973) de l’époque. Cette décision a contribué
dans une grande mesure à ce que le Canada opte pour le rétrécissement de sa
relation économique avec les États-Unis.
265
Le continentalisme fait référence à la manière dont le Canada a effectué
un rapprochement graduel tant politique qu’économique avec les
États-Unis. Au fil du temps, cette option a presque totalement déplacé
l’atlantisme et s’est transformée en un trait prédominant du Canada : « The
influence of the United States on the Canadian economy had grown more
steadily dominant; but they made no conscious move to question or resist
this growing domination »2 (Creighton, 1976).
Ces tendances ont été indirectement approuvées par les apports
théoriques d’économistes tels qu’Adam Smith et David Ricardo, qui ont
influencé les débats sur le protectionnisme et le libre-échange soutenus par
Alexander Galt et sir John A. Macdonald ainsi que des autres pères de la
Confédération canadienne, avant 1867 (Moore, 1997).
Un siècle plus tard, l’influence de John Maynard Keynes a aussi été
cruciale dans la détermination de ces tendances, surtout durant la période
qui s’est écoulée entre la crise économique des années 1930 et le second
après-guerre (1946), durant laquelle la politique de plein emploi a justifié
l’entrée massive de l’investissement étranger direct au Canada,
particulièrement celui des États-Unis.
Le nationalisme représente la troisième tendance à avoir influencé
l’économie et la politique, en particulier vers la fin des années 1910, malgré
une courte vie dans le cadre de la stratégie gouvernementale. En effet, la
crise financière de 1982 a poussé le gouvernement canadien à abandonner
la canadianisation et à se replier de nouveau dans l’option continentaliste
par l’entremise de la négociation de l’accord de libre-échange entre le
Canada et les États-Unis (ALE/CUSFTA, 1989) et du traité de libreéchange nord-américain (ALÉNA/NAFTA, 1994).
Voyage aux origines d’une nation commerçante
C’est en 1937 que l’historien canadien Donald Creighton a écrit The
Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence, 1760-1850, un ouvrage qui décrit
les origines de l’État canadien, fondé sur le commerce et l’exploitation des
ressources naturelles : « It is impossible to understand the political
objectives of the commercial class without an understanding of its business
system. The first British Canadians were merchants before they were
Britons, Protestants, or political theorists [...] the merchants became a
political power because they controlled and represented a commercial
system which, in turn dictated their main political demands.... For them the
conquest was the capture of a giant river system and the transference of
commercial power.3 » (Creighton, 1976).
L’extravertissement de l’économie canadienne a trouvé sa justification
dans son immensité territoriale et dans les difficultés initiales qui ont surgi
pour lui permettre de consolider son commerce à partir d’une infrastructure
266
Canada et Mexique :
initialement limitée. Pendant des décennies, le Canada a eu nettement
tendance à commercer avec le sud-est de son territoire et de sa frontière,
au-delà des limites territoriales avec les États-Unis, et a parallèlement
développé une autre stratégie qui avait tendance à privilégier les échanges
transatlantiques avec l’Angleterre, tandis que la région des Grands Lacs
devenait le centre industriel du pays.
Dès le début, l’ouverture du marché canadien s’est appuyée sur deux
faits, le premier étant que le Canada, même avant de s’appeler ainsi, soit né
et se soit développé à l’intérieur de deux systèmes commerciaux
transatlantiques, l’anglais et le français. La prédominance de l’un d’eux
était liée à la lutte politico-militaire que se sont livrée historiquement la
France et l’Angleterre en Amérique du Nord.
Pendant plus de deux siècles, le Canada, tout comme le Mexique, s’est
transformé en un territoire où se prolongeaient les conflits et les guerres
européennes. Les habitants de ces terres ont toujours eu du mal à s’identifier
pleinement avec le pouvoir colonial, bien que cette difficulté ne les ait pas
empêchés de profiter des réseaux commerciaux impériaux, en particulier
ceux des Britanniques. D’un point de vue politique, les gouvernements
locaux des deux pays ne fonctionnaient pas nécessairement à l’unisson.
Leurs citoyens étaient suffisamment autonomes dans le secteur
économique, mais ils cherchaient tous d’une façon primordiale la
connexion avec le marché européen.
Sa politique commerciale ouverte est apparue comme telle, vers la moitié
du XIXe siècle, au moment où les colonies obtenaient une certaine
autonomie économique et commerciale. Cette indépendance relative a
coïncidé avec les changements économiques qui se sont produits en
Angleterre, notamment l’abandon graduel des pratiques mercantilistes et
l’adoption d’un système commercial orienté vers le libre-échange.
Toute politique commerciale est basée sur deux options qui ne sont pas
nécessairement exclusives : le protectionnisme et le libre-échange. Dans
les deux cas, l’application ou la disparition des tarifs douaniers joue un rôle
principal. En optant, vers la fin du XIXe siècle, pour la création graduelle
d’un système tarifaire pour ses colonies et d’un autre très différent pour le
reste du monde, l’Empire britannique a jeté les bases qui, plus tard, devaient
servir à définir les politiques commerciales par l’imposition du tarif
douanier.
Jusqu’en 1846, le marché britannique représentait la destination obligée
des produits canadiens : peaux, poissons, blé, produits forestiers, métaux,
minerais, etc. La décision unilatérale qu’a prise l’Empire de mettre fin à
l’accès préférentiel du Canada (et du reste de ses colonies) à son marché a
sérieusement nui à ce trajet commercial. Cette mesure a obligé les colonies
267
à chercher rapidement des solutions de rechange, et le marché le plus près et
le plus prometteur était évidemment celui des États-Unis.
Cette option naturelle et même souhaitable en apparence a causé des
problèmes au Canada, principalement de nature politique. En effet, de
l’intérieur, les États-Unis se livraient une lutte à mort, déchirés entre deux
projets économiques. Cette lutte n’était pas exclusivement liée à l’abolition
de l’esclavage, mais également au protectionnisme et au libre-échange,
comme pratique économique dominante. Le Canada s’est donc
involontairement vu prendre part à la guerre de son voisin.
En dépit de cette situation, les colonies britanniques de l’Amérique du
Nord ont obtenu, en 1854, la signature d’un traité de réciprocité avec les
États-Unis, négocié en leur nom par le Gouverneur général, Lord Elgin.
Paradoxalement, cet accord leur a offert entre autres une occasion de
croissance économique en marge de la mère patrie.
Les circonstances dans lesquelles s’est réalisée la négociation sont d’un
intérêt particulier puisqu’elles nous aident à mieux comprendre le milieu où
est née la politique commerciale canadienne. Tout d’abord, il s’agissait
d’un accord commercial négocié entre un État indépendant de l’Empire
britannique depuis 78 ans et une poignée de colonies encore sous l’autorité
britannique et qui, bien que jouissant d’une certaine autonomie à diriger
leur politique commerciale, devaient toujours compter sur l’approbation de
la Couronne. Les négociations exceptionnellement prolongées en raison de
problèmes internes et de la méfiance du Congrès ont fini par aboutir.
Les colonies ont montré qu’elles possédaient la capacité significative de
promouvoir un accord de réciprocité commerciale. Associé à la
construction du chemin de fer en 1850, cet accord a démontré que la
création d’un État national peut parfaitement être précédée par des projets
économiques d’envergure traditionnellement propres à ceux d’un État
indépendant.
Le dicton « à quelque chose malheur est bon » pourrait bien s’appliquer
aux conséquences qui ont abouti à la dérogation du traité en 1866. Devant la
perte de leur marché préférentiel, les colonies britanniques ont commencé à
considérer avec intérêt la possibilité de s’unir. Cette unification s’est
concrétisée avec l’Acte de l’Amérique du Nord britannique en 1867.
Pendant les dix premières années de son existence, le gouvernement du
Dominion, en quête d’un accord avec les États-Unis, a tenté de rétablir de
nouvelles négociations commerciales.
L’échec de cette initiative a renforcé, à partir de 1876, la position des
secteurs économiques intéressés à l’instauration de pratiques
commerciales protectionnistes par ce qu’on appellerait plus tard la
Politique nationale.
268
Canada et Mexique :
Entre 1879 et 1911, les gouvernements en place ont tenté successivement
de négocier un autre traité, mais l’hermétisme états-unien s’est vu alimenté
par la découverte des avantages qu’offrait un marché captif de producteurs
et de consommateurs au Canada.
La connexion impériale par défaut?
Pendant près de 32 ans, les Canadiens ont construit les fondements de leur
politique commerciale sans disposer d’un instrument légal devant garantir
leur accès au marché états-unien. Cet obstacle n’a pas nui à la progression
des intérêts patronaux des États-Unis au Canada qui, grâce à la politique
nationale, comptaient sur un marché sûr.
Devant cette réalité, le gouvernement du Canada a cherché à faire
contrepoids dans la connexion impériale : « […] if Canadian goods could
not gain a privileged status in the United States market, then they had to
regain such status in Great Britain »4 (Hart, 1998).
La recherche d’une telle union n’allait pas de soi puisque les politiques
qui dirigeaient l’économie et le commerce de la Grande-Bretagne ont
maintenu leur orientation libre-échangiste pratiquement jusque durant des
années 1920.
Même si le Canada ne comptait pas sur la clause de la nation la plus
favorisée5, ni avec les États-Unis ni avec la Grande-Bretagne, il ne s’est pas
privé d’accorder unilatéralement un traitement préférentiel aux produits
britanniques et de chercher, à son tour, à conclure des accords préférentiels
réciproques avec plusieurs pays parmi ceux qui s’étaient développés sous
l’autorité britannique.
Depuis son apparition vers le milieu du XIXe siècle, le commerce
international avait eu recours à l’utilisation du statut de la nation la plus
favorisée et à l’application d’un régime douanier comme instruments au
service d’une politique commerciale internationale déterminée.
Devant l’impossibilité d’obtenir un tel statut, le Canada avait choisi de le
négocier ailleurs. Ce n’est qu’en 1911, sous le gouvernement du premier
ministre libéral Wilfrid Laurier, que les négociateurs canadiens ont réussi à
conclure un nouvel accord commercial avec les États-Unis.
Édification d’une politique économique internationale pour le
Mexique
Le Mexique et le Canada ont en commun plusieurs aspects sur le plan des
origines de leur politique économique internationale. Contrairement à ce
qui a été considéré, la présence de l’Empire britannique et, plus tard, celle
des États-Unis, a profondément marqué la vie politique de ces pays et pas
seulement celle du Canada, comme on l’affirme généralement.
269
L’important legs économique des Britanniques à ces pays a
profondément influencé leur avenir en tant que pays semi-périphériques.
L’une des hypothèses qui guident ce travail est que le processus de
continentalisation ne se serait pas développé sans l’existence préalable
d’une longue relation économique avec la monarchie britannique, qui a jeté
les bases du positionnement économique futur des États-Unis tant au
Canada qu’au Mexique.
Il ne faut pas oublier que malgré certaines différences et à quelques
nuances près, un certain nombre d’habitants des États-Unis, ainsi que du
Canada, ont fait partie d’une unité politique et territoriale dépendante de
l’empire anglais jusqu’au XVIIIe siècle. En d’autres termes, ces deux pays
ont été des pièces maîtresses de ce que l’on connaît comme l’Empire formel,
alors que le Mexique faisait partie de l’Empire informel6 depuis la fin de son
indépendance (1821) jusqu’à l’éclatement de la Révolution mexicaine en
1910 (Meyer, 2000).
Historiquement parlant, le Mexique s’est également débattu entre les
options atlantistes, continentalistes et nationalistes sur le plan de la
définition de sa politique économique, mais avec des différences
importantes par rapport au Canada.
Dans le cas du Mexique, la tendance atlantiste a pratiquement disparu au
début du XX e siècle, et les deux autres, le nationalisme et le
continentalisme, ont lutté avec acharnement pour s’imposer comme partie
intégrante de la politique économique officielle, et ce, depuis la fin de la
Seconde Guerre mondiale. Au Mexique, le nationalisme économique a
dominé jusqu’en 1982, au moment où la crise de la dette externe a forcé le
gouvernement mexicain à remettre en question son modèle économique.
La continentalisation a gagné du terrain à partir de 1986, au moment où
ce pays a été admis dans le GATT. Dans ce processus, la signature de
l’ALÉNA pourrait être considérée comme la consolidation de jure du
processus de continentalisation, de la même façon que le Canada l’a
concrétisé avec l’ALE/CUSFTA et, par la suite, avec le Mexique et de
nouveau avec les États-Unis par l’ALÉNA.
Protectionnisme et libre-échange au Mexique
Vers le milieu du XIXe siècle, l’abolition du monopole commercial
espagnol a déclenché un débat animé sur l’instauration du libre-échange ou
du protectionnisme comme partie intégrante des politiques du nouvel État.
Durant ce débat, les tarifs douaniers de même que les autres conditions
restrictives au commerce extérieur ont joué un rôle décisif dans les
discussions sur le projet économique de la nation naissante.
270
Canada et Mexique :
Sans minimiser l’importance d’un débat semblable qui a eu lieu au
Canada en 1866, on peut affirmer qu’au Mexique, le climat de la discussion
était tout autre. En effet, au Mexique, elle s’est déroulée pendant et après la
lutte armée menée avec acharnement par ce pays pour obtenir son
indépendance de la métropole espagnole (1810-1821), avec des coûts
humains, politiques et économiques qui l’ont laissé dans un état désastreux.
En outre, face à l’incapacité d’acquitter leurs dettes, les gouvernements
mexicains post-indépendantistes ont dû subir l’indifférence politiquement
calculée des puissances européennes, plusieurs blocus commerciaux et
l’invasion militaire punitive. Au contraire, le Canada n’a livré aucune
guerre d’indépendance à sa métropole anglaise, et le processus
d’autonomie politique et territoriale a emprunté la voie parlementaire.
Au Mexique, les protectionnistes et libre-échangistes étaient identifiés
aux groupes politiques qui dominaient la scène, c’est-à-dire les
conservateurs et les libéraux. Les uns et les autres s’entendaient pour rejeter
les États-Unis; ils partageaient ouvertement leur penchant pour le lien
économique avec l’Angleterre et encourageaient le resserrement des liens
atlantistes.
Cette vision ne coïncidait pas nécessairement avec les positions
politiques que brandissaient les conservateurs et les libéraux sur un autre
terrain, mais ils partageaient certains points de vue en ce qui concerne les
aspects économiques et commerciaux. Même conservateur, Lucas Alamán
acceptait la vision économique du libéral Mora, qui considérait le Mexique
comme un pays essentiellement agricole et minier, ce qui n’a pas empêché
Alamán de se déclarer franc partisan de la stimulation de l’industrie
manufacturière au Mexique.
La principale différence qui existait entre la vision économique soutenue
par les libéraux et celle des conservateurs résidait principalement dans la
position qu’ils adoptaient par rapport au libre-échange. Lucas Alamán
appuyait la protection douanière, qui visait particulièrement à encourager
l’industrie textile. À son avis, le protectionnisme douanier se justifiait du
fait qu’il était un instrument permettant de renforcer l’industrie nationale
afin de rompre par la suite avec la dépendance du commerce extérieur. Les
libéraux étaient beaucoup plus enclins à établir le commerce extérieur du
Mexique dans une perspective qui tendait paradoxalement à conserver le
modèle économique colonial basé sur l’exportation de produits primaires et
miniers et l’importation de produits manufacturés. Malgré son penchant
pour un État fort et centralisateur, qu’il identifiait avec un gouvernement
monarchique, Alamán s’avérait plus avancé que certains libéraux
mexicains du point de vue de l’économie.
Le débat n’était pas uniquement axé sur la relation économique avec
l’Angleterre et les États-Unis. En effet, de l’intérieur, le conflit pour le
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contrôle du marché interne et non seulement le pouvoir sur les secteurs qui
établissaient le commerce extérieur, comme on le croyait dans un premier
temps, étaient au cœur de la lutte entre centralistes et fédéralistes.
Tout comme le Canada, le Mexique était aux prises avec une résistance
évidente des groupes régionaux et locaux, qui refusaient de céder leurs
profits et ressources au bénéfice d’un gouvernement central. En plus de
perdurer, les conflits régionaux ont entraîné des coûts politiques et
économiques énormes. De plus, dans la plupart des cas, ils se sont soldés par
des affrontements armés qui ont entraîné la réticence des puissances
étrangères à reconnaître l’indépendance politique du Mexique et ont
entravé la conclusion d’accords commerciaux avec le gouvernement
mexicain en place.
Alors que l’unification politique et territoriale du Canada obéissait
clairement à une tentative d’attirer de nouveau les intérêts économiques et
commerciaux des États-Unis, au Mexique, au contraire, l’anarchie
régionale et les conflits locaux et centraux ont d’abord attiré dans une
certaine mesure les intérêts de l’Angleterre. Ils ont ensuite attiré ceux des
États-Unis, qui ont profité de ce désordre politique et économique pour
canaliser l’excédent de capitaux et de produits manufacturés dans des
conditions très souvent léonines.
La politique économique internationale du Mexique a connu à ses débuts
une trajectoire erratique, conséquence directe des événements politiques du
pays. Un des problèmes les plus sérieux avec lequel a dû composer le
Mexique, comme d’autres pays d’Amérique latine, était le besoin de
mobiliser des ressources financières devant soutenir l’essor économique
interne et, par conséquent, son commerce extérieur. Selon la mentalité de
ces pays, dont l’indépendance par rapport à l’Espagne était toute récente,
l’endettement principalement envers les maisons britanniques ferait en
sorte d’obliger ces dernières à s’intéresser économiquement à leur pays
dans le but d’y investir : « los hombres de negocios y los políticos de Gran
Bretaña estaban convencidos de que los préstamos serían los canales de
acceso a los mercados, a las minas, y los tesoros de las jóvenes naciones, así
como al fortalecimiento de su poderío naval en el pacífico y en el
Atlántico7 ». (Marichal, 1988)
Pendant cette période et jusqu’à la fin du XIXe siècle, la diplomatie
mexicaine s’est efforcée d’obtenir la reconnaissance officielle de son
indépendance politique de l’Espagne, ayant recours, comme stimulant, aux
accords et aux traités commerciaux; la reconnaissance officielle de
l’Angleterre et des États-Unis était au cœur de cette stratégie.
La formulation d’une politique commerciale tournée vers l’extérieur
paraissait difficile, en particulier pour le gouvernement mexicain en place,
simultanément confronté à la recherche de nouveaux prêts et au paiement
272
Canada et Mexique :
des précédents, pendant qu’il devait élaborer une politique fiscale destinée
à fortifier l’État, mais qui en même temps ne devait pas semer trop
d’opposition entre ces groupes, qui se disputaient les bénéfices du
commerce extérieur.
Le renforcement du commerce extérieur s’est fait prédominant pour le
gouvernement mexicain, et les accords commerciaux sont devenus la pièce
maîtresse non seulement pour le Mexique, mais aussi pour les
gouvernements étrangers qui cherchaient un marché sûr pour leurs
investissements et leurs marchandises, sans avoir à craindre la menace du
protectionnisme douanier.
À partir de cette période, la diplomatie mexicaine a non seulement
travaillé à la promotion de la reconnaissance du Mexique comme pays
indépendant, mais elle a aussi concentré toutes ses forces à le promouvoir
économiquement en négociant plusieurs accords commerciaux, dont les
plus importants, avec la Grande-Bretagne (1827), les États-Unis (1835,
1857, 1859, 1883, 1911), l’Espagne (1836) et la France (1831).
Réciprocité ou continentalisation
Tant les tarifs douaniers que l’investissement étranger, sous ses deux
manifestations (investissement productif et investissement de
portefeuille), ont joué un rôle déterminant dans le développement
économique du Mexique et du Canada. Les premiers traités commerciaux
qu’ont signé ces pays avec les États-Unis en 1835 et en 1854
respectivement, avaient en commun d’avoir été négociés avant même que
le Mexique et, encore moins le Canada, ne deviennent pour ainsi dire des
nations indépendantes.
Comme nous l’avons déjà mentionné, l’Espagne ne devait reconnaître
l’indépendance du Mexique qu’en 1836, alors que sa relation avec les
États-Unis était entrée, paradoxalement, dans une phase de nette
détérioration à la suite de son refus réitéré de vendre une grande partie du
nord du territoire mexicain. Ce refus a eu pour conséquence que les
États-Unis ont d’abord entrepris l’invasion progressive du territoire
mexicain, y menant ensuite une guerre expansionniste (1846-1848).
Les objectifs des traités à caractère commercial que nous avons analysés
ici n’étaient pas strictement économiques. Ils reflétaient, dans une grande
mesure, les événements et les changements importants qui se sont produits
tout au long du XIXe siècle : la consolidation du commerce international
vue sous une perspective nettement capitaliste; l’essor de l’expansionnisme territorial; la lutte entre ces pays qui s’arrogeaient le droit
d’intervenir dans les affaires d’un autre État en vertu de la grâce divine et de
la lutte contre les mouvements libéraux et nationalistes.
273
Ni le Mexique ni le Canada n’ont pu se soustraire à cette situation. Le
dénombrement des circonstances dans lesquelles ces accords ont été
conclus demeure un témoignage éloquent des difficultés qu’ont
rencontrées ces pays dans leurs tentatives d’accéder à une autonomie
économique relative.
La délimitation de leurs frontières continentales, la réglementation en
matière de navigation ainsi que la circonscription des routes commerciales
ont sans doute été les aspects les plus importants qu’aient pu imposer les
négociateurs anglais et états-uniens, le moment venu, tant au gouvernement
mexicain qu’au gouvernement canadien. Les traités conclus d’abord avec
l’Angleterre et par la suite avec les États-Unis ont constitué, dans une
grande mesure, un tour de force en vue de dominer l’espace états-unien, en
raison de sa situation géographique. La déclaration par les États-Unis de la
doctrine de Monroe, en 1823, qui proclamait « l’Amérique aux
Américains », était de mauvais augure pour le Mexique et son territoire.
Malgré ces mauvais présages, le gouvernement mexicain a vu dans ces
traités un mécanisme de pression sur l’Espagne, qui ne se décidait pas à
retirer ses troupes du port de Veracruz et encore moins à accepter
officiellement qu’elle avait perdu ses possessions américaines. Plus
l’Espagne tardait à y renoncer, plus l’Angleterre et les États-Unis
accentuaient leurs pressions en territoire mexicain.
Pour le Mexique, ces traités apportaient la promesse d’une
modernisation longuement désirée qui réunissait tous les ingrédients dont
le pays avait besoin pour se développer : chemins de fer, routes,
industrialisation, marchés et investissement, en somme, tout ce qui lui
donnerait accès à un véritable développement économique8.
Dans un sens différent, le Traité de réciprocité du Canada (1854), connu
aussi sous le nom de Traité Elgin-Marcy, n’avait pas comme but explicite
de délimiter la frontière sud des colonies britanniques ni d’en reconnaître
leur souveraineté politique. Contrairement à la dispersion démographique
qui prévalait dans le nord du Mexique, les habitants britanniques et français
s’étaient installés pratiquement tout le long d’une bonne partie de la
frontière avec les États-Unis, créant de cette façon, une barrière de retenue
permanente face aux éventuels désirs expansionnistes de leur voisin.
Au Mexique, la négociation de ces traités ressemblait davantage à
l’attestation de la répartition de l’économie et des terres du Mexique au
profit des États-Unis, qu’à une entente commerciale entre des nations
souveraines. Par contraste, dans le cas du futur Canada, le traité de 1854
avait pour but d’offrir aux colonies un accès préférentiel au marché
états-unien, tandis que les États-Unis, grâce à la préférence impériale,
obtenaient à la fois leur entrée à un double marché : celui de leurs voisins et
celui de la mère patrie. En ce sens, les colonies ne représentaient qu’un pont
274
Canada et Mexique :
commercial à double voie entre les États-Unis et la puissante Angleterre,
tandis que le Mexique, plongé dans l’anarchie, reflétait la décadence
économique de l’Espagne.
Ces deux traités ont fait long feu. Les États-Unis n’ont pas cherché à
proroger celui de 1854, considéré comme inutile puisque de toute façon, ils
avaient accès à presque toutes les ressources naturelles du Canada. Dans le
cas du traité mexicain, les véritables intérêts états-uniens, qui se situaient
au-delà des aspects tarifaires douaniers, n’ayant pas été satisfaits, les
États-Unis ont décidé de prendre, sans qu’aucun accord ne soit négocié, ce
qu’ils convoitaient réellement : le territoire mexicain9.
Malgré tout, après l’abrogation de ces traités, les deux pays ont cherché
par divers moyens à rétablir une relation de réciprocité commerciale. Le
Mexique a négocié d’autres accords avec les États-Unis, lesquels pour
diverses raisons n’ont jamais été approuvés et encore moins ratifiésx.
Paradoxalement, lorsque le gouvernement états-unien, qui cherchait à
relancer les négociations autour de la réciprocité commerciale, a manifesté
un véritable intérêt pour la mise sur pied d’une stratégie commerciale
simultanée vers le Mexique et le Canada (la diplomatie du dollar), les
accords ont été rejetés, tant au Mexique (1909-1911) qu’au Canada (1911).
En jetant un bref coup d’œil à la situation, nous pourrions facilement
conclure que les négociations commerciales, telles que ces traités, avaient
peu en commun. Il s’agissait en effet de deux pays économiquement
différents qui entretenaient une relation profondément distincte avec les
États-Unis. Cependant, une analyse plus détaillée révèle qu’à cette époque,
les États-Unis avaient déjà décidé d’appliquer la même stratégie
commerciale à ses deux voisins, ce qui, dans une certaine mesure, devrait
faire tomber l’affirmation traditionnellement soutenue de l’existence d’une
relation exclusive et privilégiée entre le Canada et les États-Unis11.
Si nous prenons en compte que le Traité Elgin-Marcy (1854) avait été
négocié à peine trois ans auparavant, il demeure important de se demander
si le gouvernement états-unien n’a pas utilisé une partie de l’expérience
acquise durant la négociation du traité de 1854 pour ses négociations avec le
Mexique en 1857 et 1859.
Il serait encore plus important de déterminer si Washington suivait un
plan préconçu qui prétendait harmoniser ses intérêts, selon la situation
économique, commerciale et territoriale dans les deux espaces voisins, ce
qui, dans l’affirmative, constituerait le premier indice du projet de
continentalisation états-unien.
La réciprocité commerciale a servi de fil conducteur aux entretiens des
deux pays. Le Département d’État avait clairement indiqué au négociateur
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Forsyth, en 1857, que le contenu, le rythme et les limites des négociations
avec le Mexique devaient s’en tenir au contenu du Traité Elgin-Marcy
(1854). D’ailleurs, lors de la négociation du second traité,
McLane-Ocampo (1859), le négociateur McLane s’était lui aussi inspiré de
Marcy en matière de stratégie.
Bien que les négociateurs états-uniens aient considéré les réalisations
obtenues, à la suite du traité de 1854, comme un point de référence pour les
négociations avec le Mexique, il y avait de grandes différences de contenu
par rapport à ce qu’ont finalement négocié les Mexicains et les Canadiens,
comme nous pouvons le remarquer dans le tableau suivant.
Différences entre le Traité Elgin-Marcy et ceux de Forsyth-Montes (1857) et
McLane-Ocampo (1859)
Canada (1854)
Mexique (1857 et 1859)
Accès réciproque
Réduction des tarifs douaniers en échange
d’un prêt
Libéralisation de 28 produits, dont des
matières premières et des produits d’origine
agricole et animale
Libéralisation d’un nombre supérieur à celui
stipulé dans le traité canadien, qui
comprenait certains produits manufacturés et
des produits agricoles
Exonérations : les produits manufacturés, le
saumon et la pêche à l’embouchure des
rivières. Ce traité ne s’appliquait pas à la
côte atlantique, au sud du 36e parallèle. La
pêche de crustacés était interdite sur toute la
côte des États-Unis. La pêche n’était pas
permise sur les côtes du Pacifique.
Exonérations : tissus de coton, en particulier
la cotonnade, et le sucre (seulement dans le
traité de 1857). Ce traité n’incluait pas le
commerce portuaire sur les côtes du golfe du
Mexique.
Ce traité incluait tout le territoire des
colonies britanniques de l’Amérique du
Nord.
Ce traité incluait uniquement le commerce
de la zone frontalière du nord du Mexique
avec les États-Unis.
Période de validité : dix ans
Aucun délai final n’a été déterminé.
Niveau préalable d’échange commercial
entre les deux pays : bas.
Les produits négociés représentaient 90 %
des échanges bilatéraux.
Source : Renseignements fournis par Norrie (p. 180-185), Pomfret (p. 73, 75-76), Riguzzi
(p. 70-72) et Masters (p. 7).
Les États-Unis n’ont jamais renouvelé le Traité Elgin-Marcy. Par
conséquent, le Dominion du Canada a dû envisager une nouvelle politique
commerciale puisqu’au fil du temps, les États-Unis ont eu tendance à y
mêler l’imposition de certains tarifs douaniers en exigeant une réciprocité
sans réserve. La mise en œuvre d’une politique devant répondre à ces
aspects aurait été difficilement réalisable sans l’intervention de l’État. Une
des caractéristiques les plus significatives du développement économique
du Canada réside dans le fait que, depuis sa fondation, l’État s’était
transformé en un agent-clé de la consolidation économique de la
Confédération.
276
Canada et Mexique :
Entre 1866 et 1874, le gouvernement fédéral a essayé au moins à trois
reprises de négocier un nouvel accord commercial avec les États-Unis. Les
échecs répétés de ces essais ont constitué un excellent argument pour les
habitants du Dominion, qui ont dû faire pression sur le premier ministre
Macdonald (1867-1873 et 1878-1891) afin de faire changer les règles du
jeu qui prévalaient dans la relation avec leur voisin. Ces pressions ont abouti
à la hausse des tarifs douaniers à partir de 1859 et se sont transformées en
axe de la stratégie commerciale de la Confédération.
La politique nationale a obéi à trois objectifs : chercher à satisfaire les
pressions des producteurs en faveur d’un protectionnisme douanier,
poursuivre la consolidation d’une industrie manufacturière nationale et
chercher à négocier un nouvel accord qui permettrait d’introduire les
produits canadiens d’une façon préférentielle sur le marché états-unien.
Cette politique a consisté grosso modo à taxer ces importations au moyen de
tarifs douaniers qui concurrençaient celles provenant du Canada et, en
même temps, de permettre l’entrée des importations qui réduisaient les
étapes de leur propre chaîne de production. Cette stratégie a également
orienté le secteur manufacturier vers les activités de montage.
La politique nationale a dû résoudre plusieurs problèmes au fil du temps,
le principal étant celui de la dimension du marché canadien. Grâce au
niveau de protection dont ils jouissaient, les producteurs ont amélioré
substantiellement leurs volumes de production, mais en même temps, ils
ont dû composer avec les limites de leur marché intérieur. Puis, la demande
pour un plus grand accès à d’autres marchés, principalement celui des
États-Unis, s’est faite pressante.
Le souhait de Macdonald s’est en partie réalisé puisque cette stratégie a
réussi à capter l’intérêt non seulement du gouvernement, mais surtout des
investisseurs et des entrepreneurs états-uniens, qui avaient trouvé
d’importants avantages dans le protectionnisme canadien sans qu’un
accord commercial soit nécessaire entre les deux pays.
Un grand nombre d’entreprises dont la maison mère était aux États-Unis
ont établi des succursales en sol canadien après avoir calculé les grands
bénéfices que leur offriraient les avantages de dominer, non seulement le
secteur des produits canadiens, mais aussi d’autres secteurs économiques,
tels que celui des ressources naturelles, en plus de leur offrir le
quasi-monopole du marché interne.
Longtemps, cette relation a été symbiotique : au protectionnisme se
combinaient les concessions, le marchandage et les représailles mutuelles;
après tout, ni le Dominion ni les États-Unis n’étaient réellement prêts à
renoncer totalement au commerce bilatéral.
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En dépit de la permanence prolongée de la politique nationale, les
gouvernements fédéraux avaient établi une double stratégie sans égard à
leur orientation partisane. Ils ont donc continué à rechercher la réciprocité
commerciale avec leur voisin et à cultiver leur relation commerciale avec la
Grande-Bretagne.
La présence états-unienne s’est accrue en même temps que s’implantait
le processus d’industrialisation protectionniste. Cette présence se
manifestant non seulement par l’investissement direct, mais aussi par
l’entremise d’occasions d’affaires qui ont surgi à la suite de la Loi sur les
brevets du Canada, émise en 1872, laquelle établissait des conditions
bienveillantes sur l’utilisation et le transfert de la technologie.
Une stratégie commerciale pour les deux voisins
En janvier 1910, la chance du gouvernement canadien a semblé tourner : le
premier ministre libéral, sir Wilfrid Laurier (1896-1911), avait réussi à
négocier un accord de réciprocité avec le président Taft. Cet accord
établissait le libre-échange sur les produits agricoles primaires ainsi que sur
les ressources naturelles et leurs produits dérivés. Il prévoyait en outre une
réduction des tarifs douaniers sur une quantité considérable de biens
fabriqués, principalement des outils et des machines agricoles.
Paradoxalement, cet accord a été approuvé rapidement par le pouvoir
législatif états-unien en juillet 1911 même si, depuis le mois de février, la
communauté d’affaires ainsi que les secteurs financier et manufacturier de
Toronto et de Montréal l’avaient publiquement rejeté.
Le mouvement anti-traité a connu son apogée quand un groupe de
18 libéraux de Toronto a publié un manifeste s’opposant à l’accord et
exhortant la population à faire de même. L’Anti-Reciprocity League de
Montréal et la Canadian National League de Toronto ont été fondées peu de
temps après. Toutes ces protestations ont fini par attiser l’inquiétude de la
haute hiérarchie gouvernementale : « […] the feeling in Montreal and
Toronto against the Agreement could hardly be stronger if the United States
troops had already invaded our territory12 » (Lord Grey, Gouverneur
général, cité dans Stevens, 1991).
Vers la fin du mois de février, un groupe composé de membres du caucus
libéral demandait à Laurier de retarder la présentation officielle de l’accord
au Parlement jusqu’à ce qu’il soit approuvé par le Congrès américain.
L’expérience passée démontrait que les accords antérieurs avaient été
rejetés. Aussi était-il jusqu’à un certain point superflu et politiquement
risqué de déclencher un débat parlementaire au moment où, jugeait-on, les
esprits étaient suffisamment échauffés. Le premier ministre ayant refusé
d’écouter ses confrères, les 25 jours suivants ont tourné à la bataille
parlementaire qui a précipité sa mort politique et, avec elle, la débâcle du
Parti libéral.
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Canada et Mexique :
Les principaux arguments défavorables formulés lors d’interminables
débats parlementaires pourraient se résumer de la façon suivante : la
réciprocité détruirait l’économie canadienne et l’axe commercial construit
entre les régions de l’Est et de l’Ouest; l’accord encouragerait et
multiplierait les échanges Nord-Sud entre les deux pays, au détriment des
échanges existant entre les régions canadiennes; la réciprocité
symboliserait l’absorption économique du Canada; sa durée incertaine
signifiait une menace pour les intérêts des transporteurs et des producteurs,
qui seraient forcés de concurrencer sans cesse les importations des
États-Unis, ce qui symboliserait pratiquement la disparition des industries
locales; la réciprocité conduirait à moyen terme à la séparation d’avec la
Grande-Bretagne13 parce que tôt ou tard elle détruirait les préférences
britanniques dont jouissait le Dominion et, finalement, parce qu’elle
éliminerait le commerce interprovincial obtenu avec tant d’efforts par la
construction des chemins de fer14.
Pour leur part, les arguments favorables à la réciprocité se sont heurtés
dès le début à un profond sentiment de réprobation. Selon ces arguments, la
réciprocité produirait un accroissement du marché des ressources
naturelles, un plus grand nombre de cargaisons favoriserait la prospérité du
système de transports et surtout, affirmait Laurier, on devait permettre aux
gens d’emprunter les canaux de commerce le plus près d’eux, c’est-à-dire
ceux de l’axe Nord-Sud, plutôt que de les forcer vers un commerce qui,
d’emblée, pouvait être coûteux, à l’instar de plusieurs échanges entre
l’Ouest et l’Est canadiens.
Finalement, les parlementaires ont demandé à Laurier d’apporter
certains changements au contenu du traité. Mais le premier ministre a
également rejeté cette demande. Dès lors, son destin politique et le sort du
traité étaient déterminés. Le 29 juillet 1911, le gouvernement dissout la
Chambre des communes et déclenche une élection générale prévue pour
septembre; ce vote se soldera par un échec des libéraux et un rejet du traité.
Les élections générales de 1911 ont eu l’effet d’une boîte à surprise, dont
sont sorties deux positions adverses : le nationalisme et le continentalisme.
Ces deux positions surgissaient périodiquement comme fondement d’un
débat qui tentait de définir la position du pays par rapport aux États-Unis.
Elles remontaient à très longtemps et, jusqu’à un certain point, avaient
coexisté au sein du gouvernement, des partis politiques et de la population
en général. En 1911, la nouvelle selon laquelle le gouvernement libéral
avait négocié un accord de réciprocité commerciale, préalablement
approuvé par le Sénat états-unien, a été interprétée comme un acte de haute
trahison.
Le problème suscité était loin d’être résolu à la chute de Laurier et du
parti libéral puisque le conflit résultait en grande partie de la façon dont
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l’Est et l’Ouest canadiens situaient leurs intérêts commerciaux au sein de la
Confédération, et par rapport aux États-Unis et à la Grande-Bretagne.
En ce qui a trait au contenu, les accords de 1911 et de 1854 différaient
notamment en ce que dans ce dernier, les négociateurs états-uniens étaient
principalement intéressés par le libre accès aux pêcheries de l’Atlantique
Nord et avaient manifesté moins d’enthousiasme pour le commerce avec la
Province du Canada. Bien que les intérêts états-uniens aient vu dans
l’activité manufacturière naissante de ce qui deviendrait l’Ontario les bases
matérielles pour l’installation de leurs filiales, il est probable qu’ils aient
préféré accorder la priorité à l’accès aux poissonneries de la côte de
l’Atlantique. Dans l’accord de 1911, les provinces de l’Ouest et du centre
semblaient en voie d’obtenir une position plus avantageuse que celle du
Québec et de l’Ontario (Stevens, 1970 : 3-4).
En dépit des différences régionales qu’allait éventuellement provoquer
le traité, le sort du Canada dans son ensemble venait d’être jeté. La structure
économique du Canada de l’époque était composée d’un important groupe
de chefs d’entreprises locaux qui avaient grandi aux côtés des investisseurs
états-uniens, grâce à la protection que leur offrait la politique nationale. Ces
chefs d’entreprise se montraient satisfaits de traiter avec un marché captif.
Pendant des décennies, la politique économique a poursuivi un double
objectif. D’une part, elle encourageait les exportations d’une industrie
reposant sur les ressources naturelles et, d’autre part, elle protégeait un
secteur manufacturier national pour lequel les frontières entre la
domination nationale et les pays étrangers n’existaient pratiquement pas.
En 1914, les filiales états-uniennes avaient obtenu le privilège d’être
consolidées dans le secteur manufacturier. Le Canada comptait davantage
de compagnies relevant de capitaux états-uniens que tout autre pays, se
transformant malgré tout en plus grand récepteur de capitaux provenant de
son voisin. Près de 40 % de ces investissements se dirigeaient vers la
production d’articles de consommation courante, minerais, papier journal
et combustible, dont l’extraction et le traitement requéraient l’utilisation
d’une technologie de pointe. À l’opposée, les capitaux canadiens étaient
investis dans les industries les plus traditionnelles, qui exigeaient une force
de travail intensive et qui faisaient moins appel à la technologie : les
chaussures, les textiles, les vêtements, les meubles, le fer et l’acier.
Vers une continentalisation de facto
L’étape porfirienne au Mexique (1876-1910) est certainement le précédent
le plus solide qui permette de décrire les débuts d’une formulation
gouvernementale enracinée dans une stratégie économique internationale
qui devait l’approcher des États-Unis.
280
Canada et Mexique :
De 1870 à 1910, le Mexique a profité d’un développement capitaliste
accéléré, où la majorité des transformations économiques étaient
intimement liées à son insertion dans l’économie internationale. Tant le
capital financier que le capital commercial ont été présents au Mexique
grâce à une stratégie très détaillée conçue par Porfirio Díaz et ses
collaborateurs et se résumant à créer des conditions économiques
favorables à l’investissement étranger et à faciliter et à stimuler les
exportations mexicaines, tout en assurant coûte que coûte la stabilité
politique du Mexique (Ayala et Blanco, 1981).
La plus grande part de l’investissement étranger a suivi un modèle assez
semblable à celui du Canada, en consacrant d’énormes montants à
l’extraction minière, à la construction de chemins de fer et à l’installation de
banques. Par la suite, il s’est également tourné vers la création de centrales
d’énergie électrique et certaines branches de l’industrie manufacturière.
Pendant cette période, la stratégie économique du Mexique s’est adaptée
aux exigences de l’économie internationale, et le commerce extérieur s’est
transformé en axe dynamique de l’économie mexicaine, tandis que le
marché interne grandissait à ses côtés. De 32,5 millions (de dollars
américains) qu’elle représentait entre 1877 et 1878, la valeur des
exportations mexicaines est passée à 281,1 millions entre 1910 et 1911, soit
un accroissement d’environ 864 %.
Dans ce processus accéléré d’intégration à l’économie internationale, la
nature des exportations mexicaines s’accordait avec la demande des
économies centrales, ce qui exigeait la construction d’une infrastructure :
ports maritimes et, principalement, chemins de fer. Ces voies ferrées ont
d’abord été placées en direction du golfe du Mexique, ce qui reflétait les
tendances atlantistes, britanniques surtout, du gouvernement de Díaz.
À partir de 1880, le commerce avec les États-Unis a surpassé le
commerce avec l’Angleterre. En 1910, peu avant l’éclatement de la
Révolution mexicaine, il était arrivé à représenter 76 % des exportations et
55 % des importations mexicaines.
Le processus de continentalisation n’a pas été très exigeant : la
dynamique et l’orientation même que donnait le gouvernement de Porfirio
Díaz à la politique économique, en particulier au commerce extérieur, l’ont
conduit vers les États-Unis, sans qu’aucun accord commercial ne soit
nécessaire. Le développement industriel même de ce pays exigeait
l’extension de son marché interne et, par conséquent, de ses moyens de
communication, en particulier ceux des chemins de fer au-delà de ses deux
frontières.
Le résultat financier, qui a symbolisé l’absorption progressive du
Mexique dans l’immense réseau ferroviaire américain, était lié au pari
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états-unien de dominer industriellement les marchés du Mexique et du
Canada.
Parallèlement à la construction des chemins de fer, la suppression des
taxes de vente en 1896 épuisait les réserves fiscales régionales et
contribuait au renforcement d’un État centralisateur qui devait trouver dans
le protectionnisme douanier, imposé à partir du centre, une source
importante de ressources en capital.
Pendant la dictature de Porfirio Díaz, des mesures protectionnistes ont
soutenu les activités manufacturières. L’industrie mexicaine s’est réfugiée
derrière un régime tarifaire allant de 50 % à 200 % de la valeur des
importations; un des secteurs les plus favorisés était celui du textile.
En 1911, les investissements des États-Unis au Mexique représentaient
presque la moitié de la richesse totale du pays, laquelle s’établissait à
2,4 milliards de dollars. De cette somme, plus d’un milliard de dollars
provenaient d’un investissement états-unien (Dunn, 1927).
Le débat politique à l’origine de l’accord de réciprocité de 1911 au
Canada n’était pas étranger au Mexique. Ce pays avait également négocié
pendant des années deux traités avec les États-Unis. Le premier, rédigé en
1883, avait été tronqué dans sa dernière étape. Approuvé par les corps
législatifs des deux pays, il n’avait pas été mis en œuvre parce que la
Chambre des représentants s’était opposée à examiner le projet de loi qui
aurait permis de le faire (1886).
Le deuxième, négocié entre 1909 et 1911, revêt une importance
particulière parce qu’il n’a finalement été rejeté par aucun corps législatif
du gouvernement états-unien, comme le voulait la tradition, mais plutôt par
le gouvernement mexicain. Ces deux accords ont été négociés dans leur
presque totalité pendant la longue dictature du général Porfirio Díaz
(1876-1880 et 1884-1911).
Le processus de négociation des deux accords a suscité, au Mexique, un
intéressant débat sur des points de contraste semblables à ceux discutés au
Canada en 1911. Durant la négociation de ces accords, le gouvernement
mexicain, appuyé par une prospérité économique résultant de
considérables investissements étrangers, avait assumé une position
politique provocatrice15.
Bien que les initiatives de réciprocité commerciale négociées aient
semblé irrémissiblement vouées à l’échec au moment de passer la ligne
droite de l’approbation législative, ni le pouvoir exécutif états-unien ni les
fonctionnaires liés au Département du commerce n’en ont éprouvé le
moindre découragement. Tous les deux proposaient d’autres formules qui
ont finalement amené des résultats semblables à ceux d’éventuels accords
282
Canada et Mexique :
de réciprocité. En ce sens, nous ne pouvons pas ignorer ce qui s’est produit
lors de la première Conférence internationale américaine (1889-1890),
convoquée par le gouvernement des États-Unis, au cours de laquelle la
possibilité d’établir une union douanière continentale avait été
ouvertement proposée.
La position du gouvernement mexicain est d’un intérêt particulier. Elle
représente en effet le précédent le plus éloigné des autres propositions
continentales formulées plus tard au fil des ans. Elle se distingue
particulièrement de deux propositions formulées après la Deuxième Guerre
mondiale, la première consistant en une tentative d’accord liant le
développement économique du Mexique et du Canada aux efforts de guerre
états-uniens16, en 1941 et en 1942, et la seconde proposant la création d’une
organisation internationale de commerce qui cherchait à regrouper tous les
pays sous le libre-échange en 1947 (Gutiérrez-Haces, 2004).
Les motifs qu’a exprimés le gouvernement mexicain en s’opposant à la
proposition d’une union douanière continentale étaient convaincants.
Parmi les trois plus importants de ces motifs, le premier était d’ordre
économique : le gouvernement mexicain ne pouvait pas accepter un accord
libre-échangiste continental parce qu’un tel accord l’aurait forcé à éliminer
ou, à défaut, à réduire les tarifs douaniers imposés sur le commerce
extérieur d’alors et qui représentaient une source de financement pour le
gouvernement central. Le deuxième argument était assez semblable à celui
des Canadiens qui s’opposaient à l’accord de 1911 : il fallait protéger
l’industrialisation du pays. Le troisième reprochait à la proposition de
mettre carrément en danger l’autonomie du pays, en le précipitant dans une
situation qui l’aurait rendu de plus en plus dépendant des États-Unis
(Morales, 1994).
Comprenant le rejet non seulement de la délégation mexicaine, mais
aussi du reste des représentations latino-américaines, le secrétaire d’État,
James Blaine, a choisi de travailler avec chaque groupe séparément dans les
coulisses, afin de découvrir les pays qui présentaient des qualités de chef.
Dans une certaine mesure, Blaine a essayé de coopter Matías Romero, tête
de la délégation mexicaine et négociateur vétéran du malheureux accord de
1883. Pour ce faire, il a offert de reprendre le cours des négociations
bilatérales manquées et, en échange, il lui a demandé d’exercer des
pressions sur le reste des délégués. Cette proposition n’a trouvé aucun écho
auprès de Romero. En effet, échec retentissant pour le projet continental des
États-Unis, la conférence a été énormément fructueuse pour les pays
latino-américains qui ont su avec plus de clarté à quoi s’en tenir entre eux17.
Devant l’échec spectaculaire de Blaine (1888), le congrès états-unien a
décrété le tarif McKinley18, qui contrevenait à l’esprit libre-échangiste
proposé lors de la Conférence américaine. Le tarif McKinley (1890) a
produit des effets substantiels sur l’économie mexicaine. Cet instrument a
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provoqué de manière directe l’établissement d’importantes filiales
états-uniennes au Mexique dans le style de celles qui existaient au Canada.
Ces filiales ont transféré au Mexique, en partie ou complètement, la
production de leurs sociétés, qui comptaient normalement sur l’importation
des minerais du Mexique, afin de les soustraire au tarif McKinley, qui
s’appliquait notamment à ces facteurs de production. Tel a été le cas
d’usines de traitement et de raffinage des minerais, liées aux entreprises
ASARCO (Guggenheim), Kansas City Smelting and Refining et la Omaha
Grant (Gutiérrez-Haces, 2003 : 6).
Pour la première fois, une mesure protectionniste des États-Unis tournait
à l’avantage du Mexique. En effet, les chefs d’entreprise états-uniens
avaient démontré une plus grande lucidité que leurs fonctionnaires,
paralysés dans un protectionnisme à outrance qui ne faisait qu’adopter des
arguties de tout genre, pour en dévier les effets.
Sournois et astucieux comme il l’était, Porfirio Díaz a directement attiré
l’investissement étranger, sans égard à l’orientation ni à la couleur de
l’argent, en reconnaissant à plusieurs reprises que son projet de
modernisation du Mexique — rude, à l’époque —, ne pouvait ni ne devait se
passer de lui. Si le président mexicain a volontairement retardé la
ratification définitive d’un accord commercial en négociation depuis 1909
avec le gouvernement états-unien, c’est que le pays disposait de tout
l’investissement nécessaire sans avoir besoin de s’exposer à retomber dans
un processus aussi pénible que celui de 1896.
La présence de chefs d’entreprise canadiens, à l’époque du porfiriat, a été
cruciale pour la construction d’une infrastructure moderne dans la ville de
Mexico et dans d’autres villes importantes au sein du pays. Díaz admirait le
style canadien qui, d’après lui, incarnait le meilleur du Britannique, du
Français et de l’États-Unien. Contemporain des gouvernements de sir
John A. Macdonald et de sir Wilfrid Laurier, il connaissait les mésaventures
du projet d’unification de la Confédération canadienne, ainsi que la façon
dont la politique nationale et les chemins de fer avaient attiré
l’investissement étranger.
À l’image des premiers ministres du Dominion du Canada, le président
Díaz avait également appliqué des mesures protectionnistes —
certainement moindres que celles de la politique nationale — qui
prétendaient protéger l’industrialisation mexicaine naissante. Il avait parié
que les chemins de fer, bien qu’ils aient été construits à l’aide de prêts et de
concessions étrangères, devaient apporter l’unification du pays et en finir
avec ces chefs régionaux qui n’avaient produit que des guerres et le
séparatisme. Fervent croyant de ce que le progrès devait passer par le
commerce extérieur, il a assumé avec enthousiasme le rôle de fournisseur
de matières premières et de produits de base, qui était, selon le système
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Canada et Mexique :
capitaliste, à la base de l’économie mexicaine. Son administration
prolongée a introduit la première phase de modernisation du Mexique, en
tendant une main amicale au capital étranger et en réprimant de l’autre une
population qui continuait d’être majoritairement indigène et paysanne.
[Gutiérrez-Haces, 1997 : 11-32]
L’accord de réciprocité commerciale rejeté par le gouvernement de Díaz,
en 1911, ne constituait pas un nouvel accord s’ajoutant à la longue liste des
propositions et des négociations tronquées, qui, la plupart du temps,
altéraient la relation bilatérale. Cet accord a été proposé à la même époque
que celui négocié par le gouvernement de Laurier au Canada. D’ailleurs,
comme nous l’avons déjà mentionné, les deux accords ont été rejetés par
des forces politiques internes qui s’opposaient à la réciprocité. On voit là
qu’en dépit de leur dépendance économique envers les États-Unis, le
Mexique et le Canada ont toujours compté sur une marge de manœuvre
considérable qui se situait très loin de la simple subordination.
La tentative d’homologation simultanée, bien que partielle, qu’ont
évidemment représentée ces accords palliait l’asymétrie économique
existant entre les trois pays, parce qu’en fait, cette relation inégale truffée au
fil des ans convenait parfaitement aux intérêts des États-Unis
Le projet de réciprocité commerciale continentale a débuté en 1910, au
moment où le gouvernement états-unien a proposé deux accords
commerciaux avec le Mexique et le Canada en se basant sur « les relations
particulières qui sont le résultat de la contiguïté territoriale », qui
exprimaient une tentative évidente de créer un marché nord-américain sous
l’hégémonie des États-Unis. À partir de cette date, la proposition a ressurgi
avec une étonnante régularité sous des formules diplomatiques très variées,
recevant, le moment venu, de multiples réponses qui ont donné la teneur de
ce qu’on appellerait plus tard l’« agenda bilatéral » de ces pays.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
Cet essai est tiré de Procesos de Integración Económica en México y Canadá:
Una Perspectiva Histórica Comparada, un ouvrage publié au Mexique par
l’Institut de recherches économiques de l’Université nationale autonome du
Mexique et les éditions Miguel Angel Porrua, Mexico, 2002.
« L’influence des États-Unis sur l’économie canadienne est devenue
constamment de plus en plus dominante; mais ils n’ont fait aucun geste conscient
pour remettre en question cette domination croissante ou lui résister ».
« Sans une compréhension de son système administratif, il est impossible
d’arriver à comprendre les objectifs politiques de la classe commerciale. Les
premiers Canadiens d’origine britannique se considéraient d’abord comme
commerçants avant d’être Britanniques, protestants ou théoriciens de la politique
[…] [L]es commerçants sont devenus une puissance politique, parce qu’ils
dominaient et représentaient un système commercial qui, à son tour, dictait leurs
285
principales demandes politiques […] Pour eux, la conquête consistait à s’emparer
d’un gigantesque système riverain et du transfert de la puissance commerciale. »
4. « […] si les marchandises canadiennes n’ont pas réussi à acquérir un statut
privilégié sur le marché états-unien, elles devaient alors recouvrer un tel statut en
Grande-Bretagne ».
5. C’est en 1417 qu’apparaît pour la première fois, dans un accord entre l’Angleterre
et la Flandre, une clause qui s’applique aux navires des deux pays, la « clause de
la nation la plus favorisée ». En 1434, elle réapparaît dans un accord entre
l’Angleterre et la Ligue hanséatique, où y figure la première allusion. En 1778, la
première clause conditionnelle de la clause NPF émerge d’un accord conclu entre
la France et les États-Unis, pour laquelle, s’il y a lieu, l’application de ladite
clause se soumet à la remise compensatoire d’avantages équivalents à ceux que
ferait initialement le tiers pays qualifié de plus favorisé.
6. Au début de la troisième décennie du XIXe siècle, certains leaders britanniques se
sont proposé de faire de l’ancienne Amérique espagnole et du Brésil un centre
d’influence de la zone sterling. Ce projet conçu à Londres était principalement de
nature économique; les dirigeants politiques et financiers britanniques étaient
sûrs que l’avantage économique de l’industrie anglaise, conjugué à la capacité de
sa flotte marchande, ferait en sorte que les forces du libre-échange favoriseraient
principalement les intérêts britanniques en Amérique latine. (Meyer, 2000 :
15-16)
7. « […] les hommes d’affaires et les politiciens de la Grande-Bretagne étaient
convaincus que les prêts deviendraient les canaux d’accès des marchés, des mines
et des trésors des jeunes nations, ainsi que du renforcement de leur puissance
navale dans le Pacifique et dans l’Atlantique ».
8. De 1810 à 1876, le Mexique a vécu une situation de stagnation économique en
raison de deux facteurs. Le premier, la guerre, a détruit l’industrie minière, rasé
l’agriculture et provoqué l’évasion de capitaux. Le second, la durée du conflit
armé, a, pendant 11 ans, désarticulé la vie du pays et s’est soldé par plus d’un
million de morts. Le système politique mexicain a pratiquement été décapité;
pendant les 50 premières années d’indépendance, la vie politique du Mexique a
été dirigée par plus de 50 gouvernements, et 30 présidents. Outre les luttes
internes, il a connu deux guerres avec la France et une avec les États-Unis, sans
compter que des troupes étrangères se stationnaient fréquemment sur les côtes
mexicaines, menaçant d’envahir le pays.
9. Avant 1846, date de la guerre contre le Mexique, la superficie du territoire des
États-Unis était de 2 162 366 milles carrés. Le Mexique a cédé 10 721 232 milles
carrés de sa frontière nord entre 1846 et 1853. C’est dans ces terres qu’allaient se
trouver l’or de la Californie et le pétrole du Texas.
10. Le Traité Forsyth-Montes de Oca (1857) n’est pas parvenu à être discuté par le
Sénat des États-Unis, ayant été rejeté par le président Pierce en 1856 et par son
successeur, Buchanan, en 1857. Le Traité McLane-Ocampo (1859) a été rejeté
par le même sénat; le Traité Grant-Romero (1883) a été approuvé par ce sénat,
mais, en 1886, la Chambre des représentants de ce pays a refusé d’étudier le projet
de loi de sa mise à exécution.
11. Il se peut que la différence provienne des réponses qu’ont traditionnellement
fournies le Canada et le Mexique à l’égard des plans et propositions des
États-Unis, quant aux aspects commerciaux et politiques.
12. « […] le sentiment de rancœur à l’encontre de l’Accord, à Montréal et à Toronto,
aurait difficilement pu être plus grand si les troupes états-uniennes venaient
d’envahir notre territoire ».
286
Canada et Mexique :
13. Par rapport à cette affirmation, il est intéressant de constater que la brochure
intitulée « An Appeal to the British Born », publiée par Arthur Hawkes dans la
revue British News of Canada, a inspiré l’idée du slogan de la campagne
électorale de Macdonald en 1891 : « A British subject I was born, a British subject
I will die ».
14. Tous ces raisonnements se sont vus renforcés lorsqu’une lettre écrite de la main
du président Taft qui disait ce qui suit a été publiée: « the amount of Canadian
products we would take, would produce a current of business between Western
Canada and the United States that would make Canada only an adjunct of the
United States » (« la quantité de produits canadiens que nous voudrions prendre
devrait produire un courant d’affaires entre l’Ouest canadien et les États-Unis qui
ne ferait du Canada qu’un allié des États-Unis ») Stevens: 3.
15. Deux aspects de la politique de Díaz irritaient particulièrement les États-Unis. Le
premier était d’avoir établi une zone franche dans la partie de la frontière nord qui
passait par Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon et Coahuila, par où entraient des
marchandises de qualité et à meilleurs prix que celles des États-Unis. La
deuxième, était qu’il était interdit aux étrangers d’acquérir des terres mexicaines
près de la frontière américaine. Le général Sherman, commandant général de
l’armée des États-Unis, avait suggéré son élimination par force brute.
16. En juin 1941, le Canada et les États-Unis ont signé l’Accord sur l’économie et la
production (Hyde Park). En juillet 1941, le Mexique a signé une convention
distincte avec les États-Unis qui avait pour but d’empêcher le gouvernement
mexicain de fournir du matériel stratégique à l’Axe. Les États-Unis s’étaient
engagés à les acheter. En 1942, ces deux pays ont signé un accord commercial qui
est resté en vigueur jusqu’en 1950. De leur côté, le Mexique et le Canada ont
signé un accord commercial en 1946.
17. Les propos de Riguzzi à ce sujet sont instructifs, particulièrement en ce qui
concerne la recommandation faite à l’endroit des gouvernements de « négocier
des accords de réciprocité partielle avec d’autres pays américains » et les
considérations de l’Argentine, qui a conclu que toute tentative de créer un marché
commun américain « constituerait une guerre d’un continent à l’autre, une
mesure d’hostilité envers l’Europe, où là par contre reposaient les clés sûres de la
prospérité : capitaux, technologie, émigrants, marchés » (McGann, 1960 :151;
cité dans Riguzzi :138).
18. Le tarif McKinley a acquis sa renommée en introduisant d’importantes variantes
sur la politique commerciale des États-Unis. Sa principale nouveauté réside dans
le fait qu’il a été utilisé pour obtenir, dans un premier temps, un plus grand
nombre de concessions tarifaires non réciproques sous la menace de représailles.
Le pays menacé pouvait, dans un deuxième temps, être enjoint de négocier un
accord qui, étant d’un rang inférieur à celui d’un traité, n’était pas soumis aux
inconsistances du Congrès, mais plutôt aux décisions de l’Exécutif.
Bibliographie
Ayala et Blanco. « El Nuevo Estado y la Expansión de las Manufacturas en México »,
1870-1930, dans Cordera, R., Desarrollo y Crisis de la Economía Mexicana,
Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1981.
Dunn, American Foreign Investments, New Cork, 1927.
Ferns, H. S. Britain and Argentina in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press,
1960.
287
Gutiérrez-Haces, T. « Canadá y México: Vecindad Interferida », dans Los Vecinos del
Vecino, Instituto Matías Romero de Estudios Diplomáticos, Secretaría de
Relaciones Exteriores, México, 1997.
Hart, M. Canada at the GATT. 1947-1997, Canada, 1998.
Marichal, C. Historia de la Deuda Externa de América Latina, Alianza Américas,
Madrid, 1988.
Meyer, L. Su Majestad Británica contra la Revolución Mexicana, 1900-1950 : El fin de
un imperio informal, El Colegio de México, 1991.
Moore, Ch. How the Fathers Made a Deal, M&S editors, Canada, 1997.
Morales, S. Primera Conferencia Panamericana, Centro de Investigación Científica
Jorge Tamayo, Mexico, 1994.
Norrie, K. et D. Owram. A History of the Canadian Economy, University of Alberta,
Edmonton, 1996.
Stevens, D. Origins of Instability in nineteenth-century in early republican México,
Duke University Press, 1991.
288
Archana Verma
The Establishment of Little Punjab in Canada
Abstract
This study traces the experiences of Punjabi immigrants to Canada in the first
half of the twentieth century through an analysis of reciprocal ties maintained
between two villages of the same namesake — Paldi, Punjab and Paldi,
British Columbia. The study argues that immigration of Punjabis was not an
alienating process. It did not result in disorganising their previous
socio-cultural forms. This is because Punjabis joined the mainstream in their
role as economic participants while preserving the traditional values of a
peasant society from where they came. Kinship and caste grouping were key
elements in this process. Punjabis first entered Canada as labourers facing
virulent racism. They were treated as outsiders by a culturally and racially
biased white majority. The 1920s and 1930s however witnessed their altered
status as mill owners and mill operators. The improved position they attained
gradually created an environment of accredition. Racism against Punjabis
did not die out : it faded into background as tolerance towards them increased
in certain locales. In the Cowichan Valley for example their reputation as
successful lumber manufacturers was established. Punjabis began to be
regarded as producers of wealth and contributors to economic expansion.
Their Paldi mill town not only flourished but also became a bustling
settlement of white Canadians, Chinese, Japanese and Punjabis. At ethnic
level this translated into a source of strength for the immigrant community.
They became upwardly mobile and their mobility was not hindered by
prejudice. A social space was created for Punjabis to grow in an alien land.
But Punjabis did not deviate, they remained distinct and they reaffirmed their
ethnic identity. As the dominant population in the Cowichan Valley moved
towards acceptance and accomodation with them — the idiom of their social
position remained traditional and caste oriented. Gradually group
orientation began to have a deeper meaning in the context of their overseas
settlement.
Résumé
Cette étude relate l’expérience des immigrants du Pendjab qui sont venus au
Canada pendant la première moitié du XXe siècle dans le cadre d’une analyse
des liens de réciprocité maintenus entre deux villages homonymes : Paldi
(Pendjab) et Paldi (Colombie-Britannique). L’auteur de l’étude soutient que
l’immigration de Punjabis n’a pas été un processus aliénant. Elle n’a pas
entraîné la désorganisation de leurs coutumes socio-culturelles parce que les
Punjabis se sont intégrés au courant dominant à titre d’intervenants
économiques tout en préservant les valeurs traditionnelles de leur société
paysanne d’origine. Les liens de parenté et le regroupement en caste ont
33-34, 2006
constitué des éléments clés de ce processus. Les premiers Punjabis arrivés au
Canada comme ouvriers ont fait face à un racisme virulent. Ils étaient
considérés comme des étrangers par la majorité blanche, qui avait des
préjugés culturels et raciaux. Cependant pendant les années 20 et 30, leur
statut a commencé à changer; ils sont devenus propriétaires de moulins et
exploitants de moulins. L’amélioration de leur situation leur a permis de se
faire accepter progressivement. Le racisme à l’endroit des Punjabis n’est pas
disparu : il a été relégué à l’arrière-plan, car la tolérance à leur égard s’est
accrue dans certains milieux. Dans la vallée de Cowichan, par exemple, leur
réputation de producteurs de bois d’œuvre prospères est bien établie. Les
Punjabis ont commencé à être considérés comme des producteurs de richesse
et des contributeurs à l’expansion économique. Leur ville de Paldi s’est non
seulement développée, mais elle est aussi devenue un village animé composé
de Canadiens blancs, de Chinois, de Japonais et de Punjabis. Sur le plan
ethnique, cela se traduit par une source de force pour la communauté
immigrante. Ils en sont venus à faire partie d’un groupe à mobilité
ascendante, et leur mobilité n’était pas entravée par les préjugés. Un espace
social a été créé pour les Punjabis, qui ont pu prospérer en terre étrangère.
Mais les Punjabis n’ont pas renié leur origine; ils sont demeurés distincts et
ont réaffirmé leur identité ethnique. À mesure que la population dominante de
la vallée de Cowichan les a acceptés et s’en est accommodée – l’expression de
leur situation sociale est demeurée traditionnelle et axée sur la caste.
L’orientation du groupe a commencé progressivement à avoir une
signification plus profonde dans le contexte de leur installation à l’étranger.
The Punjabi founders of the Mayo Lumber Company were some of many
small-time mill operators in the Cowichan Valley who wished to draw
maximum profits from the timber. In their case, however, a more important
aspiration accompanied this expectation. The concept of “owning” a mill
overseas had a special meaning for them. It denoted an improved social
standing and, in consequence, an altered identity. Upon settling in the
Sahtlam district, therefore, Paldi Punjabi immigrants worked hard and
made use of every conceivable opportunity to make their venture a success.
The Mayo mill flourished through their efforts and managed to attain a
commendable reputation as the generator of wealth arid employment. The.
Financial security thus obtained gave the immigrants an opportunity to
integrate their Canadian resource base with the life of their families in
Punjab and they successfully contributed to a change in the status and
standards of living of their familial, village and caste brethren. But these
responses followed only after immigrants had found a secure niche for
themselves in the Sahtlam district of the Cowichan Valley.
The Sahtlam district was situated in a region where the Cowichan Valley
descended to an altitude of less than 150 metres above sea level. It was
covered with thick glacial deposits of till, gravel, sand and silt-good soil to
support timber.1 The region experienced a moderate maritime climate with
an average annual temperature of around 9.6 degrees celsius, annual
rainfall measuring 906 mm and a little snow in the winter.2 The climate was
not very different from the other parts of the province where many of the
immigrants had spent a number of years before moving to the island. The
290
only difference was that humidity was slightly higher on the island. By
British Columbian standards, this was a congenial climate. for the growth
of the forests which covered the Cowichan Valley. The region was known
for its “carpet of dense foliage … [and] ceiling of towering trees”.3 The area
where the Mayo mill was established was dominated by rich coniferous
forests of Douglas fir, hemlock, red cedar, balsam fir and spruce. Their
commercial value increased considerably in the 1920s as the Cowichan
Valley lumber industry experienced a phenomenal growth.4 The Paldi
immigrants prospered at their expense.
Railways played an important role in promoting the growth of the lumber
industry in.the Cowichan Valley. From the time of Robert Dunsmuir, the
Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway Company preferred disposing of its land
to private investors in order to make profit from the logging traffic on its
tracks. In the 1890s and early 1900s, large stretches of the company’s
private timber land had been sold at cheap rates to a number of lumber
companies on the island.5 The timber on the Esquimalt and Nanaimo
property was also not directly taxed by the government. Thus the profits
earned, remained largely within the hands of the logging and milling
operators or the railway.6
The Esquimalt and Nanaimo Company had granted large tracts of its
timber land in the Cowichan region to the American Rockefeller and
Standard Oil companies in the last decades of the 19th century.7 The
Canadian Pacific Railway, after finalising its lease of the Esquimalt and
Nanaimo Railway in 1905, continued the same pattern and granted large
blocks of land to local timber companies.8 On the eve of the First World War,
the principal timber holders of the region were big enterprises such as the
Eastern Lumber Company, the Victoria Lumber and Manufacturing
Company, and the Boyd Company.9 They carried out their operations on a
wide scale while continuing to acquire more tracts of timber land.10 After
1916, when the lumber industry was rapidly expanding in the region, many
small and medium-scale firms also acquired land in the Valley. The Hersfall
Company Limited and the Ferguson Brothers were relatively small firms
which made strong beginnings in the area at the time.11 They were in the
process of expansion when the Mayo Lumber Company acquired its
timberin the same capacity and became a participant in the Cowichan
region’s growing stature as one of the most important lumbering centres in
the province.12 Two other companies, the Hillcrest Lumber Company and
the Charter Lumber Company, also established their operations in the
Sahtlam district at the same time as the Mayo mill. Together, these ventures
were regarded as the pioneering mills in this district.13 Of these, the Mayo
mill, being a Punjabi immigrant venture, was unique.
Mayo siding was a remote region. In 1917, it was known simply as a
sawmill and logging camp with a population of 100 only and was located
about 7 miles north-west of Duncan.14 The nature of Sahtlam district’s
291
lumber economy isolated the siding from other centres of population. There
were a number of sawmills and lumber camps in the region, but situated two
or three miles apart, and each with its own small population settled at the
site.15 When the Punjabi immigrants first arrived, there was only one mill at
Mayo Siding, known as the Young and Paitson Lumber Manufacturers.16 In
1918, Hillcrest Lumber Company was established at a distance of three to
four miles from the Mayo mill, and the Charter Lumber Company came up
in 1920, further west at Sahtlam station.17
The population was widely scattered beyond these mill settlements. The
closest habitation to Mayo mill was spread along the Old Cowichan
highway, starting about a quarter of a mile west of the Mayo mill in the
direction of the town of Duncan. The population increased considerably
from that point and the Quamichan and Somenos districts, about 20 to 30
miles from the Mayo mill, were well-populated.18 People also lived north of
the Mayo mill, in the direction of Cowichan Lake. The nearest settlement in
this direction was located at the site of Honeymoon Bay Lake Logging
Company, roughly eight miles from the Mahton-owned mill. There were
other mill towns in the same direction. The one at Youbou was the most
famous. By the 1940s, a number of Punjabis worked at both the
Honeymoon Bay and Youbou mills. There were also some farms, widely
dispersed, in the vicinity of the Mayo mill. Two farms, located on the Old
Cowichan highway, could be considered close to the mill. One of these, the
Jordan farm, regularly supplied milk, eggs and other necessities to the
Punjabis at the mill.19 Even these settlements were distant as one turned off
the Old Cowichan highway and ascended the mountain for about half a mile
to reach the mill which was concealed by thick forest. There were no roads
leading to the site when the immigrants first came, but a gravel road was
built in the 1920s connecting the highway to the mill.20 Direct contact
between immigrants and the mainstream population was thus reduced and
the likelihood of facing racial discrimination on a day-to-day basis
diminished. White British Columbians eventually became part of their
lives at the mill but most immigrants interacted with them only in the
capacity of fellow workers.
One other aspect of the new environment was important for the Mahton
immigrants—the nature of their relationship with the Jat immigrants. Apart
from the few Jats who had accompanied them in the hope of achieving
economic success, there were no other Punjabis in the area in 1917.21 The
Paldi Mahton immigrants could, therefore, aspire to work for the success of
their own community in a different setting. But as a caste, they could not
function in isolation from other Punjabis, even in an alien land. They had to
seek legitimacy for their altered roles from other castes and their upward
mobility became recognisable and evident only when measured against the
norms of their own background. The Jats in British Columbia were
particularly important for the Mahton because their common immigrant
experience had reduced the perceived social distance between them. Thus,
292
Jats remained a pervasive element of existence for the Mahton immigrants
even after they established their own mill. In the 1920s, when the Mayo mill
acquired the characteristics of a Punjabi village, a large number of Jats came
to work and settle there.
The site of Mayo siding was all bush and timber when the Mayo mill
owners first arrived there.22 But optimism was high in the group. They
owned a resource which could enable them to become regular suppliers of
lumber. Mahton Punjabis were not businessmen per se; neither were they
speculators nor investors. But their agricultural background and experience
as labourers and lease holders in the provincial lumber industry had taught
them to recognise a rich resource when they found it. They immediately
became aware that—“their leased property had good timber, their holdings
had good stands of it and their timber could be easily converted into cash”.23
Immigrants understood the demands of the market and earnestly set out to
make the maximum profit from it. In 1917, as soon as they reached the site,
the owners made arrangements “to put up a tent for immediate shelter till
some trees were cut with axe and old fashioned saws and some area cleared
to construct a couple of houses. About the same time an early structure for
the mill was built”.24 Thus emerged the site of a Punjabi-owned mill in the
Cowichan Valley which in a few years acquired an elaborate structure.
A basic structure for the Mayo mill was constructed by 1918 but the
owners suffered a set-back at the end of that year when the mill was
destroyed by fire.25 The immigrants, however, renewed their efforts with
determination and by early 1920, new buildings, with well-developed
housing facilities, were ready at the site. The intention was to attract a
potential work force. In the year 1920, the Mayo mill comprised 20
separate, individual dwelling quarters and about four or five bunk houses,
two of which were double-storeyed with a capacity to house 50 or 60
individuals at a time.26 This residential capacity was substantial. It was
noted and acknowledged with more than customary interest by those
involved in the lumber industry, not only in the Cowichan Valley but also at
the more distant Vancouver Island sawmills. The representatives of the
British Columbian Lumberman, the primary journal of the provincial
lumber industry at the time, accorded a good word to the “Hindu-owned
mill for its unusually smart layout and tidy buildings”.27 During its peak
years, the Mayo mill town housed almost 500 inhabitants, including
workers and families.28
Soon the site acquired more assets. The immigrants converted the
Esquimalt and Nanaimo railway line passing through their property into a
paying proposition by constructing the sawmill next to it.29 The cost of
transporting their lumber to the market was thus lowered. Another
economical measure was undertaken. Atoba (pond), was constructed close
to the mill for storage of logs. The mill pond had the capacity to store enough
logs to supply lumber for more than three months at a stretch.30 A dam was
293
also built on the pond so that extra water could be controlled and allowed to
flow away when necessary.31 The railway line was to the east of the sawmill
and the pond was to its west. As the area cleared of trees expanded and as the
timber holdings became more distant from the mill, the owners constructed
a private railway line to connect the distant timber supply directly to the
mill.32 By 1921, the Mayo lumber mill owned three miles of private
industrial railroad out of a total of 713 miles of industrial railroad owned by
the various sawmills in British Columbia. Individually these varied in the
range of 1 to 50 miles each.33 A gravel road about three miles in length,
adjoining the railroad, was also made.34 With this infrastructure, the Mayo
mill owners remained in operation throughout the twenties and the thirties,
until the mill was relocated from Mayo siding in 1944-45.35 By then, the
siding had been renamed “Paldi” in British Columbia.
The elaborate infrastructure of the mill indicate that the Paldi Mahton
immigrants hoped to draw substantial returns, not merely as peripherial
figures but, as primary participants in the Cowichan Valley lumber industry.
They, however, did not start with any pre-meditated plans for expansion or
concerted longterm designs. On the contrary, their approach to success was
based on trial and error. They experimented with whatever seemed useful in
making profits. Once the success of their mill seemed likely, the owners
expanded their resource base vigorously. They purchased more mill
equipment, bought larger timber holdings and simultaneously, drew upon a
regular supply of labour. In the process, the Mayo mill developed into a
successful venture and the town evolved as any other mill town in the
Cowichan Valley. However, it had a distinction attached to its growth.
Within its boundaries existed a “Little Punjab” as an ethnic enclave in
British Columbia.
In the early stages, the growth and expansion of the mill were not the
primary concerns of the Mahton mill owners. Rather, they simply looked
for such monetary returns as seemed sensible from their own perspective.
Their investment in the mill’s infrastructure was small in the beginning, in
comparison to later years, and at first they focused upon the sale of logs that
were cut to clear their property.36 Although a mill structure had been
constructed by early 1918, in real terms it was of small value because it was
not fully equipped and even before it was burnt down, the Mayo lumber
company did not appear to have started manufacturing lumber. It was only
since 1920 that the Mayo mill began to attract considerable attention and its
functioning and progress were observed with keen interest in the locality.
When the Mayo mill owners purchased basic machinery to start their
operations in 1920 after rebuilding the mill, the transaction was considered
important enough to be mentioned in the local newspapers.37 Later, when
the mill acquired the entire sawmill machinery of another company situated
in Cobble Hill, the news was covered in detail.38 And when the mill owners
were expanding their timber holdings, the names of the negotiators and
purchasers were announced on the front page of the local newspapers.39
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Thereafter, the mill became an integral part of the developing forest
industry in the region and was treated like the other mills in the Cowichan
Valley.40
Prior to 1920, the owners shared the responsibilities of mill work as a
group and not on the basis of individual authority or capability. As equal
shareholders and joint owners, the Mahton and Jat immigrants were in
similar positions. Consequently, their feeling of unity as the co-founders of
a mill was strong.41 Necessary responsibilities were nevertheless divided.
The Punjabi immigrants appear to have kept their community traditions
alive when assigning work-related duties after settling down at the Sahtlam
district mill site. The seniors such as Dhumman Singh and Bhan Singh from
Paldi village, Juvalla Singh from Sakruli village, and Bhagwan Singh from
Kharaudi village became responsible for the supervision and the
construction of the mill. Others such as Tara Singh, Ghanaiya Singh, Shyam
Singh and Kapoor Singh looked after the cutting and sale of the logs. The
youngest member of the group, Mayo Singh, continued to be a cook—“he
was then young and our seniors handled the heavy and responsible jobs. He
wanted to be involved in the mill work but everyone at the time put him in
charge of the cooking. They bought food and grocery from the stores near
Duncan and gave it to him. He was supposed to cook for all”.42 Such
decisions were not questioned, not out of obedience but as a mark of respect
to the elders of the parivar and also to the community.
However, this division of labour became unsuitable as the prospects for
expanding the business seemed to improve. The immigrants had received a
good return from the sale of their first logs and had managed to make
sufficient money from similar sales later.43 Logically the next step would
have been to return home to Punjab for good. But the thought of making
more money in the rapidly prospering local lumber industry was tempting.
In the 1920s, Cowichan Valley offered the possibility of success on a wider
scale. The seniors and elders within the group were not well-equipped for
the purpose, not because of inefficiency but, as an informant stated, because
they lacked the skills of basic education and knowledge of and fluency in
English.44 Although most immigrants had learned basic English in the past
10 or 15 years, they were not fully conversant with the language and thus,
were not in a position to use it advantageously for their business. With their
limited language skills, perhaps, they could have carried on as ordinary mill
operators for years. But this viewpoint did not accord with the aspirations of
the Mahton immigrants as more ambitious goals, in the context of new
developments in the Cowichan Valley region, seemed attainable.
In the 1920s, the lumber industry was forging ahead in the valley.45
Lumber exports were on an increase and the valley’s forest industry had
benefitted from the second Canadian Pacific Railway line that connected
the Cowichan Lake region to southern Vancouver Island.46 About three or
four years after establishing their mill, the immigrants were hopeful of
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excellent progress. They divided the essential responsibilities of their mill
work on a formal basis by choosing two individuals from among
themselves to handle the “outside work”, which meant dealing with the
general public, the whites, in order to sell their lumber and acquire mill
machinery. 47 Others preferred to continue in the production and
manufacturing work. The two individuals who were to deal with outside
contacts were Mayo Singh from the bania parivar of Paldi village and
Kapoor Singh Sidhu of Kharaudi village. The selection of Kapoor Singh
was influenced—“by his educational background. He was then 10th grade
pass and was, therefore, given the general responsibility of accounting,
keeping the records of the company’s sales and purchases as well as that of
handling the office work. Mayo Singh also had attended lower level Khalsa
Boy’s school in Mahilpur, Punjab. Among our people, [Paldi immigrants]
at that time he had a little bit of an educated background”.48 Both Mayo
Singh and Kapoor Singh were expected to work in tandem with others while
gaining access to the ‘outside’ lumber business in the Cowichan Valley.
Other, more practical reasons influenced the selection of these two
individuals. Kapoor Singh was clean-shaven before he joined the group and
his appearance was regarded as advantageous. Mayo Singh also opted to cut
his hair and remove the turban.49 Punjabi Sikh immigrants were aware of
the social reality of discrimination. Appearances became especially
important in this regard. They, therefore, made adjustments. Mayo Singh
was accepted without his beard and turban by the Paldi Mahton, so that he
could comfortably represent their company in the Cowichan Valley’s
lumber industry. “The changed appearance did make a difference. They
[Kapoor and Mayo] were not discriminated [against] in their business”.50
Maiya [Mayo] Singh was the first among the Paldi Mahton to cut his hair
and remove his turban and he was not regarded a deviant. Rather his
appearance was viewed as an asset for the mill particularly when everybody
was not obligated to follow his example—“some of them kept turbans, they
had hair all rolled up and combs in it. They did not cut hair because it was
against their religion”.51 In particular, the seniors Dhumman Singh, Bhan
Singh, Ghanaiya Singh and Tara Singh never cut their hair or beard.52
When they embarked upon lumber manufacturing in the early 1920s, the
Mahton immigrants laid stress on thrift. They did not purchase new
machinery for their mill, instead acquiring it second-hand from sales. The
equipment was purchased at different stages from other companies which
were overhauling their mills. There were two firms which were regularly
frequented by the representatives of the Mayo lumber company. These
were the Canadian Pacific Junk Company and the Foundation Company of
British Columbia.53 The owners purchased equipment from auctions as
well. Soon after their arrival at Mayo siding, the immigrants had purchased
basic mill equipment—two boilers and two engines, from the Lake
Logging Company.54 In 1920, the rebuilt Mayo mill was equipped
substantially with second-hand machinery. Its equipment consisted of top
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and bottom circulars, a good carriage, an ordinary edger, trimmer, live rolls,
two planers, one 125-horsepower boiler, one twin engine and two regular
engines.55 Within a short time, this capacity was expanded. Two more twin
engines and three boilers generating 250-horsepower, were added. A
separate planing mill was also established. It had a separate engine,
steam-fed instead of the one run by friction, and two saws of 56 inch
diameter each, an edger capable of cutting 56 inch diameter and two planers
with the capacity to handle 16 x 28 inch wood material.56 By 1921, the Mayo
mill owners were in a position to buy almost the entire mill machinery of the
Frondeg Lumber Company, located about 25 miles from the Mayo mill in
the Cobble Hill area of the Cowichan Valley, and to transfer it to their own
mill site.57
The company initially owned about 25,000,000 feet of standing timber,
primarily fir and cedar,58 enough to enable the mill to operate continuously
for 10 years. The immigrants further expanded this primary resource. By
1920, the original acquisition of 400 acres of timber land was expanded to
650. Later, several lots, altogether measuring about 1,000 acres were
added.59 The maximum figure of the company’s timber land in the 1930s
and 1940s stood at 14,000 feet. The lots were located in different directions
from the Mouat Mountain, popularly known as Hill 60, facing the mill to the
east.
Once the immigrants consolidated their timber resource, they ceased to
regard 10 years as the time period of their Canadian enterprise. Their
motivation to continue in Canada remained strong in the 1920s because
they were emotionally resilient. They could fall back on the psychological
support offered by the family members left behind in their villages at home.
In letters written to their family men in Canada, the Paldi tabbar members
encouraged their kin to carry on. In one letter it was stated, “we feel very
happy upon receiving your news. Please do not worry about us. Do
whatever you think is right about coming back. Use your own judgement in
the matter. We are behind you”.60 Tabbar members expressed themselves
similarly in other letters—“we are all doing fine here. We always pray to
God for your health and well being”; “we are happy to know that with God’s
grace you are all together and safely settled in Canada. We are very well in
every possible way and constantly pray for your prosperity”; “all our ang
sak (near and dear ones) are doing well. The pind is also flourishing”; “Paldi
is prosperous. Do not worry”.61 Although in some letters, in this case a letter
from a daughter to her father, the family stressed, “we miss you very badly,
please return along with your brother as soon as possible. It has been too
long. The money you have earned is enough”, from the immigrant’s
perspective, such requests were overshadowed by other sentences in the
letter, which emphasised, “we have received the money you sent. Life is
hard here. Things are not available. Clothing is difficult to purchase. Even
mitti (soil from earth) sells like [expensive] eggs”.62 After embarking upon
lumber manufacturing, therefore, it became almost essential for the Mahton
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mill owners to expand their timber holdings. It was on the value and the
quality of timber alone that the success of their mill depended, and on that
success rested the aspirations of the Paldi Mahton.
That they were aware of such possibilities becomes clear from the fact
that in the year 1922, the immigrants began to publicise their mill by
inserting half-page advertisements, announcing its “reopening”, in the
province’s leading lumber industry journal, The British Columbian
Lumberman.
Mayo Lumber Company, Duncan, B.C … we wish to announce
that we are again operating, having rebuilt our plant into a modern
saw-mill of 75,000 feet daily capacity, with Planing Mill and Lath
Mill attached and we are ready to again fill the orders of our
numerous customers with the best grades of Vancouver Island
lumber, fir and cedar … Orders taken for all points in Canada and
the United States. We manufacture timbers up to 70 feet
dimension, boards, shiplap, cross arm stock, clear fir rough, lath,
etc.63
They were also featured as regular advertisers in the journal’s subsequent
publications and were included in the category of the general lumber
manufacturers listed in British Columbia directories between 1920 and
1940.64 By launching themselves in such a manner, immigrants converted
their two primary assets, the mill machinery and the timber, into richer
resources. The advertisements attracted buyers and labourers to their mill.
The immigrants evidently desired to become “big timers” and in the 1920s
they managed, indeed, not only to achieve their goals but also to surpass
them. Labour was attracted to their mill and included people from many
backgrounds—whites, Chinese and Japanese as well as Punjabis. They
came to work for the Mayo mill, helped it achieve success and formed a
community at the mill site, bound together by a single industry.
The number of workers officially employed by the Mayo lumber
company in the 1920s was in the range of 200 to 250,65 a figure comparable
to other mills in the region. The bigger mills such as the Victoria
Manufacturing and Lumbering Company employed 350 to 400 workers.
The Hillcrest Company, about the same size as the Mayo mill, had about
150 workers.66 The Elco Logging Company, regarded as the company with
the highest output in the Cowichan forests at the time, employed about 175
men in their camps.67
The increasing number of workers was reflected in increased production
at the mill. The company, which had projected the production of 50,000 feet
of lumber a day in 1917-18, was producing 60,000 feet of lumber a day by
1921.68 By 1923, the figure had risen to 75,000 feet a working day and by
1927 the Mayo mill was reported to have produced and shipped 24 million
feet of lumber during 10 months of operation.69 The mill’s progress, aided
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by its substantial work force, is also evident in the figures for shipments to
countries outside Canada, recorded by the Pacific Lumber Inspection
bureau for the year 1923, which show that 6,09,196 feet of lumber was
exported by the Mayo Lumber Company, 81,000 by Hillcrest and 2,41,000
by the Eastern Lumber Company. 70 The principal markets for the Mayo
mill products were in the Prairie provinces, Eastern Canada and the United
States.71
Gradually the mill was able to purchase new equipment. It acquired
seven new logging cars in the mid-1920s and by 1927-28 owned 30
different kinds of railroad cars for loading and supplying lumber.72 New
boilers, new re-saws and new quick-change planers also appeared in the
mill as the Mayo Lumber Company prospered in association with the
overall expansion of the Cowichan Valley’s lumber industry in the 1920s.73
Their addition signified the progressive development of the mill. The
company was doing its part in the development of the Sahtlam district and
its contribution was appreciated by businessmen as well as other leading
personalities in the Cowichan Valley. J’Slay Mutter, the Mayor of the city of
Duncan, A. Peterson, Secretary of the Cowichan Merchants’ Association,
E.G. Sanford, Manager, Canadian Bank of Commerce, A.B. Thorp,
Principal of the High School and David Ford, Postmaster, acknowledged
that the Mayo Lumber Company—“ … is a source of revenue to our town
and district … they now [1927] employ over 250 men and … last year they
paid over $2,00,000 in wages … sawed over 24,000,000 feet of lumber and
shipped over 1,000 car loads”.74
Labour, however, was not drawn automatically to the mill. Bringing in
workers required concentrated efforts on the part of the owners. For even
though the “Hindoos” had acquired a “name” for themselves as lumber
manufacturers and potential employers, their mill was not regarded as an
“El Dorado” in the Cowichan Valley. It was not a large-scale venture in the
region. Moreover, popular prejudice against Asians still commanded
legitimacy among white British Columbians. Even in the 1920s, white
labourers were persistent in their demands to restrict the occupational
activities of Asians in the province. As a result, the owners could not secure
the largest reserve of workers.75 Similarly, the Mayo Lumber Company
could not easily draw Chinese and Japanese workers because “it depended
on them whether they wished to have a Punjabi boss” and because they
would not come to a mill unless it could provide a regular and steady
income. “Their condition was worse than us [racially], we were still
connected to the British. So naturally they looked for greater security”.76
That was possible only after the mill operations succeeded and its payroll
became known in the area. Punjabi immigrants were the most obvious
choice of workers for the owners, but drawing them towards the mill was
also a challenge. As immigrants sharing a common background, the
Punjabi mill owners could not perceive of their own kind exclusively in lass
terms. Other, stronger and familiar incentives, besides jobs, had to be
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provided for fellow Punjabis if they were to be pulled to the mill.
Recruitment of workers was a difficult task. But with plenty of motivation,
Punjabi immigrant owners carried on and worked earnestly to bring in
labourers for their mill and settlers for their mill town. The primary
responsibility for the recruitment of “outside” workers was vested with
Mayo Singh as most members of the bania parivar and boleya tabbar, and
Jat shareholders like Kapoor Singh were involved in the other aspects of
mill production, manufacture and office work.
With regard to labour recruitment, there were two important issues,
according to the informants, which were worked out by Mayo Singh. One
was related to the value of employing white people who could become
useful in communicating the mill’s business interests to the larger lumber
community. The other was the issue of reliability; the need to acquire a
regular labour force on which the Mahton could depend. In pursuing these
needs, Mayo Singh embarked upon a process of recruiting labour which not
only ensured the successful operation of the mill but also resulted in making
the Hindu lumber venture “a permanent feature” of the Canadian scene.
Because of his skill in attracting labour, Mayo Singh began to be admired
among his people as a “very smart businessman. He surprised
everybody”.77 Workers from different backgrounds were acquired
simultaneously for the mill but the process and the means of acquiring them
differed in each case. Mayo Singh worked almost independently to bring in
white workers. Chinese and Japanese workers either came on their own or
were brought in by agents, and Mayo Singh worked in association with
others to recruit Punjabis.
Recruitment of white workers was essential for the mill because the
owners were bound by law to employ only whites in the capacity of skilled
workers and on the machines.78 More importantly, the whites were a
valuable means of contact through which the Mahton hoped to tap
mainstream buyers, retailers and distributors. The company’s white
workforce, in the long run, did prove advantageous to the company. At the
business level, the Mayo mill managed to earn the confidence of lumber
dealers in a wide-spread area. Apart from the Cowichan Valley, it acquired
for itself white buyers and distributors in Vancouver, on the British
Columbia mainland, and in the state of Washington across the border in the
United States.79 Another definite advantage in employing whites was their
knowledge of the English language, the primary medium of business
transactions, which the owners intended to utilise in their business.
Therefore, in the process of attracting white workers to the “Hindu owned
mill”, owners took care to offer good positions to them. Whites were given
only skilled jobs and were generally employed on the machines and often
given managerial positions in the office.80 They were also given special
consideration with regard to housing facilities. Only independent houses,
built to the south of the mill, were provided to them. There were no
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bunkhouses for whites at the Mayo mill.81 Some white workers resided with
their families at the mill and some commuted directly from Duncan.
Clarence Martin was one of the first white employees of the Mayo
Lumber Company. He had originally worked for the Mahton immigrants
when they were running a leased mill at Roosedale:
I supplied them milk as a young boy. Then I was employed by them
to help sell their lumber stuff. I used to sell, for them, the slabs [of
lumber] that came out of the machine at Roosedale. They asked me
if I wished to come over to Vancouver Island even before they left
for Paldi. I was willing. I earned good money from them at
Roosedale as a 13.year old … Nobody objected to my working for
the East Indians [Punjabis] then, not my family, none other …
After the Mayo mill was built in 1918, Mayo Singh sent me a letter,
you wanna come, come any time. Take CPR boat for Nanaimo
from Vancouver. Take CPR train from Nanaimo down to Duncan.
Do let me know what date you are coming. I’ll meet you in Duncan
so that you don’t get lost. He came looking for me. I went over there
in 1918 and worked for Mayo for 36 years. I started with odd jobs at
first and then became an engineer after I took training for running
the private railroad engine and drove that until my retirement …
That time not many of them [Punjabis] knew English and Mayo he
used to use me.82
Clarence Martin was followed by many others. In 1920, George M.
Boyer became the first accountant and office manager for the Mayo Lumber
Company.83 The mill soon employed three other white engineers—Phil
LeMare, Mr Twist and Dave Miles.84 The numbers continued to increase
and, within five years of its venturing into lumber manufacturing, the Mayo
mill employed about twenty white British Columbians, a substantial
number—“scattered all over; in the office, in the machine shop, on the
logging railway and in the saw mill”.85 The increasing white workforce can
be easily identified from names entered for billing, in the white cookhouse
book list. The account book of the mill’s white cookhouse in the early 1920s
listed, among others, J.C. Whitesell, H. Loftus, J.P. Johnston, J.L. Crusson,
G. Cruikshank, W. Hall, H. Marsh, G. Hudson, Charles Kerr, Myles
Charmichael, D. Houghton, C.W. Battrick, L. Coton, M. Beckett, C.H.
Reynolds, Shaen, Leadangham and Moore. By mid 1920, a few of these
names had disappeared but new ones were added-E. Watt, Lui Smith,
Fainall, Redmond and W. Passmore. Gradually the list was expanded to
include Hunt Kid, Blk Smith, Mr. Evans, D. Henry, Cambell, Russell,
Calterall, Taggert, J. Cavell, Pol Dorro etc.86 Some of the white workers
stayed at the mill for a short time, some for much longer until better
opportunities drew them away. A core of white workers was maintained at
the mill, nevertheless, and there were others like Clarence Martin, Phil
LeMare and Dave Miles who worked at the Mayo mill until retirement.87
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How can this phenomenon be explained when racism and discrimination
were strong socio-cultural forces in British Columbia, and Punjabi
immigrants, as Asians, were relegated to a subordinate position in the
mainstream society? A straightforward explanation is that the Mayo mill
attracted whites for purely economic reasons. In the rapidly growing
lumber industry of the Cowichan Valley in the 1920s, the Mayo mill was
one of the very first operations to start in the Sahtlam district. Within a short
time, it developed from a small operation to a middle-sized sawmill and was
accredited, along with other mills, for generating more steam and smoke
and employment and production between Duncan and Cowichan Lake.88
As a result, the Punjabi mill owners were treated in the Cowichan region
like any other lumber manufacturer—as producers of wealth and economic
benefits. Those white British Columbians who responded positively
towards the Mayo mill seem to have considered it a viable proposition to
work for the Mayo lumber company. They preferred to start with a
comparatively small organisation, and eventually move away to other,
bigger mills as and when opportunities arose. This factor becomes worthy
of attention when one considers that there were bigger sawmills operating
on Vancouver Island, in the Cowichan Valley, and also in the vicinity of the
Sahtlam district, such as the Shawnigan Lake Lumber Company and the
Victoria Lumber and Manufacturing Company. Yet they continued to find
Mayo mill an acceptable place to work. In the 1920s and even later, the
“Hindus” were not condemned, criticised or discriminated against in the
overall set-up of the Cowichan Valley. Rather, in their economic roles as the
producers of wealth and employment, they were treated as integral to the
region’s growing lumber industry.
There was another consideration that may have brought a number of
white British Columbians to work at the Punjabi owned mill and possibly
encouraged them to stay there on a long-term basis. Mayo Singh’s efforts to
develop personal contacts with the white workers seems to have played an
important role in keeping them at the mill. During interviews, non-Punjabi
workers of the Mayo mill talked about their experiences at the mill in a
manner that indicated that, for the white workers, the Mayo Lumber
Company was synonymous with Mayo and not with the whole group of
enterprising owners. As Clarence Martin stressed, Mayo Singh was the
only one among the owners to keep in touch regularly with the non-Punjabi
employees of the company.89 Another informant noted that “he [Mayo
Singh] used to take walks around the mill and came to meet us. He could not
stay for long, after all he was a busy man and he had to look after his
business”.90 Another long-time, non-Punjabi employee of the mill stated in
a local newspaper interview that “Mayo was the finest man to work for”.91
The Mayo mill, however, was not dependent on white workers alone.
Whites comprised only a certain proportion of the total number of
employees. The recruitment of unskilled workers was equally important
and, in this context, the Chinese and the Japanese formed an important
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element of the Mayo mill’s workforce. Some of them came looking for jobs
at the mill by themselves and some were recruited through agents 92 Unlike
the white British Columbians, however, the Chinese and the Japanese were
not given any special consideration in the matter of jobs and housing. “Jobs
were aplenty for them because they were needed as mill hands, but, they
also needed jobs in any capacity because they were more discriminated
against than us by the larger society. It was not like today. At the Mayo mill,
they came to “ask for jobs or about new additions, just about anything and
they were kept at any position”.93 Often jobs were prearranged for them
through their “bosses who mostly brought Chinese workers from small
grocery stores in Victoria or from small vegetable shops in Duncan”.94
The Chinese and Japanese were offered jobs at the mill mainly as
unskilled workers. They were employed as construction crews for building
and expanding the sawmill.95 The Chinese built the gravel road and the
private railroad that connected Hill 60 with the mill and the mill pond in the
east to west direction, and also worked in the capacity of tail sawyers,
edgermen and log loaders.96 The Japanese, on the other hand, supervised
the construction work and the repair of the houses.97 They worked in groups
known around the mill town as “bull gangs”—“they would do any repair for
the houses, windows, doors, toilets”.98 Punjabi immigrants admired them
for their work as skilled tarkhans (carpenters).99 The Japanese were mill
wrights also, but not in the capacity of skilled workers, and they repaired the
mill machinery when necessary—“they wouldn’t come to touch the
machines when the mill was running. The bull gang always inspected the
mill during lunch hour and then they did quick repairs”.100 The Japanese
also held contracts from the mill for logging—“there were about eight or
nine gangs which operated in the logging camps and all at different timings.
They would cut logs on contract, fell the trees and buck them for 20 to 30
feet, and were paid according to the scale of the bucked timber”.101
The Chinese at the Mayo mill were mostly single men but there were also
two families among them, that of Lum Wah and Sunny Lum, who resided in
separate quarters.102 The number of Chinese employees generally
fluctuated between 80 and 100 but at no time fell below 60.103 Japanese
workers were also mostly single, though there were a few families.104 The
number of Japanese immigrant workers was usually 50 or so and they
continued at the mill till they were evacuated from the Mayo mill by the
Canadian RCMP (Royal Canadian Military Police) around 1942.105 Both
the Chinese and the Japanese lived in separate bunkhouses and those with
families were provided with independent housing.106 Houses for the
Chinese and the Japanese were built in the south-west area of the mill.107
The Chinese and Japanese family quarters were close to their bunkhouses,
although some Japanese families were housed in family quarters built to the
east of the mill and close to the residences meant for the mill owners and
other Punjabi immigrants.
303
The Punjabis formed the core of the Mayo mill’s workforce and they
were preferred by the mill owners as a reliable workforce because their
support guaranteed the ongoing operation of the mill. Punjabi immigrants
could be motivated to work for more than one shift and thereby help
increase production and keep labour costs down. For example, they could
be relied upon even when the Chinese and the Japanese workers left and at
other crucial junctures such as the one during the depression years in the
1930s when the Mayo mill functioned for two years largely because of
Punjabi workers.108 Economically, it was most advantageous to employ
Punjabi immigrants. The pivotal role of the Punjabi workers in the mill’s
operation was recognised and agreed upon by all those involved in the
founding of the Mayo mill.
Attracting Punjabi immigrants to the mill, however, was not easy.
Although their numbers were small, and they could be contacted
conveniently, a majority of them had managed to find a stable foothold in
the British Columbian lumber industry in other regions.109 In the 1920s,
most Punjabi immigrants were working in sawmills and a few had also
found jobs in planing mills, shingle mills, and with logging camps and
logging railways.110 Some had also started their own small-scale lumber
dealerships and had opened their own companies. The Virginia Lumber
Company Limited of Lachman Singh, the Punjab Lumber and Shingle
Company of Hira Singh and Hazara Singh, the Shingle mill owned by a
Hindu syndicate and the Doaba Lumber Company were some of the
small-scale ventures opened in the 1920s by Punjabi Jats on Vancouver
Island and on the mainland.111 By now, Punjabi immigrants were scattered
throughout the province. In the census of 1921, they were enumerated as
residing in practically all the electoral districts of British Columbia.112 The
task of attracting Punjabi workers to the Mayo mill was made more
complicated by the possibility that Jat immigrants might reject, or even fail
to consider, the idea of working at the Mayo mill.
The number of Jat shareholders in the company was not large enough to
attract other Jats. There was also the consideration of their religious beliefs
and practices, which could influence the choice of the Punjabi Jats to work
for the Mayo mill. In order to recruit Jats, the Mayo mill owners of the
Mahton baradari worked towards accommodating their requirements as
immigrants. They were aware that most Jats in British Columbia had
similar aspirations and aims as they did. Punjabi immigrants from both
castes looked for economic security and through economic security, hoped
to attain an enhanced social status in their homeland, although in the case of
the Mahton, the social value of attaining higher status was profounder.
Thus, when the question arose of recruiting others from their own larger
immigrant group, the Mayo mill owners embarked upon a plan to provide a
homelike environment at their mill in order to knit their community
together simply as Punjabis. In other words, the Mahton owners attempted
to create a home away from home for Punjabi immigrants at their mill
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settlement. Through this process they aimed to gather a secure nucleus of
Punjabi immigrant workers. In the recruitment of Punjabi immigrants as
potential labourers for the mill, the entire group of Mahton owners
cooperated. Mayo Singh was assisted by all the seniors. This cooperative
approach was essential if the owners had to work within the boundaries of
their own socio-cultural background.
Providing basic amenities and facilities for the Punjabis involved the
construction of separate cookhouses and bunkhouses at the mill site. The
Punjabi housing facility was built close to the mill in the east and north-east
area.113 Other facilities were added. A separate bath was built for Punjabi
men and a well was dug for drinking water. Although a water supply was
already available from a reservoir on the mill property, a well was
considered essential because it was symbolic of the rustic Punjabi
background—“people did not like tap water for drinking because they
thought ground water is pure, (thalle da pani changa hai). So a well was
made”.114 The provision of essential facilities at the mill for Punjabis was
made complete with the construction of a gurudwara. A Punjabi-owned
mill settlement could not have attracted community members without a
provision for religious services. The gurudwara was constructed to the
north of the mill and close to the Punjabi cookhouses. It was built in 1922 by
Japanese carpenters for approximately $1000.115 In British Columbia there
were three other gurudwaras at the time—in Vancouver, in Victoria and at
Fraser Mills in New Westminster, but these had been built primarily by
cooperation among the immigrants themselves. The Mayo mill gurudwara
was constructed at the company’s expense.116 By building a companyowned gurudwara, the Mayo mill owners were attempting to provide a
wholesome environment for immigrant Punjabis at their mill. An informant
explained,
In our Punjabi villages gurudwaras are generally named after a
saint or a Guru who paid a visit to the site where the place of
worship came up. Our Paldi village gurudwara is named after Baba
Mangal Sahai … Mayo mill gurudwara was like Baba Mangal
Sahai spiritually, but he did not come to visit the gurudwara. So
Mayo mill gurudwara could not be named after him. If owners had
their way they would call it Baba Mangal Singh Sahai, but they
could not do that because there were people from other villages. So
it was called only a gurudwara. It was built so that people could
come and stay here.117
With this objective in mind, the Nanak Panthi mill owners also secured
approval from the Khalsa Diwan sbciety in Vancouver to place their
gurudwara under its control.118 When this was obtained, the front door of
the Mayo mill gurudwara was lettered with Khalsa-e-Diwan. With this
development, Nanak Panthi Mahton Sikhs were placed on the same footing
as the Khalsa Panthi Jat Sikhs in British Columbia, which enabled them to
exist as a united group of Punjabi Sikh immigrants at the mill settlement.
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The provision of Punjabi institutions and facilities at the mill was
publicised by the owners through notices in the Vancouver and Victoria
gurudwaras.119 They followed this up with regular telephone contact with
the gurudwaras. They gave details about the facility of Indian [Punjabi]
cookhouse and our own bunkhouse. They gave details about the gurudwara.
Both Dhumman Singh, who was elder among our people, and Mayo Singh
made consistent efforts in this process through regular phone calls … and
also by visiting Gurudwaras.120 Punjabis settled in different parts of the
province did choose to come to the Mahton-owned mill to work as well as
settle. In the 1920s, the Mayo mill provided a secure environment in British
Columbia for a number of Punjabi immigrants who, in the context of the
larger society, were still “not regarded as rooted elements of the
population”.121 Punjabis also chose Mayo mill over other Punjabi-owned
mills because none of the other companies had created a work environment
to suit the general needs of Punjabi immigrants overseas. Most of the
Punjabi-owned lumber companies on Vancouver Island remained
small-time, one-man ventures, employing about six to ten workers and
were not, like the Mayo Lumber Company, able to accommodate Punjabi
immigrants on a reasonably large scale. The number of Punjabis who came
to the Mayo mill made it a substantial settlement. Their moving to the Mayo
mill earned a name for the Mahton Punjabis within their immigrant
community as successful sawmill owners.
The Mayo Lumber Company generally employed Punjabi workers in the
mill and not in the woods,122 thus accommodating their preference for
sawmill work. At the mill, Punjabis worked in various capacities—as green
chain pullers, log pullers, lumber loaders, sawyers or carriers.123 A large
number of them were also employed at the lumber yard, loading lumber
on the Esquimalt and Nanaimo railway. The Chinese and Japanese were
also employed in these jobs “because there was no particular division of
labour those days, everything was done by hand and no specific skills were
required for the basic jobs. So more hands meant more work”.124 But
preference was given to the workers of Punjabi background, when it came
to for what was considered outdoor work and hard work. It suited the
workers’ own preferences and as for the owners, “they felt proud, they
thought they gave right jobs to their “own” people [Punjabis]”.125
The presence of Jats at the Mayo mill town was significant from the point
of view of the Paldi immigrants of the Mahton baradari. Their presence at
the Mayo mill was a fact which remained engraved on the memory of the
Mahton pioneers who belonged to the bania parivar from Paldi village and,
even in the last decade of the twentieth century, they could still spell out
without much difficulty, the names of some of the Punjabi Jat settlers who
had worked and lived at the Mayo mill in the mid 1920s and 1930s.
There was Shyam Singh Jat of Mahilpur, Jwalla Singh of Nagal
Kalan, Pal Singh of Langeri, Jaswant Singh of Malwa, his son
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Naranjan Singh Mahal, Lashman Singh of Khurdpur, Lashman
Singh of Karnana, Mewa Singh of Malwa, Bhunno of Bada pind,
Hardyal Singh Atwal, Lal Chand of Malwa, Gurnam Singh,
Bacchan Singh, Munsha Singh, Karnail Singh, Ujjagar Singh-all
from Malwa, Labh Singh of Murali pind of Rai got, Dhanna from
Jalandhar district of Chaheru got, Tara Singh of Thodi pind, Poorn
Singh Jat of Hoshiarpur zila and Waryam Singh Jat.126
These were important to them not merely as names but as representatives
of a different caste. Different origins among them were identified through
village names, names of regions and gots that were added as last names.
According to the bania al members from the Paldi village—“those days it
was easier to identify immigrants from a different caste, because nobody
used last names. Baradari was identified through village names. Our
villages were spread out in a relatively small area in Punjab and so others
from a different village were easily recognised by their baradari”.127
By employing white British Columbians, Chinese, Japanese and
Punjabis—people from different nationalities—the Mayo mill owners
aligned themselves with the wider lumber industry in the Cowichan Valley
and in the province generally.128 Even the layout of their mill settlement had
the characteristic appearance of an ordinary sawmill and a lumber camp
housing “bunkhouse men” from different backgrounds.
The Mayo mill settlement could be conveniently divided into different
sections such as the Chinese quarters, the Japanese bunkhouse, the white
buildings, and the Punjabi temple. Correspondingly the mill catered to the
different languages, different foods and different lifestyles of its diverse
workforce. According to a Chinese informant who worked at the Mayo mill
till retirement, “it’s just like you go 50 years back you know, lot of people
just come back from the old country. Not very long ago they all worked for
Mayo mill. Their English wasn’t good. They all want to speak, their
languages, regardless whether he is Chinese or East Indian [Punjabi]. So
naturally you didn’t want one house here with Chinese and one East Indian
and then one Chinese. The next thing you know is that when you get to the
neighbours the other guy didn’t know what you were talking about.
Separated living at the Mayo mill was not by custom. It was just a normal
thing. You had Chinese, whites, Japanese and East Indians scattered all
over. You had your Chinese bunkhouse over there, they had their East
Indian bunkhouse over there. Everybody felt better this way. You could
have all huddled up, no good for people. At Mayo mill people were
segregated in bunches. They were living separately by choice”.129
Within this general setting, Mayo mill had an additional attribute. It
existed as a special “Little Punjab” for the owners and workers of Punjabi
background who constituted the predominant population at the Mayo mill.
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Little Punjab evolved at the Mayo mill settlement when the owners,
aware of the considerations of status hierarchy which remained important at
the inter-community level, were attempting to attract Punjabis as potential
labourers. Ordinarily, if given a choice, Jats would not have opted to work
and reside at the Mahton—owned mill. As a Jat informant stated in 1989—
“They say they are Rajputs, I would not work for those Rajputs. But I went
to the Mayo mill because the gurudwara was there and also our
cookhouse”.130 Others of Jat background who moved to the Mayo mill in
the 1920s were motivated by similar reasons—“gurudwara was a special
place and the cookhouse was the community centre”.131 A few opted to go
also because there was a tendency among immigrants at the time “to help
each other, it was inbuilt”.132
There were other considerations that drew immigrants of Jat origin to the
Mayo mill town. One of these was related to the necessities of
dressing—“when we worked for other companies, as I did for the Bloedel
lumber mills on Vancouver Island, we shared bunkers with 15 other men, all
arranged in a row. It was not very comfortable. You had to live with
everyone and had to be careful about dressing”.133 The “dressing” referred
to, was the tying of the turban, arranging the long hair and not wearing,
pants and shirts. Tying a turban in front of those not familiar with their
culture put a lot of pressure on the Punjabi Sikhs because their turban had
been used as a symbol of discrimination in Canada. APunjabi Sikh’s turban
was not a readymade attire, it was tied from a long piece of cloth about three
metres in length and worn in different styles. Styles of tying the turban
varied according to personal choice and also according to the background
of the individuals. Those from the trading caste had one style of wearing the
turban; those who hailed from the jagirdar (high status landlord) family had
another. Those from peasant backgrounds, which included the majority of
the Punjabi immigrants in Canada, had a distinct style of wearing the turban
and those from the lower castes such as shibba (tailor) and jhir (water
carrier) had a different style. Whatever the style of the. turban, wearing it
took time and the immigrants preferred privacy for this. Thus, when offered
the opportunity to be in a place where one could live and exist as one
desired, though in an alien land, Punjabi immigrants chose to accept it. As a
Jat informant explained,
At Mayo mill, there were lots of people to talk to, to get together
with on Sundays, Saturdays and on week days after work in the
evenings. Dress was familiar … One could even roam around in
pyjamas and ordinary slippers. There was no danger of being
branded dirty or something else. At Mayo mill, it was like living at
home, it was free.134
Punjabi immigrants acknowledged other advantages of working at the
Mayo mill.
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Living was not too bad at the Mayo mill. Some bunkhouses had
four men sharing, some had two and some had more than four,
maybe six. But everyone had a room to himself. There were
partitions. Outhouses were provided to relieve oneself. There was
no running water all the time but a well was dug by the residents
and the Company. Its water was other. It was like living in a Punjab
village.135
Jats could share with others of their community at the Mayo mill, similar
notions of prosperity and comfort associated with living overseas—“life
was better in Canada than in India. Ten dollars sved was like a fortune.
There was nothing in India. No electricity, no roads, nothing. One could
survive that’s all”.136 These amenities held value in the 1920s and 1930s
among Punjabi immigrants and they held greater meaning among those
who understood each other’s background and shared even the nuances of
cultural experience.
The confluence of Punjabi immigrants at the Mayo mill was further
strengthened, when the mill owners began to hold typical Punjabi festivals
and gatherings at their mill settlement. The homely environment was
enhanced further by the Paldi Mahton immigrants as they made
arrangements to celebrate a festival known as Jor-malla, literally meaning a
festive gathering, at the mill site on July 1st, Canada’s Dominion Day, at
company expense.137 Jor-malla was a kind of improvised substitute for the
Punjabi Holla-Möhalla (festive gatherings) held around the gurudwaras or
in some open ground near villages in Punjab at the time of Sikh festivals
such as Vaisakhi or Lohri. They generally lasted for a week or ten days and
people from the surrounding areas or even from far-off places visited these
gatherings. The celebration of the Jor-malla festival at Mayo mill had a
similar significance for Punjabis and on that occasion immigrants came to
the mill even from as far away as the United States.138 On this day, the mill
town and the Punjabis were in high spirits, even though there were only few
Punjabis in British Columbia at the time.139 The Mayo mill settlement also
became popular among Punjabis because “there were so many single men
here [at Mayo mill]...some playing kabaddi [rural Indian sport], some
playing volleyball, some lifting weights … those days they were coming
from India and carried on traditions”.140
The existence of a gurudwara played an important role in keeping
together Punjabis from different backgrounds at the Mayo mill, a
development aided by the fact that religious services at the gurudwara did
not conform to any particular panth, Nanak or Khalsa. Rather, the services
evolved out of practical considerations and revolved around certain rituals
with which rural Punjabi Sikhs were familiar. Such rituals gradually took
the form of everyday custom at the Mayo mill gurudwara because,
There were no granthis (priests) or ragis (hymn singers) at the time
who could take the initiative for religious services and could be
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kept at the gurudwara on a full time basis. Moreover, there was
nobody educated among our people … who could read the Granth
(Sikh holy book). So anyone, with any little bit of reading
knowledge, could become granthi and do katha (prayer by
narration) from the Granth. Usually some old person who could
not handle mill work was made responsible for the services and he
also took care of the gurudwara.141
There was not much, in fact, to be responsible for. “All that was required
was to give swaha (last ritual) at sunset and then fold the holy book, wrap it
in a roomal (a piece of cloth), meant for the purpose and open it the next
morning with a shabad (hymn). This was everyday custom”.142 Services
concentrated on essentials rather than details. Mahton and Jat Sikhs
performed the services themselves.
Sunday was the day kept for sangat [congregation]. Every
weekend there was service. On that day we worked from 7 am to 12
noon and then kept 1 or 2 hours for the gurudwara. About six or
seven of us men would get together to do shabad-kirtan (reciting
hymns). I had studied at the Mahilpur Khalsa boy’s school which
was good in religion, up to class six so I could recite the shabad.
After that we would go back to the mill because we had to earn
also.143
A gurudwara was essentially constructed by the Mahton owners of the
Mayo mill to attract Punjabi workers. The immigrants kept their religion
alive because it provided them with a distinct sense of identity in a different
world enabling them to sustain continuity with their own socio-cultural
background. In the Canadian context, this continuity had an altered
complexion. Not only because the followers of two distinct Sikh Panths had
come together at the Mayo mill, simply as Sikhs to carry on their religious
practices harmoniously, but also because in their village in Punjab, the
gurudwara had not, in fact, constituted a significant aspect of their
day-to-day living. “In our Paldi village, nobody visited a gurudwara
regularly. There used to be a sangat only when some gyani [saintly figure]
visited the village. Otherwise we did not know much about the service.
When the gyani came, he might do shabad kirtan but no one else. He also did
ardas, (ritual offering). Our village gurudwara was not known for weekly
services. We had akhand panth [uninterrupted narration of a religious text]
on Gurunanak’s birthday or on Chhewin padshahi [birthday of the sixth
guru, Guru Hargobind]. Other than this one could not get too involved. We
had to look after kheti [cultivation]. Usually we had someone, a granthi,
looking after our gurudwara Mangal Sahai. Mahant Sunder Singh was there
and before him there was Gurditta [Gurdeet Singh] when I came to Canada
in 1927. Whatever happened there, they would do it, not us”.144
Weekly service at the Mayo mill gurudwara was thus a new feature of life
for the immigrant Mahton Punjabis. It was essentially a modified form of
sangranth (a short, continuous prayer) found to be a regular feature in
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gurudwaras established in the Jat villages of Hoshiarpur district.
“Sangranth was usually held once a month and villagers on that day tried to
take a couple of hours off from working in the fields. It was like a
compulsory holiday”.145 Even the manner in which immigrants addressed
their holy book showed the difference. They called their holy book Granth
in Canada; in Punjabi Paldi and other villages it was called Pil Baba or Babe
di Bir.146 The appearance of the gurudwara at Mayo Siding also provides
evidence of the altered significance of religious practices for Punjabi
immigrants,
Baba Mangal Singh Gurudwara, our place of worship [in Paldi,
Punjab], was originally a dharamsala, a kind of sarai (rest house).
It had about eight to ten rooms. In one room, the largest in size, was
Pil baba [Granth], kept on a takht posh (a wooden bed-like frame)
which was covered with a plain sheet. It,was elevated from the
floor with a chanani (canopy) on top. Another room was kept in the
name of Baba Mangal Singh and it displayed pictures of Gurus.147
At Mayo siding, a house, one of the largest at the site, was used as a
gurudwara. “It was built next to the cookhouse and the khuhi. Inside the
house was a spacious room where the holy book was placed on a pirhi (low
wooden stool) elevated from the floor and covered from the top with a
chanani. Pictures of our Gurus were placed there and also in the
cookhouse”.148 As a local newspaper reporter found on his visit, “the mill
gurudwara was lavishly decorated. A rich red carpet covered the whole of
the floor. Asmall carpet was run over this from the entrance to the altar at the
head of the room. Rich silk was used for the table on which the holy book
was placed and also for the canopy. At each corner of the canopy were hung
little decorations of imitation flowers, beautiful lampshades, gold coloured
crystals and varieties of coloured glass”.149
When being interviewed, Punjabi immigrants made clear that they
perceived the Mayo mill settlement as a Little Punjab. “Those days we all
lived like separate nations, but Mayo mill was a settlement of our
people”.150 Furthermore, although the basic layout of the Mayo mill
settlement was similar to other mills in British Columbia; to the immigrants
from Punjab, the structural arrangement of the mill’s buildings was such
that it reflected Punjabi influence. Immigrants could easily distinguish and
relate to the socio-cultural institutions at the Mayo Siding. They began
describing their Canadian village layout by working out the directions from
the Esquimalt and Nanaimo railway line.
The mill, the machine workshop and the toba was to the west of the
railway line. Abadi [Punjabi residential area] was scattered on the
other side of the line, to the north-east. The gurudwara was easily
recognised by the nishaan sahab [a yellow streamer signifying
place of worship], near khuhi. The cookhouse was next to the
gurudwara. Asidewalk from the cookhouse led straight to the bath,
meant, for use by Punjabi men. The bath had a chulha inside to heat
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the water. Close to the cookhouse were residences built originally
to house the owners, these were later given to the Punjabi workers
as owners moved to bigger houses, further east of the railway. To
the north-east of the gurudwara was also all-Punjabi housing. They
were made bigger according to the number of people living at the
mill. In the 1920s and 30s, there were two separate, multi-storey
bunkhouses for single Punjabi men. About this time housing for
kabildar (family men) had also been built. To accommodate more
people, the abadi was extended further to the south in the direction
of the Hayward junction of the railway going towards Duncan.151
The layout was familiar to the Punjabi immigrants because “it was our
village. The only difference was that in comparison to the Punjabi village,
Mayo village was smaller and the houses were not built close together.
There was distance between the shacks, they were not joined in a circle. But
we lived among our people and a small pagdandi [pathway] used to connect
the well, and the gurudwara with the houses of our people”.152 The
immigrant experience contributed to the development of an unusual degree
of interaction between Punjabis of different castes in Canada. The
consequences of this development were far-reaching for the Punjabis of
Mahton origin. It changed the context of their identity. From their own
perspective, in Canada, they enjoyed a distinctly higher status than the Jats.
There were no other East Indian [Punjabi] mills at the time. Sohan
Singh’s brother’s mill in Vancouver ran for only two years. So did
Harnam Singh’s lumber company in Mission, although it made a
lot of money. There was another mill, that of Munshi Ram, he ran it
first in New Westminster and then at Vancouver but he could not
make money. He could not run the mill. Only Mayo Lumber
Company succeeded among East Indians [Punjabis] and so
naturally all Punjabis came there and we became big.153
Such perceptions of success were significant. They strengthened the
motivation of Paldi Mahton immigrants to transfer to their village, to their
parivars and tabbars in Punjab, the prosperity, wealth and enhanced status
they had earned in Canada as mill owners. Paldi immigrants did not
disassociate their familial and baradari brethren from their achievements
and worked towards bringing about a change at their village and familial
level in Punjab by making concrete contributions from their overseas
incomes. They demonstrated their attachment to their homeland, “when
you have izzat for the family then you think it’s a good step”.154
Paldi immigrants made monetary contributions from Canada to
commence and improve facilities which were essential for the village in
Punjab and were used by all. Immigrants contributed to their gurudwara, to
their village school and to the construction of village roads, the village pond
and the hospital.155 Contributions from overseas were made directly to the
caretakers of the Paldi gurudwara, to Mahant Gurditt Singh and later to
Mahant Sunder Singh, who responded to such gestures by writing letters
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which set out the expenditure incurred for Paldi gurudwara services.156
Immigrants remitted foreign earnings as a mark of respect and reverence to
the Baba Mangal Singh Sahai Gurudwara.157 They also donated to the
Secondary Boys’ High School in Mahilpur,158 and some immigrants sent
money to the Akali Akhbar, the Akali newspaper in Lahore, thus becoming
overseas contributors to the cause of the Akali movement.159 These efforts
helped to improve the image of the overseas Paldi Mahton in their home
region, specifically in Garhshankar tahsil in the Hoshiarpur district. Paldi
immigrants worked continually to make their village stand out in the tahsil
“because there was a kind of pride in that, that our village would look better,
would look like Canada”.160 An informant described the changes that took
place in the layout of Paldi village in the Garhshankar tahsil in the 1920s,
through the efforts of their men settled overseas.
Even before my departure for Canada in 1927, a pakka road was
constructed in the village with money sent from Canada. A toba
was there, but steps were added to it. That was a novelty in those
days. Even a separate room for ladies to take bath, called chhapar,
came into existence. Money for this came from Canada. Our
village men came and built big pakke houses. Some were
double-storeyed. Once pakka construction got underway, this
concept was immediately picked up. Houses were built of brick,
and the bera [the open courtyard in houses] was cemented. None of
the families in the village in the 30s had to live in kachcha houses,
even for the low class, ad dharmi, houses were pakke. All
pathways became pakka roads and came to have drains on both
sides. Gradually the village had a good entrance gate donated by
the money sent from abroad. Subsequently, a post office also came
up. Eventually a school and a hospital became its landmarks.
When you get these three things—brick buildings, school and
hospital—there is no other village like Paldi. Improvement for the
village came through Canadians, who did much more than Paldi
people for their village and liked the village more than
themselves.161
The village, which by tradition was known as a low-status Mahton
peasant proprietors’ village, thus acquired the reputation of being a
prosperous village by the 1920s because people “came to know that our
village men owned a mill in Canada”.162 Paldi village came to be noticed for
its “modern” appearance. People from the neighbouring villages in the
Garhshankar tahsil, and even from further away, acknowledged the
improvements made there. The Jats in the region took particular note of
such developments. A Jat immigrant from the Garshankar tahsil stated, “I
was born in 1930 and from my earliest memory, Paldi was a “big” village. It
was like a city with paved roads and drains on the sides. Only two villages
those days had brickpaved streets near my village, Paldi was one of
them”163 Another stated that “I am a Jat Sikh [from the village Behbelpur]. I
went to Paldi boys’ school in the 1920s. Never did I see any kachcha
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construction. All were pakka buildings there. Their houses were like
mansions, meant for commodious living”.164 These impressions were quite
common.
Paldi in the Garhshankar tahsil continued to improve its image
throughout the 1920s as the village of prosperous “Kanedians”, This
reputation was further consolidated as the immigrants expanded their
resource base by purchasing additional land in nearby villages or in the
province neighbouring Punjab, Rajasthan. The capacity to purchase
additional land was a necessary accompaniment of an improved social
position as far as Paldi Mahton immigrants were concerned. Land was the
primary source of production in Punjab but it was also the traditional
symbol of high social standing, of respect, of prestige and the izzat that
came with it. Immigrants acquired land for themselves and their families
because it was the means to retain their wahi badshahi, (sovereignty) and
because it strengthened their baradari’s status. Immigrants, however, did
not purchase land in their own village. In the 1920s land was not sold in
Paldi village because it was expensive sirwal property.165 Moreover, Paldi
villagers preferred to retain their own village land for themselves and their
descendants, and Paldi immigrants shared those values. Paldi was an
ancestral village from the perspective of the immigrants, therefore they left
their village land untouched and instead purchased land outside the vicinity
of Paldi but still within the Garhshankar tahsil, besides investing in
Rajasthan.
Paldi immigrants bought land in the Jat villages of Sakruli, Kharaudi,
Khera and Hukumatpur.166 Some immigrants also bought land in a
Brahman-dominated village, Thoana, near Paldi,167 in Bagana village in the
Hoshiarpur zila and in Ajram village in the Jalandhar district.168 In
Rajasthan province, immigrants bought land in the region of Bikaner and
Ganganagar.169 Paldi villagers owned a total of 20 murrabbe (One
murrabba equalling 20 acres) in Bikaner and three-quarters of this belonged
to immigrants.170 Plots were also purchased by immigrants in the name of a
Baba Mangal Sahai Gurudwara in another city, Anandpur Sahai, a place of
pilgrimage for Sikhs in the Punjab. On these plots, rooms were built to
provide free board and lodging for Paldi villagers as well as for others of
their baradari when they visited Anandpur Sahai.171 Some Paldi immigrants
also purchased shops in the town of Phagwara.172
The changes in the material appearance of Paldi village and the capacity
of its villagers to purchase additional land was notable because Paldi was
the only village in its local region which so clearly demonstrated the
substantial gains earned by its emigrants overseas as a unit. The Jat villages
of Kharaudi, Sakruli and Hukumatpur did not show similar levels of
change.173 Although Kharaudi village also acquired kothis (large brick
houses) through the involvement of its Jat emigrants, it was a multi-got
village and the structures built by emigrants from one got were not
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considered contributions to the development of the village as a whole.174
The villages surrounding Paldi, however, aided their Mahton neighbours, if
only indirectly, to attain a higher social dignity when the Jat villagers sold
land to Paldi Mahton proprietors. Their purchase of land outside Paldi
village led to the correlation of Paldi Mahton prosperity overseas with an
improved image at home. The significance of changing perceptions about
Paldi Mahton in the Garhshankar tahsil in the 1920s is made clear in a Jat
informant’s words, “Mahton went [to Canada] for enriching themselves,
for a better living, to buy more land, to live in rich style. But a Jat went
[overseas] to remove hunger … Those days practically the entire village of
Paldi was considered rich. Paldi could not be compared to other Mahton
villages also. It was different”.175
The immigrants in Canada were themselves aware of these notions
reflecting the changed reputation of their village and their village baradari
brethren. The reason for this, according to a senior bania al immigrant, was
not difficult to understand because,
Nearby villages [in Garhshankar] came to know that Paldi men
owned a mill in Canada. They were surprised and envious of the
development. Earlier kandiwale [Rajputs] thought we were
mahhde [lowly] and hopeless, … and Jats, would look down upon
us, hate us, … think we are of low repute. But then we became big,
Asi change ho gai sadi mill chal payee [we were operating a mill in
Canada. It did good]. We made lots of money. Then they all
esteemed us in our desh che [homeland] because “our people”,
mind you, buy land. Other people lend and sell land.176
In the 1920s and 1930s, the process of change was not confined to Paldi
Mahton alone. In Punjab, these years were particularly important for the
Mahton caste as a whole. Their ongoing struggle to be officially declared
Rajputs developed a more concrete form in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Although the colonial government had admitted their claims for a change in
status, as the Punjab census of 1921 showed, they were still not officially
listed in the category of Rajputs. So the Mahton baradari continued its
struggle by holding various ikkaths (formal caste conferences) in their
different villages in Hoshiarpur and Jalandhar districts in order to gain
internal community support.177 The unity of the community was
strengthened through these ikkaths and Mahton came to speak with one
voice in support of their claims. The developments related to the
improvement in status of Paldi village and its Mahton proprietors coincided
with this phase. As a result Paldi people, especially the close kin of
emigrants, “their taye, chache and piu”, as a villager put it, became involved
in their baradari’s ikkaths.
Around 1935, the Mahton caste held one of its largest ikkaths in the high
school of their village of Nadalon. “There was a huge gathering of our
baradari at Nadalon high school. Almost every tabbar from all gots, was
315
represented. Kanedians were represented by their relatives. At the Nadalon
ikkath, our baradari decided to arbitrarily change our status to Rajputs.”.178
The caste had, yet again, invited a high-status Rajput, the Raja of Nabha,
from a princely state in Punjab to preside over their conference. The Raja,
like other independent princes of Patiala, Jind and Faridkot, was of Rajput
descent which stretched back a 1000 years. The Raja was offered a chair
made of gold as a token of respect by the Mahton caste and was asked to
represent their case to the British colonial government.179 The decision to
arbitrarily change their caste status through the involvement of a Rajput
Raja was not new; they had made a similar arbitrary change in the early
1900s. However, in the 1930s, the caste took this decision during a
campaign that clearly demonstrated the unanimous support of all caste
members and then followed up this development by filing cases in the
Punjabi courts.180 Their efforts proved fruitful and in 1939, the Mahton
caste was officially pronounced a Rajput caste. The Paldi village
government records, as mentioned earlier, show that original Mahton
proprietors became Rajputs in 1941. The consequences of such a
development had a significant impact upon the Paldi immigrants of the
original Mahton caste at the Mayo mill settlement in Canada. In 1941,
Mayo Siding in the Sahtlam district in the province of British Columbia,
was renamed “Paldi”. With this, immigrants of the Mahton Rajput caste
managed to bring both their Paldi villages, which were situated in two
different parts of the world, closer. Within their community in the
Garhshankar tahsil in the Hoshiarpur district, the Eastern Paldi came to be
regarded as the progenitor of change through its overseas emigrants, and the
Western Paldi came to be viewed as the nucleus of continuity, an extension
of the Mahton Rajputs overseas. These images of the two villages across the
oceans remained strong within the community of the Paldi immigrants.
Not every Paldi immigrant who settled at the Mayo mill brought his
tabbar to Canada. For example, there were some such as Rattan Singh of the
boleya tabbar who remained unmarried.181 There were others from the
bania and the boleya parivar such as Bhan Singh and Tara Singh, who were
married when they first reached Canadian shores in 1905 and 1906 but
never brought their complete tabbars to British Columbia. While Bhan
Singh continued to travel back and forth between the village in Hoshiarpur
district and the mill settlement in Sahtlam district, Tara Singh never
returned to visit his tabbar in Punjab. However, both brought over their sons
to work at the mill in Canada in the 1920s.182 This pattern was discernible
among Jats as well. For example, Bhagwan Singh of Kharaudi village
travelled regularly between Punjab and British Columbia, and in the 1920s
brought over his younger brother to be employed at the mill. Nevertheless,
for some other Punjabis, their complete tabbars were established at the
Mayo mill because they either sent for their wives or brought them over
from Punjab. There were also men from Paldi village, particularly from the
bania parivar, who returned home to marry in the 1920s and brought back
their wives. A number of them had originally entered Canada unmarried
316
and remained as such until 15 or 20 years later when they returned to their
village to marry within their own caste. Some of the bania men were in their
forties when they returned to marry, and some in their mid-thirties.183 At the
time, this was not the traditional age for Punjabi men to marry but, being
overseas residents, their decisions to marry late was not questioned. On the
other hand, they were accorded greater izzat because almost every Paldi
immigrant who returned to the village married according to the traditional
marriage customs and norms of their caste. Immigrants married within their
own baradari and in accordance with their baradari’s got requirements,
performing both karewa (widow re-marriage), where applicable, and
baraati-shaadi, the regular marriage ceremony.184
Karewa was a rooted tradition among the Mahton in Punjab and Paldi
immigrants also followed it. By doing so, they demonstrated their izzat for
traditional norms and customs and for their families. A karewa marriage
conducted in the village for a Paldi immigrant from the bania parivar was
detailed thus.
Ghanaiya Singh was the first to come to get married. He did not
have baraati shaadi. He was the oldest in the family and was also
sayana [middle-aged]. When he came, his parjai [brother’s wife]
was a widow. Her husband, Ghanaiya’s younger brother, who was
in the paltan [military] had died three or four years back. So when
Ghanaiya came to marry, his parivar; mother was still there and
father also; decided among themselves to perform a karewa
marriage, chadar dalke [covering them with a sheet]. There was no
child from his wife’s first marriage. Ghanaiya stayed for about six
months or a year and then took his wife to Canada.185
Other immigrants who married according to traditional rites also upheld
their traditional societal values. Baraati-shaadi was an elaborate ceremony
through which a marriage was completed in different stages. It started with
the proposal of names and the sending of messages to prospective families
through intermediaries. After that the ritual of the binding ceremony was
done. Afew days before the actual wedding, the rishtedars [relatives] of the
family were invited to have food. Villagers were also invited for the meals.
Although not every villager went to the marriage feast, tabbars
participating in marriage rituals would send one representative to the
marriage feast who also carried his own utensils.186 Even members from
different pattis followed this ritual in Paldi village. On the wedding day
itself, members of a different patti did not join the wedding and the marriage
ceremonies were confined to the members of the marrying parivars and
tabbars. On the wedding day, a baraat (wedding party) consisting only of
men, went to the bride’s village. The baraat stayed there for four days during
which the marriage was sanctified through a variety of rituals, the most
important being the circumambulation of the fire. For Mahton immigrants,
their marriages were performed according to Hindu rituals and the marriage
was called vedi-vyah because the cermonies were accompanied by recital of
317
marriage rites from the vedas. Thereafter the baradt returned to the village
with the bride and the wedding rituals were continued in the groom’s village
for the next three days. After the baraat returned with the bride, the women
in the household played an important role in the completion of various
marriage rituals. Their functions varied from performing kangna [a post
wedding ritual] to visiting the jathera (ancestral shrine) besides general
merry-making.187
Paldi men returned from Canada to marry after the initial marriage
arrangements had been formalised by their senior parivar members. ‘In
those days, the consent of the boy and girl Meant nothing because marriages
were family decisions’.188 Consequently, from the point of view of
immigrants, their marriage ceremonies were not lengthy affairs.
The marriage had been arranged for me and I had to honour my
family’s decision. I had seven days’ wedding. After my baraat
returned with the bride my parjai [sister-in-law] called for me from
the crowd, and as I turned in that direction she threw atta [flour] in
my eyes. Its our riwaz [ritual]; women do that to the men of their
family who return with new wives. I also played kangna and
visited jathera baba Matiya da [Shrine of Saint Matiya] in a
procession amidst singing by the women.189
Traditional marriage customs played an important role in the marriage of
other immigrants as well. Mayo Singh and Hari Singh got married in the
1920s according to the traditional rites.
Immigrants from the Jat caste also went home from the Mayo mill to
marry in the 1920s. They also married in accordance with the got
requirements of their caste and according to the vedi-vyah ceremoney, in
which marriage was sanctified through Hindu marriage rites. Balwant
Kaur, who came to the Mayo mill after marrying a Jat Siddoo groom from
Kharaudi village in 1926, belonged to the Hunjal got of Jats from the
village, Tholu di Paddi, in the Garhshankar tahsil. Her got was different
from that of her husband’s, his mother’s, as well as his maternal and paternal
grandmother’s.
At that time it was our riwaz. When elders got together to arrange a
marriage they made sure that we went outside four gots [sic]. I was
very young when I got married, only 14 years old, but I remember
my uncles sitting and discussing details of got arrangements for me
… My marriage was done as a vedi-vyah by a Bahman [Brahman]
… My husband and I took lavan phere [circumambulation] …
Then I was taken to my husband’s village where I played kangna,
and visited jathera. I did not go to the gurudwara … My jithani
[husband’s older brother’s wife] who was living in Canada in the
1920s, also married the same way … also my sister who came to
the Mayo mill in 1924.190
318
Balwant Kaur and other Punjabi women generally arrived in Canada a
year or two after their marriage, when their passports and other immigration
formalities had been completed. Some came with their husbands who had
stayed in Punjab for more than a year, and some followed later with other
members of their parivar.
When immigrant women came to join their men, they were relatively
young in age, generally in the range of 16 to 18 years old, and most were not
even conversant with the basic principles and doctrines of Sikh religion.191
None of them were educated; they had not been to even a primary school.
Consequently, they could not read from the Granth, which, in their village
language, they referred to as Babe di Bir or Pir Baba “I still don’t know the
text and also do not understand the meaning of the shabad. At that time
[1920s], I could barely recite shabad. All women were like that. Bishan
Kaur, Khusali, Anar Kaur, Dileep Kaur, my jithani, everybody was the
same”.192 When they came to Canada they came as part of the lives of their
immigrant men and thus settled down to establish their tabbars and ghars
overseas.
The arrival of women provided a new dimension to the settlement of
Punjabi immigrants at the Mayo mill. It helped stabilise the community
because for some people their ghar, families and households, were now to
be established in Canada. Children were born to the immigrant community
in the late 1920s and the 1930s.193 As a result, a resident Punjabi community
grew up at the Mayo mill and the settlement acquired the form of a true
Punjabi village in the eyes of the immigrants. Housing arrangements also
underwent a change to accommodate families. Bigger and separate houses
were provided for kabildars (men with families), while single men
continued in the bunkhouses. Gradually, women created their own world at
their Canadian Punjabi village which was different from their village life in
Punjab but similar in some important essentials. Their Punjabi life could not
be recreated in full in Canada because houses were of independent design
and generally one tabbar—which included husband, wife and children—
lived in a single house. Among Mahton families, almost every tabbar had an
independent dwelling but among Jat families some tabbars lived jointly.194
Moreover, the nature of the men’s world was different in Canada. Punjabi
women could not join their men in the mill work and men came home for
meals. The Punjabi women gradually adjusted to their new environment.
They cooked, washed clothes, looked after their children, participated in
the gurudwara services, joined in the Jor-malla festival and generally
socialised among themselves as they would do in their villages. They
managed to find time to get together in between mealtimes at someone’s
house, to chat and gossip and exchange their experiences in the new
world.195 Life was different for Punjabi women in Canada but they adjusted
to the differences and became more involved with their families, “sada
ghar, sada tabbar”, (my house and my family). In the context of their life
319
overseas, the family came to mean a tabbar, comprising the husband, wife
and children.
Little Punjab at the Mayo mill in Sahtlam district became an almost
self-sufficient village for the Punjabis in Canada because a school was also
made available at the site. The Mayo mill school was originally started in
1921 to provide facility for education of the children of white families. It
was built on the company’s property and at the company’s expense.
Eventually, Punjabi and Japanese children also attended the mill school. In
1929, the local Cowichan Valley newspaper reported a colourful
performance with song and dance, by the Mayo mill school children at
Christmas time. The report described in detail the items performed by
Japanese, Punjabi and white children. Significantly, it was the provincial
government of British Columbia which provided the school with a teacher,
desks, maps and other equipment.196 The school also had an elected board of
trustees. The management of the school remained in the hands of white
British Columbians, and the school principal and teachers remained white
Canadians.
The status gained in Canada brought higher izzat in Punjab. However, the
sharing of success by Paldi immigrants with their village and families
generated different reactions within their own village community. The
improved socio-economic position they attained through wealth gradually
created a class awareness among different Paldi families living in the
Garhshankar tahsil. This development eventually resulted in
differentiation and increasing social distance between emigrant families
and other Paldi parivars. As a corollary to this, the community of Paldi
immigrants in British Columbia also underwent a change. Some
individuals gained more from the profits earned through the Mayo mill’s
success and this redefined their status rankings within their immigrant
community. Gradually their group orientation ceased to have meaning in
the context of their overseas settlement.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
320
See Files (1955).
Ibid.
See Wright (1967).
See Rajala (1992):
Ibid.
See Gray (1982).
See Rajala (1992).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. See the British Columbia Lumberman, September 1926, p. 24.
See the Cowichan Leader, 29 January 1920, p.1; 21 March 1918, p. 1.
Ibid.
14. See British Columbia Directory (1918).
15. Interview, male, 80 years, 5 October 1993, Vancouver; Interview, male, 88 years,
6 February 1994, Coquitlam, British Columbia.
16. See British Columbia Directory (1918).
17. See the Cowichan Leader, 20 January 1920, p. 1.
18. Interview, male, 88 years, 6 February 1994, Coquitlam; Interview, male, 80
years, 5 October 1993, Vancouver, British Columbia.
19. Interview, male, 80 years, 5 October 1993, Vancouver, British Columbia.
20. Ibid. Also, male, 88 years, 6 February 1994, Coquitlam, British Columbia.
21. Some Punjabi owned mills came up in the region in the mid-1920s. See the
British Columbia Lumberman, January 1920, p. 34; July 1922, p. 42; October
1922, p. 48; the Cowichan Leader, 8 October 1925, p. 7.
22. Interview, male, 88 years, 14 and 15 March 1989, Coquitlam, British Columbia.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Interview, white male, 84 years, 27 December 1988, Langley, British Columbia.
26. See the British Columbia Lumberman, January 1920, p. 27. Also by Interview,
male, 88 years, 14 and 15 March 1989, Coquitlam; Interview, male, 80 years, 5
October 1993, Vancouver; Interview, male, 72 years, 11 October 1993, Paldi,
British Columbia.
27. See the British Columbia Lumberman, January 1920, p. 27.
28. These numbers fluctuated. In the mid-1920s, however, the community was
substantial. The official number of employees ranged between 200 and 250. See
the British Columbia Lumberman, between 1925 and 1930. Interviews, male, 88
years, 14 and 15 March 1989, Coquitlam; Also male, 80 years, 5 October, 1993,
Vancouver and male, 72 years, 11 October 1993, Paldi, British Columbia.
29. Interview, male, 72 years, 11 October 1993, Paldi, British Columbia.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. See the British Columbia Lumberman, July 1921, p. 31.
34. Interview, male, 88 years, 14 and 15 March 1989, Coquitlam; Also, male, 80
years, 5 October 1993, Vancouver and male, 72 years, 11 October 1993, Paldi,
British Columbia.
35. The mill was sold to the Lake Logging Company in 1944-45.
36. Interview male, 88 years, 14 and 15 March 1989, Coquitlam, British Columbia.
37. See the British Columbia Lumberman, August 1920, p. 53; October 1920, p. 33.
38. In December 1921, Mayo mill acquired the entire sawmill machinery of the
Frondeg Lumber Company situated at Cobble Hill. See the Cowichan Leader, 15
December 1921, p. 7 and the British Columbia Lumberman, January 1922, p. 42.
40. The progress of the Mayo mill was regularly covered in the British Columbia
Lumberman and the Cowichan Leader, 1920-1940.
41. Interview, male, 88 years, 14 and 15, March 1989, Coquitlam, British Columbia.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. See Rajala (1992).
46. See Turner (1973).
47. Interview, male, 88 years, 17 March 1989, Coquitlam; male, 68 years and female
65 years, 28 January 1994, Burnaby, British Columbia.
321
48. Interview, male, 88 years, 17 March 1989, Coquitlam, British Columbia.
49. Ibid. Also male, 68 years and female, 65 years, 28 January 1994, Burnaby, British
Columbia.
50. Ibid.
53. See Company receipts, Joe Saroya Collection.
54. See the Cowichan Leader, 30 August 1917, p. 1; 20 December 1917, p. 1.
56. See the British Columbia Lumberman, August 1923, p. 53.
57. See the Cowichan Leader, 15 December 1921, p. 7 and the British Columbia
Lumberman, 1922, p. 42.
59. See anonymous memo, The Mayo Group: Its History and Potential, Joe Saroya
Collection.
60. See letters, Joe Saroya Collection.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid.
63. See the British Columbia Lumberman, June, July 1922, p. 82.
64. Ibid. Also see British Columbia Directory, 1920-1940.
65. See the British Columbia Lumberman, September 1923, p. 37; the Cowichan
Leader, 21 April 1927, p. 1 and 13 June 1929, p. 5.
66. See the Cowichan Leader, 13 June 1929, p. 5.
67. Ibid.
68. See the British Columbia Lumberman, January 1920, p. 27 and the Cowichan
Leader, 29 January 1929, p. 1.
69. See the British Columbia Lumberman, September 1923, p. 37 and the Cowichan
Leader, 20 October 1927, p. 10.
70. See the Cowichan Leader, 21 April 1927, p. 1.
71. See Wright (1966).
72. See the Cowichan Leader, 21 April 1927, p. 1.
73. Ibid. Also, 13 June 1929, p. 5.
75. See Ward (1990); Buchignani and Indra (1985); Adachi (1979); and Wickberg et
al. (1982).
77. Ibid.,14 March 1989.
78. Ibid.
79. See business cards, Joe Saroya Collection.
80. Interview, male, 88 years, 14 March 1989, Coquitlam and white male, 84 years,
27 December 1988, Langley, British Columbia.
82. Ibid.
83. Ibid. Also See the British Columbia Lumberman, January 1920, p. 27.
84. See the Cowichan Leader, 2 September 1982, p. 32.
86. See White Cookhouse Book, Joe Saroya Collection.
87. See the Times Colonist, 1987, p. 1, Joe Saroya Collection.
90. Interview, Chinese male, 65 years, 29 February 1989, Duncan, British Columbia.
322
91. See “Old Logging Days Rich in Character”, newspaper clipping without
reference, Joe Saroya Collection.
93. Ibid.
94. Ibid.
95. Ibid. Also, male, 72 years, 11 October 1993, Paldi, British Columbia.
96. Ibid., 12 October 1993.
97. Ibid.
98. Ibid.
103. Ibid.
104. Ibid. Also, male, 72 years, 12 October 1993, Paldi, British Columbia.
106. Ibid. Also, male, 88 years, 15 March 1989, Coquitlam, British Columbia.
108. Ibid. Also see the Cowichan Leader, 5 May 1932, p. 8.
109. See Johnston (1988c); and Buchignani and Indra (1985).
110. See Bihchignani and Indra (1985).
111. See the British Columbia Lumberman, January 1920, p. 34; July 1922, p. 42;
October 1922, p. 48 and the Cowichan Leader, 8 October 1925, p. 7.
112. See Canada Census (1921).
113. Interview, male, 88 years, 6 February 1994, Coquitlam; male, 80 years, 5 October
1993, Vancouver and male, 72 years, 12 October 1993, Paldi, British Columbia.
114. Interview, male, 88 years, 6 February 1994, Coquitlam, British Columbia.
115. See the Cowichan Leader, 5 May 1932, p. 8.
116. Interview, male, 88 years, 15 March 1989, Coquitlam, British Columbia. See also
Buchignani and Indra (1985).
120. Ibid.
121. See Johnston (1988c).
123. Ibid. Interview, male, 72 years, 11 October 1993, Paldi, British Columbia.
125. Ibid.
126. Interview, male, 80 years, 30 September 1993, Vancouver, British Columbia.
127. Ibid.
128. See Bradwin (1968).
130. Interview, male, 75 years, 10 April 1989, Vancouver, British Columbia.
131. Interview, male, 65 years, 24 December 1988, Vancouver, British Columbia.
132. Interview, male, 70 years, 28 February 1989, Duncan, British Columbia.
133. Interview, male, 75 years, 19 and 20 April 1989, Vancouver, British Columbia.
134. Ibid.
135. Ibid.
136. Ibid.
323
137. Interview, male, 88 years, 17 March 1989, Coquitlam and Interview, male, 72
years, 11 October 1993, Paldi, British Columbia. See also “Paldi Residents
Celebrate Jor Malla”, newspaper clipping without reference, Joe Saroya
Collection.
138. See “Paldi residents celebrate Jor Malla” and letters, Joe Saroya Collection.
139. “Paldi Residents Celebrate Jor Malla”, Joe Saroya Collection.
142. Ibid., 6 February 1994.
143. Ibid.
144. Ibid.
147. Ibid.
148. Ibid.
152. Ibid., 15 and 17 March 1989.
153. Ibid.
154. Ibid., 22 March 1989. 155, Ibid.
158. See receipts and letters, Joe Saroya Collection.
159. Ibid. Immigrants had formed an Akali Committee at Paldi in the 1920s and they
sent donations through the gurudwara to Amritsar.
161. Ibid.
164. Interview, male, 75 years, 28 September 1992, New Delhi.
165. Group Interview, males 80, 92 and 65 years, 20 March 1993, Paldi, Punjab.
166. See letters, Joe Saroya Collection. Also by Interview, male, 88 years, 6 February
1994, Coquitlam; male, 80 years, 5 October 1993, Vancouver and male, 72 years,
11 October 1993, Paldi, British Columbia.
168. Interview, male, 72 years, 11 October 1993, Paldi, British Columbia. See letters,
Joe Saroya Collection.
170. Ibid.
171. Interview, Granthi, 28 March 1993, Paldi, Punjab; male, 88 years, 6 February
1994, Coquitlam and male, 72 years,11 October 1993, Paldi, British Columbia.
173. This was ascertained during a personal visit to the villages.
174. Ibid.
175. Interview, male, 75 years, 28 September 1992, New Delhi.
176. Interview, male, 88 years, 6 February 1994; 23 March 1989; 13 April 1989,
Coquitlam, British Columbia.
177. Ibid. Interview, male, 88 years, 27 March 1993, Paldi, Punjab.
324
179. Interview, male, 88 years, 27 March 1993, Paldi, Punjab. For a study of the
genealogy of the princes of native Punjab states, see Griffin (1970).
180. Interview, male, 88 years, 27 March 1993, Paldi, Punjab.
181. Ibid.
182. Ibid.
183. Ibid.
184. Ibid.
185. Ibid.
186. Ibid.
187. Ibid.
190. Interview, female, 83 years,1 February 1994, Burnaby, British Columbia.
191. Ibid.
192. Ibid.
193. Ibid. Also see community photographs, Joe Saroya Collection.
194. Interview, female, 83 years, 1 February 1994, Burnaby, British Columbia.
195. Ibid.
196. See the Cowichan Leader, 10 March 1921, p. 9; 6 January 1921, p. 1; 16 January
1930, p. 5; 13 July 1922, p. 6; 3 January 1929, p. 1; 3 January 1929, p. 1.
325
Nubia Hanciau
La sorcière dans l’imaginaire fictif chez trois
écrivaines de l’Amérique française
Même si on ne les brûle qu’au figuré, les
sorcières existent encore.
Maroussia Hajdukowski-Ahmed
Résumé
Symbole de résistance face à la répression féminine, la sorcière secoue le
monde des arts et ébranle l’hégémonie masculine en dépassant les frontières
géographiques et textuelles. L’étude de ce personnage en lien avec l’histoire
de la sorcellerie présente la double perspective historique et littéraire. Les
écrivaines Anne Hébert, Maryse Condé et Nancy Huston donnent la parole à
la sorcière pour exprimer des événements occultés par l’histoire traditionnelle. Bien que leur regard ait pour point de départ des origines culturelles
distinctes, toutes trois ont le même projet littéraire : révéler une vision
nouvelle et révolutionnaire de la sorcière comme personnage littéraire. Ce
texte a été traduit du portuguais vers le français.
Abstract
A symbol of resistance in the face of feminine repression, the sorceress shakes
up the art world and rocks the masculine hegemony by going beyond
geographic and textual boundaries. This character study together with the
history of witchcraft presents both a historical and literary perspective.
Writers Anne Hébert, Maryse Condé and Nancy Huston give voice to the
sorceress to express the events overshadowed by traditional history. Although
their gaze has a point of departure in distinct cultural origins, all three have
the same literary project—to reveal a new and revolutionary vision of the
sorceress as a literary character. This text was translated from Portuguese to
French.
De l’Europe au Nouveau Monde, particulièrement du XIVe au XVIIIe
siècle, le discours en vogue à cette époque, au lieu de reconnaître chez la
femme le libre arbitre, la force et la connaissance mêmes, a préféré
l’identifier par sa perfidie ou, lorsqu’elle détient le pouvoir, comme une
créature terrible, une femme-homme, dont l’hybris répugnante détruirait la
femme-mère et la femme-femme. La collectivité intériorise les préjugés,
propage les superstitions et persécute la femme, considérée comme
instrument des ténèbres et du mal « la nature l’a rendue sorcière »1 et
ennemie de l’Église et de l’élite dominante. L’action de la sorcière la situe
33-34, 2006
dans une sphère opposée à celle de la sainte, de la fée ou de la Vierge Marie,
images maternelles reçues comme des idéaux.
Cette vision négative sera corrigée par Jules Michelet (1862), le premier
à valoriser les aspects positifs de cette puissante image, de qui personne
n’osait s’approcher. Elle sera retouchée par l’écriture féministe à partir des
années 1970, quand la sorcière sera transformée en symbole de résistance
au moment où les mouvements internationaux soutiendront la libération
des femmes, contribuant ainsi à une nouvelle vision de ce stéréotype du
point de vue historique et littéraire. Dans ce contexte, la relecture du
personnage revêt un caractère exemplaire, car, en plus d’inverser la
tradition, elle valorise des traits positifs associés aux femmes, méprisés par
la culture hégémonique patriarcale, anciennement conditionnée à la voir
comme un « être inférieur ».
La sorcière dans l’imaginaire fictif chez trois écrivaines de l’Amérique
française2 propose une relecture de la représentation de la sorcière dans le
récit de fiction, en s’appuyant sur un récit de la nouvelle histoire et en s’y
référant. Nous partons de l’hypothèse d’un roman d’auteur féminin qui,
dans le courant des mouvements de libération de la femme qui survient en
Amérique francophone à partir des années 1970, prend en considération
cette image historique et marginale, symbole de la lutte féminine de la
déconstruction du discours hégémonique. Théoriquement parlant, c’est à
partir de cette affirmation que nous développons cette recherche laquelle
offre deux grandes perspectives – l’historique et la littéraire – segmentées
en plusieurs parties. Dans la première, les vestiges du discours traditionnel
au sujet de la sorcière sont récupérés par la nouvelle histoire, qui fixe le
personnage à travers le temps et l’espace. Dans une perspective propre à la
littérature d’auteur féminin, le personnage renverse et transforme des
paradigmes et des notions cristallisées. Pour la relecture de la fiction et pour
la compréhension quant à la subversion dont les écrivaines font la
promotion des faits historiques, la soutenance de la critique littéraire
féministe se révèle être un support théorique fondamental et différencié,
spécifiquement pertinent en ce qui a trait au thème.
Pour cette étude, nous avons jugé nécessaire de commencer par la
connaissance de l’histoire de la sorcière et de ses origines, de la situer dans
le monde qui l’entoure, l’influence et la transforme, en tenant compte
surtout des actes qui, leur ayant été attribués, se déroulent dans des
circonstances historiques distinctes, dans des pays de cultures différentes et
de structures sociales en mutation. Au départ, la recherche est orientée vers
l’univers dans lequel émerge et se meut le personnage, plus précisément en
Europe, au tournant du XIVe siècle jusqu’au XVIIIe siècle.
Le choix de cette longue période historique se justifie par le fait qu’en
Occident, la confiance des fidèles en l’Église catholique s’est vue
compromise par l’émergence d’un phénomène généralisé : la répression
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systématique du féminin, représentée par la « chasse aux sorcières ».
Durant près de quatre siècles, dans l’imaginaire et dans les croyances
traditionnelles, surtout en ce qui a trait à l’ecclésiastique, la sorcière a été
associée au mal, reliée essentiellement à la sexualité, agente de Satan,
seigneur du plaisir. Soupçonnée de s’accoupler avec lui (femme vipère,
femme fétide, femme perfide, femme infecte), cette femme incarne le péché
et le mal. Par ailleurs, en professant un spiritualisme angélique, l’Église
méprise la nature du corps et prêche l’attente de la mort, en souhaitant
dissuader les fidèles d’être heureux sur terre. Dans un milieu social de
frustration et de révolte contre de pareils facteurs qui empêchent l’attente
positive, la population se nourrit de rêves, riches en miracles, en folies
absurdes, étranges, surnaturelles, enchanteresses…
Mais seule, la légende ne suffit pas. Il faut qu’une personne, née au sein
du peuple, ose exercer les magistratures naturelles de la collectivité : la
guérison des malades, la consolation des affligés, le culte des morts,
l’organisation des fêtes. À une époque d’urbanisation, l’absence de
religiosité dans le milieu rural amène la sorcière sur la scène pour régner sur
les « temps du désespoir », dont parle Jules Michelet. En accumulant
misères et souffrances, la femme du serf est la première à se révolter. C’est
elle qui va cueillir les plantes médicinales, transmettre son énergie aux
faibles, préparer les grandes communions sabbatiques, offrant ainsi une
compensation au désespoir collectif. En même temps que l’on a recours à
ses services, elle est pointée du doigt par l’Église comme une étrangère, une
marginale, une sorcière, facteurs déterminants faisant en sorte que la
sorcière n’obtiendra jamais le statut ou la reconnaissance parmi les actions
révolutionnaires de l’histoire, la destinant à la clandestinité.
Parce qu’elle est humiliée et dégradée par les érudits, les magistrats et le
sermon dans les églises – moyen le plus efficace de christianisation de
l’époque –, la femme réveille la crainte énoncée dans les citations
subjectives et misogynes, qui affirment à un niveau idéologique et
pragmatique le danger de sa malignité et de son incompétence. Tandis que
se multiplient jusqu’à épuisement les insultes et les discours à l’encontre de
la femme, la supériorité masculine est mise en évidence et justifiée. Si les
hommes sont protégés du crime qui rend la sorcellerie affreuse, les femmes,
« au corps et à l’esprit plus faibles », socialement isolées, menacent avec
leurs pratiques magiques, même si dans la majorité des cas elles ne les
utilisent que pour assurer leur survie.
Mais qui sont-« elles », ces femmes sévèrement et injustement punies?
Certes, elles ne correspondent pas qu’à une seule femme – à l’exemple de
Jeanne d’Arc, dont le portrait remonte à l’art romanesque ou à l’épopée –
mais toutefois, à un « type féminin », qui ne se confond avec aucune des
représentations individuelles successives. Elles appartiennent à leur sexe.
Et, tout dépendant de la société qui l’investit de sa fonction, l’« éternel
féminin » les habite; une certaine époque de l’histoire occidentale les
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justifie, leur conférant, durant des siècles de vie, un destin impersonnel. Peu
importe que la sorcière médiévale, renaissantiste ou moderne ait jeté ou
dissipé un sort, signé un pacte ou non avec Satan, si elle a reçu des dons! Ce
qui importe c’est qu’elle ait cru en son pouvoir magique, dans les dangers
que celui-ci représentait et que toute une population, à une époque tardive,
ait cru en eux, ou ait besoin d’y croire… Voilà le fait historique de la
sorcellerie, ressuscité dans cet ouvrage.
Par ailleurs, dans le développement de l’approche littéraire, l’inscription
du personnage de la sorcière dans la fiction chez les auteures
contemporaines montre combien les frontières de la réalité historique, ou
de ce qui est obtenu comme tel, varient dans l’esprit des hommes et des
femmes qui l’intègrent. Les premiers, pour la plupart, partent d’une vision
excessivement sommaire du monde imaginaire face à un monde réel, et ont
été tout au long de l’histoire beaucoup plus obéissants que ceux qui croient
appartenir à l’idolâtrie ontologique. Soumises et sans voix durant dix-neuf
siècles, les femmes sortent de l’anonymat vers la fin du XXe siècle pour, peu
à peu, entrer dans le monde du travail, du savoir et de la culture. Leur
insertion dans la vie publique et la quête du plaisir sans répression
restaurent la présence de l’aspect féminin dans l’histoire. Investies d’une
force nouvelle, les filles d’Ève prennent courage à se révolter contre la
misogynie d’une société patriarcale, contre des stéréotypes et des préjugés
demeurés intacts pendant des siècles.
Il en ressort ainsi deux perspectives et la combinaison de deux points
importants pour l’observation et l’exploration : les sociétés du passé et les
sociétés actuelles. Considérant qu’il s’agit d’une recherche à caractère
bibliographique et herméneutique, les réflexions historiques partent, tout
d’abord, d’un examen de la bibliographie spécifique sur le sujet permettant
de récupérer des épisodes de la vie de ces personnes désaxées et des
communautés au sein desquelles elles ont vécu. Le registre et la description
des principales époques de l’histoire de la sorcellerie, la richesse des récits
qui seront évoqués, forts de l’apport interdisciplinaire et de l’aspect
anthropologique – des caractéristiques de la nouvelle histoire –, constituent
l’une des principales lignes de force dans l’approche du thème et guideront
les relations établies sur les analyses des productions fictives, constituant
ainsi l’approche littéraire de la recherche.
Le monde change. Les sorcières ont-elles changé? Avec l’actualisation
du personnage et les multiples possibilités de lecture apportées par la
critique littéraire féministe, il sera possible de rompre les barrières du temps
historique et de ramener au présent des femmes provenant des siècles
antérieurs, en les percevant d’un nouvel œil, d’un regard « nouveau ». Voilà
l’une des plus grandes sources de liberté de l’être humain : la possibilité de
voyager à travers le temps et l’espace, à travers la fantaisie et les craintes, à
travers la réalité et le rêve, et de composer cette longue chaîne de discours
que constitue la culture historique.
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Nous partons du principe que l’histoire et la littérature, par les temps qui
courent, étant de dialogue confluent parmi les différents domaines du
savoir, partagent leurs formes de perception et de connaissance du monde,
même s’ils ont des méthodes, des exigences et des points de vue différents.
Si l’historien moderne cherche à récupérer les faits qui se sont produits à
une époque lointaine et s’efforce de voir de quelle façon l’humanité se
représentait à soi-même et face à la réalité, la littérature pour sa part se
tourne vers la récupération du récit historique, reconstruit le passé ou
invente le futur, déstabilise le système, en travaillant à partir des sentiments,
des émotions, des codes de conduite et d’actions de la société d’une autre
époque. Bien qu’il puisse y avoir des divergences dans leurs argumentations, les deux récits s’efforcent de récupérer la vie, de représenter la
réalité, de la clarifier.
L’historien fait appel aux sources, aux archives ou aux témoignages de
tierces personnes, favorisant le croisement d’au moins deux discours
différenciés – celui de l’énonciateur et celui de la source à laquelle il a
recours; l’auteur de fiction met en parallèle deux temporalités différentes,
celle du temps de l’énonciation et celle du temps énoncé. Roland Barthes
reconnaîtra déjà deux plans temporels distincts qui interfèrent dans la
construction du discours historique, le rapprochant du discours fictif : le
temps de l’énonciation de l’histoire dans le texte, qui correspond au temps
de l’écriture dans le roman, et celui de l’énoncé dans l’histoire, qui se
rapporte au dit temps de l’aventure dans le récit à caractère fictif.3
Parmi les écrivaines qui ont projeté la sorcière comme héroïne et exploré
le thème de la sorcellerie, Anne Hébert, Nancy Huston et Maryse Condé
composent le corpus analytique du présent ouvrage, pour l’importance
qu’elles revêtent sur la scène de la littérature d’expression française en
Occident, amplement démontrée par leurs cheminements respectifs. Parce
qu’elles croient en la nécessité de la mémoire et en sa force, leur projet
littéraire les amène à s’intéresser à des images censurées et à leurs histoires
taboues, posées trois fois en marge du discours officiel : parce qu’elles sont
des femmes, qu’elles échappent au modèle établi et qu’elles circulent
ex-center, dans un nouveau monde. L’ensemble de leurs œuvres embrasse
des récits composites, qui remontent au passé et à la contemporanéité,
multipliant les notes explicatives et les interprétations. Leurs fables,
alimentées par toutes sortes de mélanges, sont le support idéal d’une pensée
qui, en fusionnant des formes, des genres et des registres de la tradition
occidentale, pratique l’hybridation, rendant ainsi possible n’importe quelle
appropriation.4
Bien que les textes de fiction avec lesquels nous travaillons aient été
créés par des écrivaines qui proviennent de différentes régions d’Amérique,
ils appartiennent au même genre littéraire (romans), présentent une identité
linguistique (française) et thématique (les représentations de la sorcière), et
révèlent des images, des allégories et des symboles communs, qui montrent
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la situation de la femme en tant que sujet lié à la culture de forme
différenciée. La triple représentation de la sorcière ne signifie pas qu’il faut
s’engager à étudier chacun de ces univers culturels. Cette représentation se
fera par la confluence de la documentation historique européenne et des
formulations théoriques de la critique littéraire féministe, qui soutiennent le
processus herméneutique.
Symbole de lutte contre la répression féminine, la sorcière est venue
secouer l’art et appuyer la libération de la femme pour devenir une source
d’explorations multiples, un étendard qui traverse les frontières des
Amériques et fait le tour du monde. Échappant à des définitions précises,
car elle constitue une image en mouvement, bien que la tradition l’ait
portraituré comme une image unidimensionnelle sur qui l’on projette le mal
absolu, la sorcière est représentée par les théoriciens et théoriciennes, et les
auteurs de fiction de forme complexe, comme un personnage dynamique et
comportant de multiples facettes. Tout en étant réelle et symbolique, cette
représentation exerce une grande fascination. En discutant d’elle, en
histoire et en littérature, nous avons récupéré certains concepts et réflexions
d’auteurs féminins reconnus dans le milieu de la critique littéraire
féministe, qui la décrivent d’une façon positive.
Anne Hébert, dans Les enfants du sabbat (1975), Maryse Condé, dans
Moi Tituba sorcière… noire de Salem (1986) et Nancy Huston, dans
Instruments des ténèbres (1996), utilisent des stratégies qui font appel à des
discours différents et à des époques différentes pour faire l’éloge et
renverser des faits véridiques rencontrés dans l’histoire; elles intègrent
l’aspect populaire, représenté par la sorcellerie, dans un montage érudit,
représenté par le texte littéraire, pour donner la voix à la minorité et
récupérer l’image de la sorcière, en la valorisant dans le contexte de la
production littéraire des Amériques pendant les trois dernières décennies.
Par le biais de l’analyse de la trajectoire du personnage de l’histoire
traditionnelle, qui reproduit une vision monologique, de l’histoire
marginale de leurs vies, qui nous amène à une vision multiple, des aspects
généraux et particuliers, qui s’articulent et sont révélés par l’analyse du
personnage dans la fiction, nous fournirons la dimension quant à la part de
l’histoire qui a été trangressée dans les histoires racontées depuis près de
trois siècles après la fin de la « chasse aux sorcières » et ce que les sorcières
contemporaines ont en commun ou de différent avec ces huit (ou neuf!)
millions brûlées sur les bûchers de l’Inquisition.
Considérations finales
La destruction des sorcières prouve que les hommes sont des « persécuteurs
nés ». Mis à part les pulsions de vie, d’amour, de plaisir, associées à Éros, il
existe une pulsion noire, mortelle, associée à Thanatos, qui a un goût
suicidaire et qui va à la rencontre de la douleur et de l’annulation.
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L’humanité s’autodétruit de temps en temps, en éliminant ce qu’il y a de
meilleur, en contredisant les ordonnances des textes religieux canoniques,
qui préconisent de faire le bien et suggèrent de présenter l’autre joue. Elle
ignore que toute attaque contre autrui est un attentat contre soi-même, en
attribuant aux autres tout ce qui lui arrive de néfaste. La mort des neuf
millions de sorcières ajoute sans doute une page noire de plus au texte du
monde moderne, dans lequel des esprits illuminés, d’autres moins, auraient
joué chacun leur rôle.
Le phénomène de la chasse aux sorcières ne cesse d’effrayer l’Occident
encore aujourd’hui. Une telle manifestation de haine et de violence à
l’encontre des femmes accusées de sorcellerie dépasse toute compréhension. Sans nier la conjoncture historique qui a rendu possible l’apparition de
cette persécution, on souligne ici un facteur qui passe souvent inaperçu : la
représentation polysémique de la sorcière dans l’univers du récit de fiction.
Cette proposition de recherche sur la représentation de la sorcière dans le
roman féminin de langue française des Amériques – le Canada et les
Antilles – à la lumière de la nouvelle histoire est l’une des approches
possibles pour un sujet aussi vaste et complexe. Une telle approche conduit
à des considérations finales qui font ressortir des aspects significatifs
développés tout au long de cette recherche. À partir des principes directeurs
soulevés dans l’introduction, il est possible d’affirmer qu’il existe, dans le
récit de fiction d’Anne Hébert, de Maryse Condé et de Nancy Huston, des
récurrences thématiques qui coïncident avec les perspectives
révisionnistes de la nouvelle histoire, qui récupèrent la figure marginale de
la sorcière, éteinte ou méprisable dans la société occidentale, qui pendant
des siècles l’a identifiée à un « être du mal ».
L’étude comparée de romans d’auteurs féminins, dont la protagoniste est
déclarée (ou supposée) être une sorcière, permet d’affirmer que l’approche
littéraire du thème rencontre des parallélismes dans le récit de la nouvelle
histoire. Cependant, lorsque les textes fictifs effectuent le renversement du
stéréotype, ils requièrent un support théorique différencié, qui rend compte
et soutient une lecture transformatrice des paradigmes et des notions
cristallisées par l’histoire traditionnelle. Cet appui est fourni par la critique
littéraire féministe, qui offre les ressources nécessaires à l’opérationnalisation de la recherche et permet de comprendre la transformation
esthétique/narrative qui se produit dans le roman et se reflète sur le terrain
social extratextuel.
Dans leur proposition qui tente d’ébranler la solidité des discours
cristallisés, les auteures Hébert, Condé et Huston inscrivent l’héroïne/la
victime/la sorcière dans leur récit – représentée par les héroïnes Julie,
Tituba et Barbe – primordialement soumise à des situations stéréotypiques
au sein de la société. Maintenant inscrites en littérature, elles rompent avec
la linéarité de l’histoire et soutiennent la rébellion subjective et/ou externe
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sur le plan du littéraire en faveur des minorités, dont la voix émergente
pendant les dernières décennies fragmente, de façon salutaire et productive,
le contexte social dans lequel elles s’insèrent.
Dans la relecture des romans Les enfants du sabbat, Moi, Tituba
sorcière... noire de Salem et Instruments des ténèbres, il est clair que dans le
processus de représentation de l’héroïne sorcière dans le récit littéraire, les
romancières se servent des renseignements tirés du récit de la nouvelle
histoire et, éventuellement, de l’histoire traditionnelle, pour structurer leur
œuvre et y insérer des éléments informatifs, culturels, sociaux et du
quotidien, qui hybrident la fiction. Par ailleurs, certains aspects
d’esthétique littéraire s’inscrivent dans le texte de la nouvelle histoire. Une
différence ressort de cet échange : dans la méthode permettant de rendre
l’histoire fictive, l’artiste travaille librement sur le projet de récupération de
la sorcière et propose une nouvelle version des faits, qui se caractérise pour
être subversive, polémique, polysémique, carnavalisée, à multiples
facettes, ouverte.
L’exégèse de l’histoire de la sorcellerie, les causes et les dédoublements
de la witch crazy, les rituels ecclésiastiques et sataniques – les premiers,
gouvernés par l’Église et soutenus par le bras tentaculaire de l’Inquisition –
les sataniques, métaphorisés par le sabbat, dirigé par l’image du Diable et
des sorcières, « leurs fiancées » – étudiés à la lumière de la nouvelle histoire,
permettent d’isoler et de limiter l’origine du génocide des femmes et les
sentiments contradictoires vécus par les théologiens par rapport à la femme.
Si d’un côté, la douceur féminine, la virginité et la maternité sont valorisées,
de l’autre, la femme est suspecte, dans son « moi » intérieur, de demeurer
éternellement une imbécile, une prostituée ou une sorcière. Voire, même les
saintes sont mal vues par l’Église et deviennent un objet de soupçon si elles
essaient de sortir de l’anonymat et de contredire la modestie exigée à
l’égard de leur sexe.
La recherche de l’horreur qu’a représenté la chasse aux sorcières, dont
l’apogée se situe paradoxalement au temps de la Renaissance, ses
conséquences, la condamnation de l’imaginaire qui, à une période
déterminée de l’histoire, immobilise le rire même et le maîtrise,
l’interdiction pendant des siècles de l’apprentissage, de l’accès à la culture
et au monde du travail pour la femme contribuent à faire constater le rôle
indéniable que l’Église a joué dans l’histoire et dans la construction du
mythe de l’infériorité féminine, rencontré invariablement dans la plupart
des religions et à toutes les époques.
Ève, la coupable originelle, a précipité l’humanité dans le péché. Dès les
tout débuts, de la pomme fatale, les femmes n’ont cessé de se faire accuser
d’être : « imparfaite » aux yeux de Saint Thomas, « le produit d’un os en
trop » au dire de Bossuet, « la porte du Diable » d’après Tertullien.
L’anathème est jetée sur la femme, qui est regardée avec crainte. Cet
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héritage ancien, une histoire de l’anti-féminisation chrétienne qui a duré
près de dix-neuf siècles, a été l’objet de cette recherche pour mieux faire
comprendre la préoccupation explicite des auteures étudiées, qui sont
allées à la rencontre d’un discours homogénéisant visant à revaloriser
l’image symbolique de la sorcière, la regardant sous un autre angle.
Les romancières utilisent ce personnage/symbole comme un instrument
visant à détruire et transformer des conduites méprisantes, en lui donnant
une connotation favorable. La sorcière n’est plus une mad woman in the
attic. Réhabilitée, elle revêt le stigmate, cesse d’être laide et méchante, se
métamorphosant en belle, bonne et créative, source d’inspiration de
merveilleux exploits littéraires, qui rapprochent des artistes par le biais de
cette audacieuse thématique, en particulier à partir des années 1970, alors
qu’elle devient récurrente.
Par la reconstruction de la mémoire, la fiction contemporaine et la
nouvelle histoire se transforment en instrument de dénonciation de la
condition féminine dans le contexte de la contemporanéité. Les récits de
fiction et historiques entretiennent avec le passé une action affective et
militante. Se lire en textes et être lu par eux – voici l’un des buts de ce projet
de récupération de la mémoire. Dans la composition narrative des voix
revécues d’héroïnes sorcières, les écrivaines actualisent le passé en le
confrontant avec le présent. Sa flexibilité même, inoculée dans la narration,
réinventée à partir d’images mémorisées servant à configurer la trajectoire
commune de l’oppression, se manifeste dans l’étude des œuvres
concernées.
À contre-courant du traitement traditionnel de faits inoubliables qui
réfèrent à une histoire des sorcières au moyen de stratégies discursives de
domination, vient s’opposer, dans le milieu de la littérature, une poétique de
subversion et de métamorphose qui tente de retirer les personnages des
marges pour modifier le centre littéraire, en les insérant par des espaces
interstitielles du discours en vogue. Les femmes étranges, exilées du noyau
social et travesties en sorcières, sortent brusquement des franges, du dehors
vers le dedans du système littéraire et social. C’est par l’insistance, la
résistance, la révolte et l’agentivité que les sorcières se détournent du
chemin marginal que la société leur impose, pour défier les prémisses par
lesquelles leur exclusion a été pratiquée.
Cela prouve que, plus que des protagonistes/victimes, rebelles,
hystériques, possédées ou folles, les auteures des fictions étudiées font
apparaître dans le milieu de l’historiographie et de la critique littéraire
féministe une héroïne qui est en faveur de la valorisation de la sorcière,
transformée et revêtue de nouvelles valeurs, dynamique, active et créative.
La valeur esthétique et son pouvoir interfèrent sur le plan politique et
confirment la prémisse de la nouvelle histoire : ce qui est le plus inventif
vient assurément de la marge et non de la norme. C’est ce qui constitue la
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marginalité des écritures dans le genre féminin qui fait son intérêt et sa
force.
Loin de se livrer à des actes séditieux du fait qu’elles aient été accusées,
Julie, Tituba et Barbe agissent comme un bouc émissaire face aux
manifestations du mal dans la communauté où elles vivent. Dans la
construction de ces héroïnes, Anne Hébert, Maryse Condé et Nancy Huston
s’insèrent dans un contexte plus vaste de réaction à l’intolérance à travers le
temps et l’espace. Pendue (Tituba), persécutées et condamnées (Barbe/
Tituba), reconnues de par leur nature comme vouées au Diable et à la
sorcellerie, elles deviennent des ennemies de l’Église et de la loi, qui les
étiquettent de sorcières et les excluent parce qu’elles possèdent le savoir
non officiel (Barbe/Tituba), qu’elles ont le don des visions surnaturelles
(Julie/Tituba/Barbe) et qu’elles gèrent une pratique singulière durant les
périodes de crises et de privations sociales.
Le corps, lieu de lecture par excellence, détermine l’espace occupé par
les personnages au sein de la société. Les émotions et les sentiments sont
exprimés par le langage du corps, cet intermédiaire de la parole. La vie
intérieure agitée se dédouble à l’extérieur. Du point de vue d’un
positionnement symbolique, le corps des héroïnes joue un rôle équivalent à
celui tenu par les mentalités. Les personnages vivent et manifestent le
mystère de la sexualité au moyen de leurs corps selon les tensions
dynamiques et les conflits qu’ils connaissent dans la société. Bien qu’elles
soient agressées, violées physiquement et psychologiquement, les
personnages maîtrisent leur fertilité et leur descendance.
Les forces telluriques de la sorcellerie, le contact avec la nature, avec les
plantes et les animaux, assurent le point d’équilibre des protagonistes.
Hérité des figures ancestrales, ce pouvoir s’incorpore aux héroïnes à l’aide
de la mémoire et vient remplir l’espace laissé par l’isolement. L’amour,
initialement idéalisé mais non vécu, réveille des fantaisies qui au bout de
leur trajectoire les propulse vers la relation et la vie. Même si les héroïnes
sont attelées à des espaces contraignants, par la ressource dysphorique de la
révolte, elles se libèrent pour finalement vivre dans des cartographies
nouvelles. La réalité se transforme radicalement. Même si elle est morte,
Tituba continue à vivre dans la mémoire de l’île; Julie fuit avec un jeune
homme et Barbe, de l’état psychique désaxé et spatial auquel elle était
reléguée, se rend à Paris, au cœur de la France.
Produites dans un contexte géographique différent, liées à des traditions
culturelles et littéraires distinctes, la lecture comparative des œuvres
d’Hébert, de Condé et de Huston révèle, cependant, des stratégies
narratives et des méthodes thématiques analogues, employées dans
l’exercice de leur créativité. Toutes les trois explorent des questions de
genre, s’engagent contre les problèmes contemporains – colonialisme,
ethnocentrisme, oppressions blanche, masculine et chrétienne – du monde
336
française
occidental. Elles pointent du doigt l’interaction complexe entre la
subjectivité, la collectivité et l’histoire, et elles mettent en rapport les
vertiges associés aux visions, la réversibilité des doubles et les duplicités de
la vie, tandis qu’elles reproduisent des histoires de l’imaginaire et du monde
intérieur de leurs héroïnes.
Une poétique de l’intertextualité, qui se révèle être contemporaine
notamment parce qu’elle communique une esthétique de la production et de
la réception littéraires, se manifeste dans l’espace des récits. Condé et
Huston pratiquent la métafiction historiographique. Les trois auteures
incluent des mises en abyme pour permettre aux micro-récits de se réfléchir
dans le récit principal et d’agrandir les structures. Presque toutes les formes
d’intertextualité se retrouvent dans les œuvres d’Hébert, de Condé et de
Huston, des plus explicites aux plus implicites, déclarées ou non, avec ou
sans références précises, conservées ou transformées.
Des citations bibliques aux épigraphes mises en exergue dans les pages
d’introduction, des contes de fées aux figures légendaires, des évocations
folkloriques aux nombreuses citations tirées de l’Ancien et du Nouveau
Testament – qui accusent leur caractère citationnel par l’intermédiaire des
signes linguistiques typographiques ou sémantiques –, le réseau
intertextuel présenté est vaste, et il ouvre la voie à une poétique structurée
dans les modalités de l’écriture et de la lecture. La pratique littéraire
révolutionnaire et anticonformiste des auteures, qui soutiennent le
processus contestataire de lecture/écriture parodique, contribuant ainsi à la
déstabilisation de l’injuste status quo, favorise le dialogue avec d’autres
arts et avec le discours de l’histoire, le remettant en question par le biais de
l’ironie et du rire.
Hébert, Condé et Huston résistent à imposer une fin à leurs textes. Julie
s’enfuit du couvent, accompagnée d’un étranger vers un endroit indéfini.
Tituba revient sur son île natale, où elle renaît métamorphosée en invisible
et transformée en mythe. Barbe vivra une aventure avec Jean-Jacques
Rousseau et vieillira sorcière, conclusions paradigmatiques de la croyance
qu’écrire ou raconter des histoires est un processus prééminent et
transformateur. À la renaissance de Tituba comme mythe correspondent
métaphoriquement celle de Julie et celle de Barbe, qui conquièrent l’espace
de la liberté, le dehors, où elles pourront fomenter une révolte qui leur
permettra de vivre leurs désirs et fantasmes.
La force du symbole de la sorcière vient du mélange de tous les
classements : la vierge, l’hystérique, la prostitué et la possédée sont le fruit
d’une division qui prend corps chez la Mère, mais que le Verbe peut
récupérer ou unifier. Cette vocation subversive de la fiction se converti en
caractéristique fondamentale des œuvres de ces écrivaines, qui illuminent
l’histoire tourmentée des femmes en Amérique, pour surgir avec une force
singulière dans les pages de la fiction. Point de convergence d’un grand
337
nombre de carrefours signifiants et de réseaux thématiques
incontournables dans le monde contemporain : la victimisation de la
femme, la folie comme moyen de fuite, la rançon d’un passé oublié, la
maîtrise du corps et de la fertilité, enfin, la prise de conscience politique
féministe.
Le passage d’une valeur à une autre à l’intérieur d’un même système ou
le passage d’une valeur d’un système à un autre – de la littérature
(esthétique) à l’histoire (sociologique) – se fait par des processus d’échange
complexes. Si les écrivaines analysées ici réussissent à transformer, à
modifier des concepts culturels enracinés, autant dans le système littéraire
que dans le système historique, nous pouvons alors dire que la littérature
produite par des auteures américaines, d’expression française, assume une
place importante dans l’univers des lettres occidentales. Ceci est vrai en ce
qui concerne chacune des écrivaines, à l’intérieur d’un système littéraire
national/culturel et des trois œuvres dans le système universel.
Nous devons souligner l’importance que représente l’appui d’une
communauté féminine permettant d’assurer le succès de la stratégie, qui se
traduit par « un rejet collectif du syndrome du bouc émissaire ». Le début de
la libération de la sorcière se produit dès que les femmes refusent d’être
« bonnes » ou « saines », suivant les modèles dominants. Celles-ci éclatent
les définitions fixes et imposées de « méchante femme » et « bonne femme »
et vont au-delà des catégories de prostituée et d’épouse, ce qui équivaut à
assumer le rôle de la sorcière et/ou de la folle. En faisant imploser le
stéréotype, ceci permet de franchir les frontières de l’aliénation.
La persécution, la superstition et l’ignorance dont a été victime Barbe
dans l’Ancien Monde traversent l’Atlantique et s’intègrent dans un
contexte plus vaste d’intolérance à travers le temps et l’espace, atteignant
Julie et Tituba en Amérique. Anne Hébert, Maryse Condé et Nancy Huston
récupèrent ce « côté obscur », elles amènent ces héroïnes à la danse, en leur
offrant une nouvelle possibilité. En retraçant la sorcière, figure des ombres
et de la nuit, elles vont à l’encontre des obsessions de la rationalité
dominante et se rangent dans le courant littéraire qui intègre d’autres
figures marginales, en généralisant ainsi la signification même des œuvres.
Au double extérieur de l’image sociale, ces auteures offrent une autre
possibilité comme alternative de libération, qui traverse l’opacité des
ténèbres et pénètre dans le monde magique et surnaturel. C’est par ce
chemin que s’établit l’interlocution entre la société et la subjectivité des
héroïnes qui, malgré les obstacles dans la recherche d’identité, conservent
l’âme intacte pour leur permettre de vivre leurs moments d’épiphanie,
écartées et libérées des souffrances dont elles ont été victimes.
Selon Nancy Huston « La littérature est de la sorcellerie ». Actives et
créatives, les écrivaines choisies, chacune à sa manière, dans leur
338
française
géographie, époque et magie singulière, se sont servi des éléments pour
faire leur sabbat littéraire et rééditer l’image rebelle de la sorcière, blanche
ou noire, née dans l’Ancien ou le Nouveau Monde, en la retirant du fond des
ténèbres en vue de diffuser son symbolisme puissant aux multiples
horizons. Si « la sorcellerie est héréditaire », comme l’a écrit Anne Hébert,
d’après Maryse Condé, « chacun[e] peut modeler la sorcière à sa façon, afin
de lui permettre de satisfaire ses ambitions, ses rêves, ses désirs… ».
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
Michelet, 1966, p. 2. Nous avons opté ici pour l’utilisation générique du terme
sorcière. Pour aller au-delà de ce qu’est la sorcellerie, ses variantes et
différences, nous avons eu recours à ceux qui ont le plus exploré le sujet, les
nouveaux historiens. Julio Caro Baroja distingue enchantements et sortilèges qui
supposent des pratiques individuelles de sorcellerie, dotées de caractéristiques
collectives. L’étude d’Evans Pritchard part du point de vue anthropologique.
Keith Thomas affirme qu’il n’y a pas lieu de distinguer entre les pratiques, tandis
que Robert Mandrou voit dans l’existence ou non du pacte avec le Diable la
différence à la base, un fait qui l’amène à employer distinctement la sorcellerie et
les autres pratiques magiques. Ces aspects sont explorés dans « L’univers de la
sorcellerie » (2.3), dans la seconde partie de cette recherche.
Rio Grande : Éditions de la FURG (Fondation Université de Rio Grande, dans
l’État du Rio Grande du Sud, au Brésil), 2004, 374 p. Dans le but de procéder au
découpage du texte destiné à être publié dans la Revue internationale d’études
canadiennes, nous avons choisi d’insérer le texte de présentation et les
considérations finales de ce travail. Nous avons jugé que ces deux parties
constitutives situeraient le lecteur ou la lectrice, tout en lui offrant un échantillon
représentatif de l’ouvrage.
Roland Barthes, 1982, p. 13-21.
Le Nouveau petit Robert (p. 1110) définit le mot hybride comme un croisement
de variétés, de races, d’espèces différentes; ou un composé de deux éléments de
nature différente anormalement réunis. Afin de mieux comprendre cette
définition, le concept d’hybride proposé par Zilá Bernd, et ici adopté, qui
l’interprète comme le dépassement des frontières, est un acte qui anciennement
exigeait une punition immédiate; par ailleurs, il peut s’agir également de ce qui
participe de deux ou plusieurs ensembles, genres ou styles. En ce qui concerne ses
applications en critique littéraire post-moderne, qui préfère hybride aux termes
métissage ou syncrétisme, l’hybridation est l’expression la plus appropriée
lorsque l’on veut parler de divers mélanges interculturels. Un hybride peut
également être le composé de deux éléments de nature différente anormalement
réunis, permettant d’en créer un troisième, qui possédera les caractéristiques des
deux premiers, soit renforcées, soit réduites. En faisant ressurgir ce concept, la
postmodernité met par dessus tout l’accent sur l’altérité et la valorisation de ce qui
est différent. En soulignant le besoin de penser à l’identité comme un processus
de construction et de déconstruction, l’hybride serait en train de détruire les
paradigmes homogènes de la modernité, en s’insérant dans la mouvance de la
post-modernité, s’associant à ce qui est multiple et hétérogène. Aux grandes
synthèses cohérentes, homogènes et univoques d’interprétation de la constitution
culturelle des Amériques succèderait un temps d’ambiguïtés, d’hétérogénéités et
de déplacements des gloires pétrifiées. Bernd, 1998, p. 17-18.
339
Authors / Auteurs
Valerie ALIA, Ph.D., Running Stream Professor of Ethics and
Identity, Leeds Metropolitan University, Faculty of Arts &
Society, Civic Quarter, Leeds, LS1 3HE, United Kingdom.
Leslie P. CHOQUETTE, Professor of History and Francophone
Cultures, and Director of the French Institute, Assumption
College, 500 Salisbury St., Worcester, MA 01609, USA.
Béatrice COLLIGNON, Maître de Conférences, UFR de
Géographie, Université de Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne, 191, Rue
Saint-Jacques, 75005 Paris France.
Karen, GOULD, Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic
Affairs, California State University, Long Beach, 1250
Bellflower Boulevard, BH-303, Long Beach, CA 90840-0118,
USA.
Dr. Teresa GUTIÉRREZ-HACES, Instituto de Investigaciones
Económicas, Unidad de Investigación en Economía Mundial,
Circuito de Investicagión de las Humanidades, Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Ciudad Universitaria,
México D.F. 04510, Mexico.
Nubia HANCIAU, Fundação Universidade Federal do Rio
Grande/FURG, Departamento de Letras a Artes – sala 13,
Campus Carreiros – Avenida Itália km 8, 96201-900, Rio
Grande, RS, Brasil.
Coral Ann HOWELLS, Professor Emerita of English and Canadian
Literature, University of Reading, Whiteknights, PO Box 218,
Reading, Berkshire RG6 6AA, England, U.K.
Masako IINO, President, Tsuda College, 2-1-1 Tsuda-machi,
Kodaira-shi, Tokyo 187-8577, Japan.
Jozef KWATERKO, Professeur, Institut d’études romanes,
Université de Varsovie, rue Obozna 8, 00-927, Varsovie,
Pologne.
Jean-Claude LASSERRE, Professeur émérite, Université Lumière
Lyon 2, 86 rue Pasteur, 69007, Lyon, France.
Marc LEVINE, Professor of History, Director, Center for Economic
Development, Director, Center for Canadian-American Policy
Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Holton Hall 315,
P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413, U.S.A.
33-34, 2006
Seymour LIPSET, (1922-2006), received a doctorate in sociology
from Columbia in 1949. He taught at the University of Toronto.
He was the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
and Sociology at Stanford University (1975–1990) and the
George D. Markham Professor of Government and Sociology at
Harvard University. He also taught at Columbia University and
the University of California, Berkeley.
Professeur Lipset a reçu un doctorat en sociologie de
l’Université Colombia en 1949. Il a enseigné à l’Université de
Toronto. Il a été Caroline S.G. Munro Professor de science
politique et de sociologie de l’Université Stanford (1975-1990)
et a été George D. Markham Professor of Government and
Sociology de l’Université Harvard. Il a aussi enseigné aux
universités Columbia et California, Berkeley.
Anthony M. SAYERS, Department of Political Science, University
of Calgary, Social Sciences Building, Room 756, 2500
University Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta, T2N 1N4.
Archana B. VERMA, Ph.D, Department of History, Hindu College,
University of Delhi, Delhi - 110007, India.
Robin WINKS (1930-2003), Ph. D. Johns Hopkins, Professor,
History, Yale University. A remarkable scholar, he was a
Guggenheim Fellow, a Smith-Mundt Fellow, a winner of the
Stimson Grant, and a two-time nominee for the Pulitzer Prize.
Érudit hors pair, le professeur Winks a été Guggenheim Fellow,
Smith-Mundt Fellow, récipiendaire d’une bourse Stimson Grant
et a été deux fois en lice au Prix Pulitzer.
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Frontières et migrations (Volume 38, 2008.2)
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University of Alberta - Conseil international d`études canadiennes

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