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Originally Posted by CityTech
That's quite probable. This is the territory that the British initially designated as Quebec after the conquest of New France:
If the Americans hadn't seceded, the British probably would have at some point let the British colonists take over the part of that territory within what is now the USA, but I do think most of what is now Ontario would have stayed part of Quebec. (Maybe not the southernmost part). Before the invention of the railroads the only way to really get there was down the St. Lawrence River anyway. And you're right in that British migrants would have probably settled in the south, much more hospitable. The only reason why Ontario was built up at all in the early 19th century was because of the Loyalists (who obviously wouldn't exist in this scenario). So I do think it would have remained devoid of British settlers long enough that the Canadiens would have settled it first, and probably beat them to the punch at building it up. Of course, it's quite possible that anglophones would overrun it later.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by urbandreamer
Quebec only had 70,000 people in 1765; the 13 colonies over 1.5 million. Quebec was a backwater then and remains one in North America, which explains its isolationist policies. If England hadn't conquered Quebec, Quebec probably would've been conquered by America and most people would speak English today.
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I know French Canada had a much higher fertility rate in the past ("revanche du berceau") and even not that many generations back, in the earlier half of the 20th century, Jean Chrétien was the 18th of 19th siblings, ten who did not survive infancy.
But how come the part of the St. Lawrence valley that's now in Quebec was able to maintain such a high population growth rate of French descendants, even more than Acadia, Louisiana, or even the parts of Ontario and the American Midwest formerly part of the "province of Quebec" so that it was the place of critical mass for Francophones not to be assimilated away/diluted? Was the head start that crucial and the difference between the St. Lawrence valley being really Francophone and the Great Lakes/Mississipi being hardly much so at all in settler count?
If most of French North America was thinly settled in the late 1700s, why was it Quebec (the area of the St. Lawrence valley in particular) that was able to grow much more than other parts of French North America? Even though it's much colder and has a shorter season to farm and grow crops to thrive off than places farther south in Ontario, and the US that were once French.
Why no revanche du berceau post-Anglo conquest in Acadia, Louisiana (pre- or post- exile), or the formerly French parts of the Midwest US or Ontario? Was it just that Quebec had a "head start", even back when it's population in the 1700s was only tens of thousands? If French speaking, traditional and working class Catholics really had a high fertility rate, big families and a strong urge to keep their culture, why did this "revanche du berceau" mindset not work elsewhere in French North America? There's not even the "je me souviens!" attitude in Louisiana, the Midwest etc. among French descendants versus say the common attitude (often brought up by US Hispanics) that parts of the US South was once Mexico or "New Spain" and that Hispanic immigration to those areas is a throwback to that area's roots, let alone the feisty Anglo-resisting attitude of the Quebecois when it comes to Francophones reclaiming Anglo-Quebecois places like Anglo-Montreal or Sherbrooke.