Histoire Potton History Volume 4 – Numéro 1 – Printemps 2016 | Tiré À Part

HISTOIRE POTTON HISTORY VOLUME 4 – NUMÉRO 1 – PRINTEMPS 2016 | TIRÉ À PART reservation was justified, it was said, by the To Sojourn and to Leave: difficulty, the risk, if not the impossibility, of Geographical Mobility, making a documented judgment on the most Social and Cultural Rebalancing recent times. in one Region of Quebec Written sources were indeed often inaccessible or partial; historians, unable to decide on the The Case of the Eastern Townships th th records, remained reserved, preferring to in the 19 & 20 Centuries abstain from bringing any scientific judgment on this still very fresh past. In fact, the By Jean-Pierre Kesteman, Ph. D. impartiality expected of the historian was Professor Emeritus - University of Sherbrooke made more difficult when the players and protagonists of history were still alive. Translation by Sandra Jewett This did not prevent other players from delving A note from the Editorial team: into the most recent past. But then it was In 2012, Professor Kesteman was the keynote more in the style of an event-driven narrative, speaker at a convention sponsored jointly by a chronicle or journalism. The historian would the Fédération Histoire Québec (FHQ) and the neither venture into sensational stories, nor Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network (QAHN), into personal testimonials. Moreover, such which was themed on the Eastern Townships. was not asked of him. The text of his address to that convention was published as an article in Histoire Québec, Times have changed. Today’s educated public Volume 18, No. 1, 2012, pages 8 to 17. We lives in accelerated times, and wants historians thank Professor Kesteman and Histoire Québec to say as much as possible about yesterday or for allowing us to reproduce his article in our the day before. Organizations that magazine. commission the historical narrative of their municipality or of their institution require that Professor emeritus of the University of the presentation include even the most recent Sherbrooke, Jean-Pierre Kesteman graduated events. A similar approach may be found in from the University of Louvain in Belgium, the the series of volumes of regional history University of Sherbrooke and UQAM sponsored by the Institut québécois de (Université du Québec à Montreal). His recherche sur la culture1. doctoral thesis focused on the development of th industrial capitalism in the 19 century in the The historian then finds himself hard pressed Sherbrooke Region. He is the author of a to shorten this purgatory of recent history at number of books about the urban, economic the risk of being overtaken by sociologists, and social history of Quebec, of which, Histoire political science specialists or popularizers of de Sherbrooke 1802 – 2002, in four volumes, all stripes. This is not without difficulties. and is co-author of Histoire des Cantons de Consider the fact that it is only very recently l’Est (hereinafter cited as HCE). that early Soviet records or Vatican archives were partially opened up. In Canada, as in The historian is not a man or woman of the other countries, many documents, going back present. Years ago, what was called several decades, are still classified as secret or “contemporary history” would stop three under conditions restricting accessibility. quarters of a century prior to real time. This Association du patrimoine de Potton [1] VOLUME 4 – NUMÉRO 1 – PRINTEMPS 2016 | TIRÉ À PART HISTOIRE POTTON HISTORY Time for the historian, in spite of everything, Townships: place of passage, land of welcome keeps a thickness of resistance that cannot be and integration space). These are well compressed. After having written histories of reflected by the interpretation brought by most centenaries and bicentenaries, the author of of the guest speakers: a “place of passage” for these lines concedes that, for the last thirty the Amerindian peoples, a “land of welcome” years of his narrative, he has played more the for the immigrants of the 19th century, and an role of a columnist than that of a historian2. “integration space” for those of the In short, we cannot ignore the hindsight 20th century. necessary to judge the past. We are only barely beginning to better place the Quiet At first glance, certainly, the breakdown and Revolution in the evolution of Quebec in the the complexion given to these three periods 20th century. appear to be an interesting model for analysis. When he plays the role of a columnist or It is nevertheless highly revealing to compare journalist, when he treads on the fresh turf of these three themes, as presented in French, the contemporary, another danger plagues the with those proposed for the same convention steps of the historian – the anachronism. In of Anglophone historians. If “Land of Passage” order to render his account more alive, more presents no problems, by contrast, the modern, more sensational, he is tempted to differences in points of view between terre resort to concepts, to a vocabulary, to d’accueil and “Place of Settlement”, or different ways of seeing, forged for the between espace d'intégration and “Home of analysis of the most contemporary problems. Communities” will be acknowledged. Indeed, A method of projecting the present into the the French theme être accueilli en un endroit past which often proves to be inadequate. (literally translated: to be welcomed in a place) conveys a stronger sense than the Historical interpretation does not consist in English “to establish, to settle oneself in a dressing up the past in contemporary place”. Similarly, the French concept of conceptual or terminological clothing. For if intégration emphasizes the notion of we do that, it is precisely the uniqueness of togetherness, while that of “Home of the previous situation that disappears. Communities” relates to multiplicity. Ultimately, the past and its difference no longer exist: the past would be only another Thus, simply within the theme titles, a present. Therefore, historical consciousness difference may be observed, even a dilutes itself into an infinite series of moments divergence in the readings of our regional without connection one to another. The history proposed by each of the two deletion of chronology and of the context of communities! cause and effect distorts history to that taught at the high school level, reducing it to a The themes, as expressed in English, call to sociology or a technology of the past. mind a historical vocabulary, let’s say, neutral or, in any case, less marked by fashion, since These general reflections lead me to consider it was already used in the 19th century. On the framework proposed, in French, for the the other hand, two of the three themes works of the present convention, which was retained in the French language apply an organized around the theme: Les Cantons-de- interpretation or a presumption marked by l'Est : lieu de passage, terre d'accueil, espace very contemporary concerns: l’accueil et d'intégration (literally translated: the Eastern l’intégration (welcome and integration)! Is it [2] Potton Heritage Association HISTOIRE POTTON HISTORY VOLUME 4 – NUMÉRO 1 – PRINTEMPS 2016 | TIRÉ À PART not the programme proposed for refugees and Indeed, the history of communities who, in immigrants of the 21st century? successive waves, arrived in the Eastern As a preliminary note to this convention, it Townships in the 19th and 20th centuries, leads seems therefore useful to look at the broad to the following evidence: the great majority of outline of the history of the Eastern Townships individuals and families stayed in the region for the last two centuries which may be for only a limited time. By that, it is meant – measured in terms of the concepts proposed in a few months, a few years, the time of a French: land of passage, welcome and generation, or for a career. After that, these integration. To get straight to the heart of the people resumed their migratory path to other matter, here are the three theses I intend to regions on the North American continent or develop: returned to their native land. The documentation on this phenomenon is 1. The concept of “land of passage”, far from extensive, but for the present purposes, only a being limited to the epoch of the Amerindians, certain number of sufficiently characteristic characterizes the different waves of examples will be retained. immigrants who have arrived in our region for more than 200 years. The first wave of settlement in the region is made up of Americans, primarily from New 2. Except in very exceptional cases, the England, who settle beginning in the 1790s. persons having come to settle in the region Twenty years later, in 1812, their population were neither welcomed nor pushed away by numbers are estimated at 20,000 persons. the previous populations, but rather ended up But soon, the trend reverses. In 1818, local by finding their place in a generalized observers estimate the scale of the exodus in indifference. the direction of Ohio, Pennsylvania, the Great Lakes Region or Upper Canada at around 3. The arrival of one migratory wave did not 4,000 individuals3. culminate in the integration with the previous group, but rather in the development of From 1834, land companies such as the British opposing cultures, even antagonistic. And this American Land Company encourage opposition did not die out until the arrival of a immigration from the British Isles and third migration, which revives a new phase of the North of Europe. For 1836 alone, antagonism. 6,000 immigrants land in the region. But this wave of arrivals triggers an inverse effect, The Eastern Townships – a Land of because some American families, settled here Passage for a generation, leave the region for the more Western States4. Thus, American merchants, After the end of the Amerindian period, like Tylar H.

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