Quote:
Originally Posted by Landlocked
Oddly enough my father used to tell stories about the Ukrainian and Polish farm immigrants having to defend themselves against the predominantly French Catholics in the St. Paul / Bonnyville region, back in the day.
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I was totally expecting this type of brush-off. The historic treatment of francophones in their provinces is not a topic that most people in Western Canada are uncomfortable with being reminded of.
Your assertion though is entirely plausible and even likely. The colonization-era Prairies were a tough place to survive, and all of the groups living there occasionally bumped into and stepped on each other in order to survive.
What I am talking about though is the authority of government. It was aggressively assimilationist towards francophones, AND towards other groups including Ukrainians and Poles.
The main difference of course was that francophones by and large were already Canadians with legal rights in the country they called home, and those rights were violated or taken away.