Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
To follow up on this, the Canadian (and American) officials who were concerned about the demographic growth and territorial expansion of French Canada weren't entirely a bunch of paranoid conspiracy theorists.
There was actually something going on at the time, Starting in the latter part of the 19th century and running well into the first half of the 20th.
In particular if you look at the legacy of Curé Antoine Labelle and politician and journalist (founder of Le Devoir) Henri Bourassa, there was clearly a movement to settle a large swathe of central-northern Canada with francophones.
Part of this was to build a demographic "bridge" of francophone settlement to help out the beleaguered Franco-Manitobans who were being fucked over by that province at the time, so they wouldn't be all alone out there.
The idea was that along a line going northwest from Montreal you'd have a band of towns and villages populated by francophone. All the way through NW Quebec, across northern Ontario and into Manitoba. A parallel settlement corridor to the anglo one that had taken shape to the south.
This would also help stymie the outflow of francophones to the US, and keep more of them within Canada's borders.
Today Curé Antoine Labelle is mostly known as the man who led the opening up of the Laurentians for settlement, but his vision and impact went far beyond that. The settlement of the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region happened in large part due to that impetus, and if you look at a map of where Canadian francophones live today you can see how francophone populations were implanted well into Ontario along a northern axis in the Kapuskasing-Hearst-Timmins region, and also along a more southerly one in the Sudbury/Nipissing area.
It does seem like the effort eventually petered out at Sudbury and Hearst going west.
|
It actually goes further West than Hearst. Longlac is about 50% francophone and Geraldton about 25%. So Geraldton is pretty much the end. Nakina which is to the North is almost half francophone from what I've heard. There is also Ignace which is 13% francophone according to its website and located in Kenora District on Hwy 17.
I work with someone from Geraldton who is francophone. She speaks French very well and much better than the average Franco-Ontarian.