Language Attitudes Towards Canadian French and English, 1691-1902: the Emergence of the Canadian Voices

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Language Attitudes towards Canadian French and English, 1691-1902: The Emergence of the Canadian Voices

Beau Brock

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in French Linguistics Department of French Studies University of Toronto

Language Attitudes towards Canadian French and English, 1691- 1902: The Emergence of the Canadian Voices

Beau Brock

Doctor of Philosophy in French Linguistics

Department of French Studies University of Toronto

2014 Abstract

This dissertation examines the origins and development of attitudes (in the guise of beliefs and stereotypes) towards Canadian French and Canadian English during the 18th and 19th centuries, as expressed primarily by foreign travellers to North America. By conducting a comparative study of these two languages, I aim to build a bridge between French Canadian studies on

Canadian French, and Anglophone Canadian studies on Canadian English, two fields which have historically been distinct and separate.

The time period studies (1691-1902) is marked by major political and social change, including the English Conquest, the creation of Upper and Lower Canada (and later the United Province of

Canada), and the Dominion, all of which had major, lasting effects on the development and status of both languages. In order to study the evolution of language attitudes during this period,

I employed content analysis on the metalinguistic and cultural commentary in a wide variety of texts, including travel journals, scholarly and newspaper articles, monographs, and prescriptive texts, written in French and English.

My analysis has shown that British commentators were the most critical of both languages (and peoples), and relied almost entirely on beliefs and stereotypes rather than empirical evidence to ii support their claims. As colonial peoples in the process of renegotiating their linguistic and cultural identities, French and British Canadians were strongly affected by these beliefs, particularly following Confederation. From this point forward, we see evidence for what I have termed the “Emergence of the Canadian Voices;” that is, Canadians’ rejection of foreign opinion about their language and culture, and a move towards an endogenous linguistic norm, which was supported by the increasing use of linguistic studies on both languages. Understanding why and how these “Canadian Voices” developed in the late 19th century is crucial to understanding the language question in Canada today.

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Acknowledgments

I would first like to express my sincere gratitude to my thesis supervisors, Dr. Brousseau and Dr. Portebois, for their excellent direction, assistance, and encouragement throughout the past five years. I would also like to thank Dr. Labrie for the unique insights he provided, particularly in the last stages of writing.

I am also grateful to the Department of French Studies for its support in numerous ways over the past six years, and for giving me the opportunity to teach and do research, the two things that I love to do best. I owe special thanks to Dr. Michelucci, who graciously accepted me into the programme after the deadline, and also to André Tremblay for his great assistance on just about everything.

I must also thank all of my parents and siblings for always believing in me, and encouraging me to keep moving forward.

Finally, I would to thank my wife, Emily, whose endless support, patience, and love have made this dream of mine a reality.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ...... iv

Table of Contents ...... v

List of Tables ...... xi

List of Figures ...... xiii

List of Appendices ...... xiv

Introduction ...... 1

Old Beliefs ...... 1

Previous Studies on CanFr and CanEn ...... 4

Bouchard ...... 5

Caron-Leclerc ...... 10

Chambers ...... 11

Building a bridge ...... 13

Research questions and hypotheses ...... 15

Periodization: 1691-1902 ...... 18

A note on terminology: patois, jargon, barbarism, solecism, and dialect ...... 20

Overview of the thesis ...... 26

1 Chapter One Corpus and Methodology...... 29

1.1 Corpus ...... 29

1.1.1 Building the corpus ...... 29

1.1.1.1 Writings on Canadian English (1792-1975) ...... 30

1.1.1.2 The Travellers – Canada to 1900 ...... 32

1.1.1.3 Bibliographie linguistique du Canada français ...... 33

1.1.1.4 Mythe et reflet de la France ...... 34

1.1.1.5 Other texts ...... 35

1.1.2 Refining the corpus ...... 37

1.1.2.1 Text selection criteria: what is a Canadian? ...... 37

1.1.2.2 Information-based criteria ...... 39

1.1.2.3 Analysis-based criteria ...... 40

1.1.2.4 The texts represented in this corpus ...... 41

1.2 Methodology ...... 45

1.2.1 Theoretical background ...... 46

1.2.1.1 Language attitudes ...... 46

1.2.1.2 Perceptual dialectology and folk linguistics ...... 47

1.2.2 Categorizing the observations ...... 49

1.2.2.1 Stereotypes, beliefs, and attitudes ...... 49

1.2.2.2 Language stereotypes about English in Africa ...... 50

1.2.2.3 Schmied’s five categories of arguments based on language beliefs ...... 50

1.2.2.4 Language stereotypes of Canadians ...... 52

1.2.2.5 Language beliefs about CanFr and CanEn ...... 54

1.2.3 Other considerations ...... 56

2 Chapter Two 1691-1838: Origins of language beliefs and stereotypes ...... 58

2.1 Canadian French: 1691-1838 ...... 60

2.1.1 Aesthetics and grammar ...... 63

2.1.1.1 Quality and purity ...... 63

2.1.1.2 Patois, jargon, etc...... 73

2.1.1.3 Anglicisms ...... 79

2.1.1.4 Canadianisms, Normanisms, and archaisms...... 79

2.1.1.5 Pronunciation ...... 81

2.1.2 Utility and legitimacy ...... 83

2.1.2.1 French Canadians don’t speak English ...... 83 vi

2.1.2.2 The bilingual problem ...... 86

2.2 Early impressions of Canadian English ...... 90

2.2.1 Aesthetics and grammar ...... 91

2.2.1.1 Quality and purity ...... 92

2.2.1.2 Americanisms ...... 95

2.3 Conclusion ...... 98

3 Chapter Three 1839-1867: Perpetuation of language beliefs and stereotypes ...... 100

3.1 Impressions of Canadian French ...... 102

3.1.1 Aesthetics and grammar ...... 104

3.1.1.1 Quality and purity ...... 105

3.1.1.2 Patois, jargon, etc...... 115

3.1.1.3 Anglicisms ...... 124

3.1.1.4 Canadianisms, Normanisms, and archaisms...... 128

3.1.1.5 Pronunciation ...... 132

3.1.2 Utility and legitimacy ...... 140

3.1.2.1 French Canadians don’t speak English ...... 140

3.1.2.2 The bilingual problem ...... 142

3.2 Impressions of Canadian English ...... 147

3.2.1 Aesthetics and grammar ...... 149

3.2.1.1 Quality and purity ...... 149

3.2.1.2 Americanisms ...... 152

3.2.1.3 Pronunciation ...... 154

3.3 Conclusion ...... 157

4 Chapter Four 1868-1902: Countering language beliefs and stereotypes ...... 158

4.1 Impressions of Canadian French ...... 160

4.1.1 Aesthetics and grammar ...... 163 vii

4.1.1.1 Quality and purity ...... 165

4.1.1.2 Anglicisms ...... 183

4.1.1.3 Pronunciation ...... 189

4.1.2 Utility and legitimacy ...... 192

4.1.2.1 French Canadians don’t speak English ...... 193

4.1.2.2 The bilingual problem ...... 195

4.2 Impressions of Canadian English ...... 201

4.2.1 Aesthetics and grammar ...... 203

4.2.1.1 Quality and purity ...... 203

4.2.1.2 Americanisms ...... 208

4.2.1.3 Pronunciation ...... 212

4.2.2 Utility and legitimacy ...... 215

4.2.2.1 British Canadians don’t speak French ...... 216

4.3 Conclusion ...... 218

5 Chapter Five The emergence of the Canadian Voices ...... 220

5.1 Origins and development of language beliefs and stereotypes ...... 221

5.1.1 Canadian French ...... 222

5.1.1.1 Quality and purity ...... 226

5.1.1.2 Patois, jargon, etc...... 230

5.1.1.3 Anglicisms ...... 231

5.1.1.4 Canadianisms, Normanisms, and archaisms...... 233

5.1.1.5 Pronunciation ...... 235

5.1.1.6 French Canadians don’t speak English ...... 236

5.1.1.7 The bilingual problem ...... 237

5.1.2 Canadian English ...... 237

5.1.2.1 Quality and purity ...... 241 viii

5.1.2.2 Patois, jargon, etc...... 242

5.1.2.3 Americanisms ...... 243

5.1.2.4 Pronunciation ...... 243

5.1.2.5 British Canadians don’t speak French ...... 244

5.1.3 Summary ...... 244

5.2 The emergence of the Canadian voices ...... 251

5.2.1 The French Canadian Voice ...... 253

5.2.1.1 Opposition to, or rejection of, foreign opinion ...... 254

5.2.1.2 Conflict between endogenous and exogenous norms ...... 259

5.2.1.3 The progression from an amateur to a professional approach ...... 263

5.2.2 The British Canadian voice ...... 266

5.2.2.1 Opposition to, or rejection of, foreign opinion ...... 267

5.2.2.2 Conflict between exogenous and endogenous norms ...... 269

5.2.2.3 Progression from an amateur to a professional approach ...... 270

5.3 Independent, parallel development and cross influence ...... 271

5.3.1 Independent, parallel development ...... 273

5.3.2 Cross influence ...... 275

5.4 Conclusion ...... 281

Conclusion ...... 283

Summary of contributions and documentation ...... 283

Questions requiring further investigation ...... 289

New research questions ...... 290

Final words ...... 293

Bibliography ...... 295

Primary sources ...... 295

Secondary Sources ...... 314 ix

Appendices ...... 323

Biographical information ...... 323

List of Tables

Table 1.1 Comparison of initial and final number of texts, by source 42

Table 1.2 Number of texts by genre 45

Table 2.1 Texts with references to CanFr and CanEn, by nationality: 1691-1838 59

Table 2.2 Texts with references to CanFr and CanEn, by genre: 1691-1838 60

Table 2.3 Texts with references to CanFr, by nationality: 1691-1838 62

Table 2.4 Texts with references to CanFr, by genre: 1691-1838 63

Table 2.5 Texts with references to CanEn, by nationality: 1691-1838 91

Table 3.1 Texts with references to CanFr and CanEn, by nationality: 1839-1867 101

Table 3.2 Texts with references to CanFr and CanEn, by genre: 1839-1867 102

Table 3.3 Texts with references to CanFr, by nationality 103

Table 3.4 Texts with references to CanFr, by genre: 1839-1867 104

Table 3.5 Texts with references to CanEn, by nationality: 1839-1867 148

Table 3.6 Texts with references to CanEn, by genre: 1839-1867 149

Table 4.1 Texts with references to CanFr and CanEn, by nationality: 1868-1902 159

Table 4.2 Texts with references to CanFr and CanEn, by genre: 1868-1902 160

Table 4.3 Texts with references to CanFr, by nationality: 1868-1902 162

Table 4.4 Texts with references to CanFr, by genre: 1868-1902 163

Table 4.5 Texts with references to CanEn, by nationality: 1868-1902 202

Table 4.6 Texts with references to CanEn, by genre: 1868-1902 203

Table 5.1 Origins and occurrences of beliefs or stereotypes: CanFr 223

Table 5.2 Origins and occurrences of beliefs or stereotypes: CanEn 239

Table 5.3 Comparing origins and occurrences: CanFr and CanEn 248

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List of Figures

Figure 5.1 Number of occurrences (in %) of each belief or stereotype by decade, CanFr 225

Figure 5.2 Number of occurrences of each belief or stereotype by decade, CanFr 226

Figure 5.3 Number of occurrences (in %) of each belief or stereotype by decade, CanEn 240

Figure 5.4 Number of occurrences of each belief or stereotype by decade, CanEn 241

xiii

List of Appendices

Biographical Information 321

xiv 1

Introduction Old Beliefs

The foundations of this dissertation stem from my early interest in language attitudes, which can be traced back to the end of my first year of high school. I chose French to fulfill my language requirement instead of German or Spanish based entirely on my then unfavourable attitude – or prejudice, in this case – towards the latter; to my adolescent mind, French simply sounded better than the other two languages. As with many prejudices, which are often driven by ideologies, this was not based on any real world experience with German or Spanish speakers; it was rather an impression I had growing up. In most Hollywood movies, for example, German is often the language of the villains (Hans and Simon Gruber1 from Die Hard 1 and 3, any German-speaking character from Mel Brooks’ movies2, etc.), and is often exaggerated to make it sound harsher than it actually is; Spanish has suffered from a similar stigma. Upon hearing Heinrich Heine’s poem Die Lorelei read aloud for the first time, or discovering the beautiful poetry of Spanish poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, my opinion of both languages changed completely: following my year abroad in France, I spent a summer in Spain learning Spanish, and began studying German when I returned to my home university.

This brief, personal introduction is necessary to understand where the idea for this study comes from. I can pinpoint the origins of this dissertation to one specific class in September 2006, when I began teaching French as a teaching assistant at the University of British Columbia. After going through the necessary self-introductions, one of the very first questions I was asked puzzled me: “Are we going to learn Parisian French or Québécois3 in your class?” Unsure of what to say to the student, who was of Franco-Ontarian descent, I weakly explained that I had learned French in France, so that was what I would be speaking in class. Variations of that same question would come up every semester, both during my time at the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto, which indicated a pervasive, unfavourable attitude towards the French

1 Technically, it would be more accurate to say German English accent in this case, but the effect is the same. 2 Cloris Leachman’s pronunciation of her character’s name in Young Frankenstein, Frau Blücher, is particularly memorable for its exaggerated guttural sound and the fear it instilled in nearby horses. 3 With the exceptions of book titles and citations from English-language texts, I will be employing the French spelling of Québec (and Québécois) and Montréal throughout this dissertation.

2 language in Canada. This attitude was further confirmed by numerous encounters over the past six years with English-speaking Canadians who dismiss Québécois as “not real French.” Experiences like these ultimately led me to focus on language attitudes in Canada, though I wasn’t sure how to approach the matter.

In the summer of 2009, one of my thesis supervisors suggested I research John Squair, former professor of French and chair of Romance Languages at the University of Toronto (1884-1916). In addition to writing a number of French grammars for students, Squair pioneered the Bonne Entente (1916-30), a cooperative programme between the provinces of Ontario and Québec that aimed to promote dialogue between the two peoples. In his Open letter to the people of Ontario on the teaching of French (1918), Squair explained the necessity of such a programme:

A stupid prejudice against the French of Quebec has often hindered Ontario people from profiting by the accessibility of such a large and homogeneous group. The higher institutions of learning of the two Provinces should unite to establish a system of interchange for the learning of the two languages. (Squair 1918: 4)

Having encountered on numerous occasions exactly what Squair was referring to, this passage encouraged me to search for the origins of this “stupid prejudice” towards French Canadians and their language. Shortly after reading Squair’s letter, I came across Jules-Paul Tardivel’s speech La langue française au Canada (1901), which he read before the Catholic Union of Montréal. An American by birth, Tardivel was a staunch supporter of French Canadian nationalism and Canadian French (hereafter CanFr)4, and refuted the notion that French Canadians ought to imitate so-called “Parisian French” (hereafter ParFr). In the following passage, Tardivel pointed to the negative opinion foreigners had of the language:

Mais cette langue, que nos ancêtres ont conservée avec un soin si jaloux, est-elle bien la vraie langue française?

Dans certains milieux, particulièrement aux Etats-Unis, on est sous l’impression que le français parlé au Canada n’est pas le français véritable, mais un misérable patois. Certains de nos voisins5 affichent parfois leur dédain pour le Canadian

4 For the purposes of this dissertation, the abbreviation CanFr will refer exclusively to the French language spoken in the Canadas: Upper and Lower Canada, Canada East and West, and finally Ontario and Québec. It does not include Acadian French (hereafter AcFr), whose characteristics and history differ significantly from those of CanFr. 5 Here Tardivel is speaking specifically of the Americans, though the term could equally apply to the residents of Ontario.

French, très différent, à leurs yeux, du real French as spoken in France. Plusieurs de nos écrivains ont fait des efforts louables pour dissiper ce préjugé, mais sans grand succès, probablement. (Tardivel 1901: 16)

This passage highlights a number of important points about attitudes towards CanFr at the turn of the century. Firstly, the belief that French Canadians did not speak “real” French was widespread, and accepted by Americans and English-speaking Canadians (and as we shall see later, by Europeans as well). The use of the term “patois” to describe the French language spoken by French Canadians is significant for a number of reasons, particularly in the latter half of the 19th century, and will come up again and again throughout this dissertation. Secondly, that only the French spoken in France, or perhaps more accurately, the French spoken by the Parisian élite, was the only legitimate or valid variety of the language. Finally, the claim that French Canadians had worked to repair to reputation of their language is both fascinating and a little discouraging: despite the best efforts of these writers (see chapters 2-4), the patois myth persisted throughout the 19th century, and became even more widespread during the first half of the 20th century. This strongly suggests that what language experts (e.g. linguists, philologists, lexicographers) write about the language is not necessarily what non-experts, i.e., everyone else, believe, despite a preponderance of evidence suggesting otherwise.

My interest in language attitudes isn’t limited to CanFr, however; Canadian English (hereafter CanEn) has long been a widely misunderstood, and little studied variety of English, though researchers like Chambers, Boberg, and Dollinger have made considerable contributions to the study of the language in recent years, as we shall see both in the next section and in the first chapter. Although I have never had a student ask if I would be teaching in CanEn or American English (hereafter AmEn) in class6, stereotypes about the former abound in the United States, due in no small part to the popularity of the Bob and Doug MacKenzie sketches for SCTV (a Canadian TV comedy show) in the early 1980s, as well as more recent portrayals in shows like South Park. The “ays” and the “aboots”, the hallmarks of the stereotypical Canadian accent, are frequently mocked in American popular culture, but I have yet to meet a Canadian who speaks that way. Ironically, it is people from my home state of Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the so-called “Yoopers”, who display more of these stereotypical traits than do actual Canadians.

6 In my experiences teaching in France, the question was always AmEn or British English (hereafter BritEn).

Much like my preliminary research on CanFr, I began searching for academic studies on the history of CanEn, only to be disappointed by how few works there were on the subject, a problem first commented upon by early Canadian linguist Matthew Scargill in his article “A pilot study of Alberta speech: vocabulary” (1955). A consultation of Walter Avis and Murray Kinloch’s bibliography Writings on Canadian English, 1792-1975 (1978) revealed that the overwhelming majority of texts written on CanEn were published after 19507, and many of these are reviews or summaries of the few actual studies available. Reading through Orkin (1970) and Chambers (1993, 2004), I was surprised to find negative attitudes towards CanEn similar to those towards CanFr, which are best exemplified by Susanna Moodie’s influential account of life as a settler in Upper Canada, Roughing it in the Bush (1852), and Reverend Geikie’s paper “Canadian English” (1857), which he read before the Canadian Institute. The first to coin the term “Canadian English”, Geikie derisively compared the English spoken in Canada to “the negro patua [sic] or the Chinese Pidgin English.” (Geikie 1857: 9)

Upon learning that CanFr and CanEn were described in similar terms during the 19th century, and that both were compared unfavourably to the varieties spoken in France and Great Britain, I began to doubt that this was mere coincidence. Before stating my research questions and hypotheses regarding the origins and development of language attitudes towards CanFr and CanEn, it behooves me to discuss the works of three researchers who have made significant contributions to the study of the history of both languages, and furthermore, to situate myself and the present dissertation in this conversation.

Previous Studies on CanFr and CanEn

Examining the history of CanFr and CanEn through the lens of folk linguistics using content analysis is crucial to understanding not only how both languages are used today, but also how they are viewed by Canadians and foreigners alike. For my part, I am particularly interested in the latter: where does this perception or attitude come from? Numerous historicalstudies of both languages have appeared in recent years; for CanEn, there are the works of Chambers (1993, 2000, and 2004), Dollinger (2008), and Boberg (2010). For CanFr, there is Bouchard (1988, 1998, 2012), Noël (1990), Caron-Leclerc (1998), and Gendron (2007). Naturally, this list is far

7 Of the 723 texts listed in Avis and Kinloch’s bibliography, 590 (81.6%) were written from 1950-1978.

5 from complete; there are many of other works which I will refer to throughout the dissertation for the particular insight they bring to this study.

In the following pages, I will discuss the works of Bouchard, Caron-Leclerc, and Chambers; specifically, their methodologies, corpora, and contributions to the study of CanFr and CanEn, respectively. The reason for choosing these three researchers in particular is because the present dissertation has been strongly influenced by each in significant ways, including the structure and methodology. Given that my primary interest is in language attitudes towards both languages over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, rather than focusing on an aspect of syntax (Dollinger 2008) or a combined external and internal history of the language (Boberg 2010), the present dissertation necessarily has far more in common with the former than the latter. There are, however, significant differences as well, such as the considerable differences among the corpus, periodization (in the case of CanFr)8, and perhaps most significantly, the decision to compare the metalinguistic commentary on both languages in the same study, which has not yet been attempted. It is my hope that this dissertation will add to and bring together the works of these three researchers, and open the door for more comparative studies of both languages.

Bouchard

Although I cannot possibly give a detailed description of sociolinguist Chantal Bouchard’s numerous works in this short section, I can provide an overview of those which directly address the history of CanFr: the articles “De la ‘langue du grand siècle’ à la ‘langue humiliée’: les Canadiens français et la langue populaire” (1988), “Contes et légendes du Canada français: le mythe du French Canadian patois” (1990), La langue et le nombril (1998), and Méchante langue (2012)9. I cannot overestimate the influence Bouchard’s work has had on the present dissertation; had I not come across her first monograph nearly seven years ago, I likely would never have been inspired to write this dissertation. Although the subjects discussed in each of these three works are related – as they all deal with French Canadians’ tumultuous relationship with their

8 None of the studies on CanEn are divided into distinct periods like they are for CanFr; this is in part to due to the fact that very few studies have been done on the history of the language, and also because English-speaking Canadians were not affected by major political events like the French Canadians were, the obvious exception being the Confederation. 9 Bouchard’s essay On n’emprunte qu’aux riches: la valeur sociolinguistique des emprunts (1999) is also noteworthy for the distinction she makes between how French and French Canadians borrow words from other languages, English in particular.

6 own language – I will treat them separately in the following paragraphs in order to show the progression one to the next.

In “Contes et légendes”, Bouchard traced the origins of what she calls the “French Canadian patois” myth, which was evidently widely accepted by the British, Americans, and British Canadians, to no earlier than 1879. This date is based on evidence she gathered from language chronicles printed in three newspapers published in Québec, namely La Patrie10, La Presse11, and Le Devoir12. The first Canadian reactions to this myth appeared in 1910, while the myth would continue to grow stronger throughout the first half of the 20th century, up to the Quiet Revolution. Through my own research, which takes into account a wide range of texts in both English and French, I have been able to establish much earlier dates for both of these: 1803/1828 for the first usage of the term patois to describe the language spoken by French Canadians (see chapter two), and 1853 for the first reaction by a French Canadian to foreign opinion of CanFr.

In La langue et le nombril, which saw a revised edition in 2002, and an English translation, Obsessed with language in 2008, Bouchard focused on the origins of French Canadians’ preoccupation with their own language, specifically how they perceived its quality or legitimacy over time. Bouchard examined the question from several points of view, relying heavily on cultural, political, and linguistic approaches, and proposed a periodization scheme unique to each one:

1. Pre- and Post-Confederation Canadians (habitants and Canadiens français) 2. Commentary on the language itself, which was divided into three distinct periods: post- Confederation (Le Canayen et l’anglicisme, 1867-1910), the interbellum period (La gloire du paysan, 1910-40), and post-World War II (L’Après-Guerre, 1940-60) 3. Language chronicles from the early period to almost present day (1817-1970), and specifically during the Quiet Revolution (1960-70)

10 La Patrie (1879-1978) was a Montréal-based newspaper founded by French Canadian journalist and politician Honoré Beaugrand (1848-1906). For the purposes of this dissertation, La Patrie was notable for publishing three language chronicles: Alphonse Lusignan’s “Fautes à corriger: une à chaque jour” (1884-1885), Louis Fréchette (1893-1896) and Raoul Rinfret’s (1895) “A travers le dictionnaire et la grammaire: corrigeons-nous!” 11 La Presse, another Montréal-based newspaper, was founded in 1884 by William-Edmond Blumhart. After his stint writing for La Patrie, Fréchette’s language chronicle was published in La Presse from 1897-1900. 12 Le Devoir was founded by French Canadian politician Henri Bourassa in 1910, and strongly promoted French Canadian nationalism. A number of language chronicles were published in Le Devoir in the mid-to-late 20th century.

I have drawn inspiration from this for my own periodization scheme, though studying CanFr and CanEn together has led me to establish significantly different categories. For example, the year 1763 works well as an end date/beginning date for the history of CanFr, but is of lesser importance for CanEn, whereas the Confederation (1867) was of significant linguistic, cultural, social, and political importance for both French and British Canadians alike. Therefore, my periodization scheme is based mainly on major political events, including the Rebellions of 1837-38, the Confederation in 1867, and the founding of the Société du parler français au Canada in 1902, all of which had a profound effect on the status of both languages and their respective community, whether immediately perceptible or not.

Returning to La langue et le nombril, Bouchard explained that the Confederation actually caused more problems for French Canadians and their language than it solved: “A partir de la décennie 1860-1870, tout va changer; les Canadiens vont devenir des Canadiens français et entrer dans une période de crise qui durera un siècle.” (Bouchard 1998: 70) This period was defined primarily by increasingly negative and uninformed views of CanFr – held by Anglophones and Francophones alike – and numerous anti-French language measures taken by the government like the Manitoba Schools Act of 1890. While my analysis stops in 1902, Bouchard’s discussion of what happens after that date confirms much of what I have found about the 19th century, namely that CanFr lost prestige as time went on, to the point where (some) French Canadians worried that they would someday be speaking a patois if the appropriate measures weren’t taken, a belief which reached its culmination in the debate surrounding joual in the 1960s and 1970s.

In Méchante langue, Bouchard expanded upon Jean-Denis Gendron’s essay D’où vient l’accent des Québécois? Et celui des Parisiens? (2007) in an effort to determine how and why commentary on CanFr went from overwhelmingly positive during the 18th century (see chapter two) to almost entirely negative in the 19th and 20th centuries (see chapters three and four). Bouchard found that the years 1841-42 marked a major milestone, or turning point for French Canadians and their language: on the one hand, the creation of the United Province of Canada together with Article 41 from the Union Act of 1840, which made English the only official language, threatened the existence of CanFr, and therefore French Canadian society and nationality. On the other hand, the debate among Thomas Maguire, Jérôme Demers, and Michel Bibaud regarding the legitimacy and correctness of CanFr drew attention to the fact that the French spoken in Canada was quite different from Standard French. French Canadians were then

8 faced with the choice of “modernizing” the language, which meant adopting an exogenous linguistic norm, or abandon their language and nationality, and “amalgamate” with the British. It is after this point that we see a net increase in the number of texts, prescriptive, descriptive, and normative, written about CanFr.

Noting how French Canadians became engaged in the debate on their language was only half of the issue, however: Bouchard also sought to account for the seemingly rapid change from positive to negative accounts of CanFr by foreigners. Bouchard initially hypothesized that this dramatic change was chiefly a result of political, social, and linguistic ramifications from the French Revolution, during which one prestige variety of French achieved prominence in France, while another maintained its dominance in Canada. While her initial hypothesis was not inaccurate – the French Revolution did in fact mark a major turning point in the development of French in France, and therefore affect how French travellers saw CanFr – Bouchard concluded that there were a number of other factors that would help account for the change in attitude towards CanFr, namely the following five events or trends:

1. The numerous social transformations spurred by the French Revolution, including the promotion of a different linguistic norm, i.e. what is now known as Standard French. 2. The importance of reading and writing as means of transmitting the norm in France, whereas in Canada, the transmission was primarily oral in nature. 3. The crucial role of public education in diffusing the French language in France; this process was much slower, and began later, in Canada. 4. The English Conquest of Canada in 1760, which effectively severed all ties between French Canadians and France for nearly a century. The departure of many of the seigneurs in 1763 exacerbated the problem. In addition, the only French speakers who immigrated to France in the late 18th and early 19th centuries were clergy members who had left France during and following the Revolution. Significantly, they did not bring with them what would become Standard French, but a form of speech associated with the Ancien Régime (see below). 5. The (unavoidable) Anglicization of the French Canadian elite in the 19th century, which led to an influx of English terms and phrases, i.e., Anglicisms, particularly among lawyers, politicians, and journalists.

Gendron, for his part, arrived at a somewhat different conclusion about the emergence of the two distinct varieties of French spoken in Canada and in France, a conclusion which I believe serves to enhance Bouchard’s own findings. Given how slowly linguistic change on a massive scale occurs – over hundreds of years – Gendron had difficulty accepting the idea that the French Revolution was when CanFr and Standard French began to diverge; fifty years (1790-1840) was simply not long enough for the two varieties of French to have diverged to the extent commentators like Maguire remarked upon. These must have already been on separate evolutionary paths, well before the colony of New France was ceded to the British by the Treaty of Paris in 1763.

Gendron argued that the origins of CanFr and what would become Standard French can be traced back to the effects of Claude Vaugelas’ influential work, Remarques sur la langue françoise (1647)13. While no individual is capable of changing the essence of a language, Vaugelas (and later Remarqueurs) was largely responsible for the development and acceptance of le bel usage, a form or style of speech (initially a highly prestigious sociolect, essentially) different from le grand usage. Gendron demonstrated that differences in pronunciation, for example – /wa/ vs. /wɛ/ for the diphthongue oi, a difference which was central to the debate on the legitimacy of CanFr in the 19th century – were already present by the mid-17th century. This meant that there were two distinct styles of speech coexisting in France, one of which was transplanted to the New World (le bel usage), while the other (le grand usage) eventually became the standard in France following the French Revolution.

The coexistence of these two varieties of French in France for over a century and the subsequent adoption of le grand usage as the French standard help explain why there is such a sudden, drastic change in commentary on CanFr from the 18th to the 19th centuries. It was not that English rule made every French Canadian speak poorly overnight – though the introduction of Anglicisms certainly led commentators to express more negative judgements on the language –

13 Although somewhat tangential to the present topic, it behooves me to mention Ayres-Bennett and Magali Seijido’s recent study Remarques et observations sur la langue française (2013), in which they stress the importance of the “Remarqueurs”, beginning with Vaugelas, on the development of the French language. Long considered to be of little linguistic importance, Ayres-Bennett and Seijido argue that the contrary was true: Vaugelas and later writers shaped the French language for generations to come, which is precisely what Gendron argued in this essay.

10 but rather that they spoke a different form of the language that had developed or evolved separately from the one spoken (and written) in Europe.

Caron-Leclerc

My thesis shares a number of similarities with Caron-Leclerc’s monumental, unpublished doctoral dissertation Les témoignages anciens sur le français du Canada (du XVIIe au XIXe siècle): edition critique (1998), much of which is available on the website of the Trésor de la langue française au Québec14. There are of course several important differences between Caron- Leclerc’s dissertation and my own, which I will clarify in this section. The primary motivation for Caron-Leclerc’s thesis was to illustrate the importance of travellers’ accounts of CanFr, as it relates not only to the history of the language, but also to its changing status over time. To this end, Caron-Leclerc constructed a corpus of some 82 texts15, drawn mostly from Gaston Dulong’s Bibliographie linguistique du Canada français (1966) and Sylvain Simard’s Mythe et reflet de la France: l’image du Canada en France, 1850-1914 (1987), with further contributions from Armand Yon’s Le Canada français vu de France: 1830-1914 (1975). Believing that few authors who had cited travel literature in the past were not thorough enough in their analysis, or even misrepresented the original works, Caron-Leclerc provided extensive biographical information on each author (when available), and analyzed and commented on each text, and its particular significance.

Caron-Leclerc divided her dissertation into two periods: under French rule (1651-1760), and under English rule (1761-1899). She organized the authors by nationality, linguistic region (région linguistique française), profession, age, and whether or not they worked in Canada, and organized the texts by date of publication and genre, to determine if there were any discernible patterns in the commentary based on these parameters. The two major patterns that emerged were that the French were far more forgiving, and even encouraging, of differences between Standard French and CanFr than were the Belgians or the British. Secondly, and of particular significance, Caron-Leclerc concluded that these comments did not appear to be responsible for French Canadians’ linguistic insecurity.

14 http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/quebetext/voyageurs.asp 15 Her corpus includes some doubles, i.e., the same text which appeared in multiple formats.

In analyzing a more diverse collection of metalinguistic commentary, particularly a vastly- expanded English-language corpus, many of which have been unexplored until now, I feel I can provide a somewhat more nuanced account of foreigners’ beliefs and stereotypes about CanFr. Regarding her first conclusion, Tardivel’s speech casts some doubt about Caron-Leclerc’s claim that the British were the most vocal and harshest critics of CanFr, as he stated clearly that it was the Americans who held CanFr in low regard, while Squair (and most French Canadians; see chapter four) pointed to the British Canadians; I believe an analysis of more texts – particularly English-language ones – will clear up this matter. As for the second conclusion, Bouchard’s research suggests that French Canadians were very much preoccupied with what foreigners though of their language, particularly in the late 19th century and certainly throughout the 20th; this apparent contradiction can be attributed to the largely dissimilar corpora each researcher employed. Whereas Caron-Leclerc was concerned with foreign accounts of CanFr, i.e. travel journals and studies of Canadians written by foreigners, the bulk of Bouchard’s corpus was made up of texts written by French Canadians. By examining both kinds of texts together, I believe a more nuanced explanation of this issue can be found.

Chambers

Canadian linguist J.K. Chambers has contributed much to the study of CanEn on a wide variety of topics, including, but not limited to phonology, history of the language, lexicography, and sociolinguistics. Over the past thirty years, he has written several articles that describe the external history of the English language in Canada, two of which have been instrumental in convincing me to write this dissertation as a comparison of both languages: “‘Lawless and vulgar innovations’: Victorian Views of Canadian English” (1993), and “‘Canadian Dainty’: the rise and decline of Briticisms in Canada” (2004). Both articles delve into the settlement history of Upper Canada, and highlight the importance of British commentary on the development of CanEn. Although written nearly a decade apart, both articles cover essentially the same phenomena, so I will be discussing them together in the following paragraphs.

According to Chambers, whose findings are corroborated and expanded on by Dollinger (2008) and Boberg (2010), the American Loyalists had a significant impact on the development of the English language spoken north of the American border, as it was their variety of English – or perhaps more accurately stated, 18th century Colonial English – that ultimately served as the

12 basis for CanEn, despite massive waves of immigration from the British Isles in the first half of the 19th century. Here, Chambers explains that the Loyalist influence extended far beyond linguistic matters:

As newcomers, the [British] immigrants found themselves conforming to the established patterns in nearly all their mundane activities. The descendants of the Loyalists, as true pioneers, had set the standards and developed the routines for land-clearing, crop selection, house construction, religious observance, educational practices and much more. (Chambers 2004: 227)

In short, the influence of the Loyalists on all aspects of British Canadian culture was unavoidable, and was firmly entrenched by the end of the 18th century. Much like French Canadians were guarded against the influence of the English language and culture, British Canadians were equally wary of American influence, especially after the War of 1812 and the Rebellions of 1837-38, two events which convinced the British government to dilute the American element through systematic emigration. Although the plan served to limit American sympathies among the people by increasing the proportion of British settlers in the colony, it did little to affect the English language spoken in the Canadas, save in the most isolated communities.

Chambers noted that commentators as early as the 1830s complained of the American nature of the English language spoken in Upper Canada, which ultimately paved the way for at least two distinct varieties of CanEn: the speech of the majority of Canadians, which was in many ways indistinguishable from AmEn, and what Chambers called “Canadian Dainty”, an affected British dialect adopted by the British Canadian elite from approximately 1850-1950, which was best characterized by a tendency for hypercorrection and a strong preference for emulating British usage and vocabulary. In the second article, for example, Chambers noted that elocution lessons designed to sound more British were quite common in the late 19th century.

For a number of reasons, including the increasingly closer ties between Canada and the United States, “Canadian Dainty” died out after World War II, and CanEn would rapidly lose its more distinctive features, thereby resembling AmEn more and more. Although Chambers provided several references that point to the existence of two varieties of English being spoken in Canada, Lighthall’s influential article “Canadian English” (1889) suggested that there were several “Canadian Englishes.” This became evident to me particularly as I read through more of the

13 unexplored travel journals, in English and in French. It is precisely this phenomenon – an unawareness, or failure to take into consideration the possible primary sources in the other language – that I seek to address in this dissertation.

Building a bridge

While I believe the collection and analysis of hitherto unexamined texts in French and English a worthwhile, necessary endeavour, as it will serve to refine and advance current understanding of the history of both languages, this dissertation aims to be much more than a simple “anthology” of metalinguistic commentary. The collection of these texts is only a first step towards the main goal of this dissertation, which is to build a bridge between the works of three researchers specifically, and studies on the history of CanFr and CanEn generally. It must be stated that this is not a criticism of either researcher’s work, all three of whom have made invaluable contributions to the study of both languages. Rather, I seek to address the problem of studying and considering the British and French Canadian peoples and their respective languages separately, or even exclusive of one another, a phenomenon which has been the norm for well over a century.

By this, I do not mean that one should always compare and contrast these two peoples, and their languages, cultures, politics, etc.; in many cases, this would be neither possible nor desirable. Rather, I seek to address the problem of a “wall” that has existed in the study of these languages; namely I am referring not only to the fact that studies of CanFr have historically been the almost entirely dominated by French Canadians, and the study of CanEn by English-speaking Canadians, but also to a seeming unawareness or misunderstanding (particularly in politics) about the other language community. In short, I believe that there is not enough dialogue between the researchers on CanFr and CanEn. I believe that this division or separation of the studies on both languages obscures the fact that they have a great deal in common with each other. Namely, that both British and French Canadians struggled with linguistic and cultural insecurity throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries, as shown by the works of Bouchard and Chambers. Taking the history of both languages together as a whole, rather than as two isolated, completely independent parts with nothing in common is essential for understanding their frequently antagonistic relationship, as well as common misperceptions of both languages and peoples.

It first became apparent to me that there was a clear divide between studies on CanFr and CanEn when I began compiling my bibliographies. In reading through the list of authors, I was struck by the obvious division or segregation of studies on the history of each language into two distinct camps. The study of CanFr is primarily the domain of researchers from Québec, whereas studies on CanEn have been conducted almost exclusively by Anglophone Canadians. According to Chambers (2011), however, this has been changing, as he remarked that CanEn was receiving more and more attention in foreign universities. Furthermore, each “camp” has historically relied almost exclusively on French and English language sources, respectively. Bouchard and Caron- Leclerc, for example, have only a handful of English-language sources16 in their corpora, and the excellent anthology Le français au Québec: 400 ans d’histoire et de vie (2000) contains almost exclusively French-language sources. Even the most commonly referenced books written by Anglophones, such as the works of Weld (1799), Lambert (1810), Kane (1859), and Milton and Cheadle (1865) were translated into French shortly after their publication in English.

As for the English language in Canada, I had not come across a single French language source that commented on CanEn in any of the histories or studies of the language. Was this because such sources simply did not exist, or that they had not been examined? I found it difficult to believe that of the dozens of travel journals written by French and Belgian travellers during the 19th century, in addition to the hundreds of French Canadian works referenced in Dulong (1966), that there wasn’t a single mention of CanEn. To date, I have found more than a dozen references to English in French-language sources published during the 19th century, and I believe that there may be more hidden away in Québécois and French newspapers.

This seeming unawareness of what the other language community is doing, or has discovered about itself brings me back to the initial point: we see the same kinds of commentary about both languages, at approximately the same time, and from the same commentators, namely the British and the French. Furthermore, this commentary can be either explicit (in the case of French Canadians), or largely implicit or indirect (in the case of British Canadians). In other words, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that there is a shared – not isolated – language history in

16 For example, of the 82 texts in Caron-Leclerc’s corpus, only 7 were written in English. This includes well-known works like Lambert (1810), Durham (1839), Cornwallis (1860), and Roy (1877).

Canada, characterized by both communities’ struggles to (re)define themselves culturally, politically, and linguistically in relation to their former rulers.

Research questions and hypotheses

It is clear from Squair and Tardivel’s accounts that (some) British Canadians and Americans believed that CanFr was impure and illegitimate, and Geikie had an equally negative opinion of CanEn. But did French Canadians have similar views about CanEn? Given their constant contact with British Canadians since the second half of the 18th century, especially in major cities like Montréal and Québec, it would be truly surprising if no French Canadian had a negative opinion – or prejudice, to keep the terminology consistent17 – about the language spoken by their neighbours. Conversely, were there any Anglophones (British, British Canadians, or Americans) who had a positive opinion of CanFr?

In order to determine the origins of these prejudices, the present study proposes the following research questions, which will shed more light on the development and evolution of attitudes towards both languages during the late 18th and 19th centuries. Given the nature of this study, the most appropriate tool or methodology for answering these questions is content analysis, as the subjects’ attitudes towards CanFr and CanEn cannot be ascertained directly, but rather through a careful reading and analysis of their metalinguistic commentary. The first set of questions seeks to account for the commentators’ identity, their motivation, and the nature of the commentary, i.e., what was said, to/by whom, in which contexts, etc. I will provide a brief example for each question.

Firstly, who are the commentators? In order to understand the nature of the commentary, it is important to establish basic biographical information on each writer, including nationality, profession, socioeconomic class, as well as age and gender. Along with these somewhat superficial elements, it is important to consider the commentators’ adherence to a particular ideology, which in turn influenced or determined their attitudes towards French or British Canadians. Frederick Marryat, for example, was a prominent English Royal Navy officer of middle class roots who had a strongly negative opinion of French Canadians while Sir Richard

17 See 1.2.2.4 for a detailed explanation of the terminology I will be employing throughout the dissertation.

Bonnycastle was a military engineer who distinguished himself during the Rebellions of 1837- 38, yet was rather fond of his Francophone neighbours.

Secondly, what did the commentators say about the language? In order to give an accurate portrayal of the metalinguistic commentary, it is necessary to collect what each commentator wrote about the language, and clarify whether it was positive or negative, specific or vague, prescriptive or descriptive, etc. English writer and civil servant Kinahan Cornwallis, who accompanied the Prince of Wales on his tour of North America in 1860, insisted that the language spoken by the French Canadians he met was a patois, not French. Labelling CanFr as a patois is clearly a negative assessment of the language, which was informed by Kinahan’s own (negative) attitudes towards French Canadians, rather than any linguistic evidence he found in support of his theory.

Thirdly, where or to whom does the commentary apply? British and French Canadian societies in the 19th century were highly diverse, with a number of clearly defined socioeconomic classes, language and ethnic groups. Knowing to which segment of society the commentators refer is an important piece of the puzzle, as the nature of the commentary will differ depending on the subject in question; upper class vs. working class, urban vs. rural, British Canadian vs. French Canadian, etc. American chemist Benjamin Silliman, for example, made a clear distinction between the French spoken by upper class (i.e. educated) French Canadians and the rural habitants.

Fourthly, when did commentary on CanFr and CanEn first appear, and when do we see a change from positive to negative assessments of the language? Is there sufficient evidence to support that the 1840s was truly the turning point that Bouchard claimed, or are there earlier comments about either language? An anonymous British traveller to the Canadas commented on the “impurity” of CanFr as early as 1793, and there is evidence to suggest that a “patois myth” existed in the 18th century (see Volney 1803), while English policeman John Harriott remarked that there was little difference between the English spoken in the United States and Canada in 1807.

Fifthly, what were the commentators’ motivations for discussing the language? Did they set out to understand Canada and the Canadians better, or was it simply an off-the-cuff observation, seemingly unrelated to the rest of the text? Or perhaps better stated, was the commentary

17 indicative of a particular ideology, or merely the commentator’s own attitude, developed as a result of meaningful contact with the local population? French musician Emmanuel-Marie Blain de Saint-Aubin was particularly interested in French Canadians and their language, and wrote several articles defending CanFr, even going so far as to chastise his fellow Frenchmen for spreading misinformation.

The second research question aims to account for how these language beliefs and stereotypes spread over time, and evolved, considering that it appears most non-Canadians received their information about Canada and the Canadians from travel literature and popular studies. Upon cursory research, it is clear that Tardivel wasn’t the first to point out Anglophones’ negative opinion of CanFr; from what I have found, French Canadian awareness of beliefs about their own language dates back to Pierre Chauveau’s novel Charles Guérin (1853), where he wrote: “On ne saurait trop admirer la sottise de quelques touristes anglais et américains qui ont écrit que les Canadiens parlaient un patois.” (Chauveau 1853: 357) Chauveau was evidently familiar with what Anglophones thought about this language, but how was he made aware of their existence? Were these beliefs so commonplace that everyone knew about them?

There is sufficient evidence to suggest that travel writers were often familiar with each other’s work: Isaac Fidler specifically mentioned similarities between his Observations on professions (1833), Frances Trollope’s controversial Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), and James Stuart’s Three years in North America (1833), while Anna Jameson cited a long passage from Washington Irving’s Astoria (1836) in her popular work Winter Studies and Summer Rambles (1838)18. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, there is a high degree of conformity regarding commentary on CanFr and CanEn, to the point where later writers took beliefs or stereotypes about each language as a given, and simply repeated it. In the case of CanFr, for example, the belief that French Canadians spoke a variety of Norman French (hereafter NorFr) was ubiquitous in the final decades of the 19th century, despite little linguistic evidence to support this theory, apart from some lexical items and superficial similarities in pronunciation. Tellingly, some of the

18 This is only a very small sample. Books written on Canada (and the United States) in the 19th century – travel literature and more scholarly works alike – frequently cited (or outright copied from) earlier works. I will make reference to instances of these in chapters 2-4.

18 commentator who believed CanFr was Norman in origin, such as American writer Henry David Thoreau, didn’t even speak French.

In addition to the language beliefs and stereotypes about CanFr and CanEn espoused in travel journals, there are numerous newspaper and journal articles, monographs, popular histories, and normative and prescriptive works that discussed these languages. Some of these even address the aforementioned stereotypes, and attempt to dispel them: French Canadian journalist Benjamin Sulte, for example, lectured and wrote numerous articles with the express aim of disproving the existence of a French Canadian patois; Tardivel and Napoléon Legendre did much the same in the late 19th century.

In summary, the present study aims to establish the origins of commentary on the quality of CanFr and CanEn, as stated by travellers or recent immigrants to the Canadas, and subsequently to trace how these comments evolved over time and spread. I believe that although the opinions expressed by these travellers were not the only voices that influenced the discourse on language in Canada – as British and French Canadians were very outspoken on the matter, which I will discuss in chapter five – they played an integral role in shaping Canadian attitudes towards their own language, and spurred discussion on the legitimacy of both languages, a discussion which might not have been initiated until much later.

Periodization: 1691-1902

Since I began working this dissertation in 2009, the essentials have scarcely changed: my goal has always been to compare and contrast the metalinguistic commentary on CanFr and CanEn, and the sources listed in the bibliography are the same ones I consulted at the beginning. The only major change has been my periodization scheme, which has been greatly reduced from its initial size. The dates 1691-1902 may at first glance appear to be arbitrary, even too long: much can happen in 211 years, and Canada is no exception, having seen a major regime change, several wars, and the reorganization and expansion of the territory in relatively short order. In the following paragraphs, I will explain why I chose these dates, and justify the division of this long period into three shorter ones: 1691-1838, 1839-1867, and 1868-1902. In brief, the justification for these three periods is for me to test my hypothesis regarding the appearance and frequency of certain language beliefs and stereotypes.

When I first began my bibliographical research, my plan was to cover the period from 1791, which marks the date of the foundation of Upper and Lower Canada, up to the Quiet Revolution in 1960. After several months of reading through the texts in each bibliography of the four bibliographies I consulted, it became obvious that I needed to make some modifications to my plan, because: a) it simply was not possible for me to analyze the thousands of texts published during that nearly two century span, more than half of which were published after 1900; and b) there was no need for me to extend the analysis up to 1960, as there was an earlier date that served as a much better end to the dissertation. Considering that my primary motivation for undertaking this thesis was to understand the origins of outsiders’ language attitudes towards CanFr and CanEn, and the resulting Canadian responses to those attitudes, I only needed to go as far as 1902, for reasons elaborated in the following paragraph. As for the beginning date, 1691 marks the publication of the first work that mentioned the quality or purity of CanFr, French priest Chrestien Le Clercq’s Premier établissement de la Foy dans la Nouvelle-France. Hence, 1691-1902 became the scope of my dissertation.

As for the subdivision of this 211 year long stretch into three smaller units, I felt that it would be useful to define each period by a major political or social event, as this would allow me to test whether there was some correlation between an increase in the number of language beliefs and stereotypes and those events or not. For this reason, the first period ends with the Rebellions of Upper and Lower Canada in the years 1837-38, as I expected to see a stark increase in the negative comments about British and French Canadians in particular, and also about their language. The second period begins with the aftermath of the Rebellions, namely Lord Durham’s infamous report which led to the creation of the United Province of Canada in 1841, and ends with Confederation in 1867. Finally, the third period begins with the aftermath of Confederation, and ends not with a major political upheaval, but corresponds to several important trends: 1) there is a sharp decrease in the number of travel journals published after 1900; 2) it is obvious that British and French Canadians largely (but not entirely) controlled discourse on language in Canada; and 3) the foundation of the Société du parler français au Canada in 1902 marks a commitment to professional studies of language in Canada. Furthermore, we also see the publication of the first descriptive work dedicated in part to CanEn, Sylva Clapin’s New Dictionary of Americanisms.

Since I designed this periodization scheme with the express purpose of testing some of my hypotheses, namely regarding the frequency of certain language beliefs or stereotypes over time, it does seem to be somewhat artificial from a linguistic point of view. However, it must be repeated here that the aim of the present study is not a history of the French and English languages in Canada, but rather a history of attitudes (in the guise of language beliefs and stereotypes) towards these languages, as held by foreigners and Canadians alike. Seen through this lens, I believe that by organizing the analysis and commentary in this way will allow for a better understanding of the progression of these attitudes throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, and ultimately it will also help explain why there is an increase in the frequency of a given belief or stereotype during a given period, and among which groups of people (see chapter five).

Terminology: patois, jargon, barbarism, solecism, and dialect

Prior to discussing my corpus and methodology, it is important to discuss and define several important, frequently encountered terms that were used to describe CanFr and CanEn. By far the most common criticism of both languages was that they were something less than “real” French or English, a notion that writers conveyed with a variety of (mostly pejorative) terms. Some of the common include: patois (a loanword from French), jargon, barbarism/barbarisme, solecism/solécisme, bad/mauvais, corrupt/corrompu, (im)pure/(im)pur, and vulgar/vulgaire. While the meanings of the latter four are mostly self-evident, the former nouns require some explanation, as they meant slightly different things in French and English, and their definitions changed subtly over time. For this reason, I am presenting the definitions for patois, jargon, barbarism, and solecism, as well as dialect, in both English and French, followed by a comparison of each term, whenever possible.

The English-language dictionaries I consulted were Samuel Johnson’s A dictionary of the English Language, 6th edition (1785), and Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). I have chosen these two dictionaries because they were most commonly used and influential in Great Britain and the United States. Since the first fascicles of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) were not published until 1884, only commentators in the final two decades would have had access to it, so I have not considered it here. The only French language dictionary I consulted was the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (DAF), the 5th (1798), 6th (1835), and 7th (1878) editions. While other important dictionaries were published

21 during the 19th century, including the highly influential Littré (1863-1872, 1873-1877), the DAF was by far the most influential French dictionary, as French Canadians referred to it almost exclusively on matters of the legitimacy of Canadian linguistic forms, for example19. The definitions for the four terms changed little throughout the three editions, but I will note where any changes occurred.

The term patois did not appear in either Johnson or Webster’s dictionaries, though it was commonly used by British and American writers beginning throughout the 19th century to describe CanFr, and CanEn only twice. This indicates that these commentators were familiar, or at least pretended to be20, with the French definition, as given in the DAF. This definition changed only slightly from the 5th edition to the 6th, the latter of which is as follows:

Patois. s.m. Le langage du peuple et des paysans, particulier à chaque province. Chaque province a son patois. Le patois bourguignon, picard, champenois, gascon, provençal, etc. Parler patois. Je n’entends point son patois. Il parle en franc patois. Il me dit en son patois que…

Il se dit quelquefois, par extension, de Certaines [sic] façons de parler qui échappent aux gens des provinces21. Cela est du patois. Il parle encore patois. (DAF 1835: Vol. II 369)

A patois is therefore what commoners speak, and is differentiated by region or province. While not clear from this definition, patois often had a negative connotation, implying at times ignorance, rusticity, and a poor command of French (or English).

The term jargon could be considered a close synonym to patois, but it is always used in the pejorative sense, with an emphasis on unintelligibility:

Jargon. n. s. [jargon, Ft. Gericonça, Spanish]. Unintelligible talk; gabble; gibberish. (Johnson 1785)22

Webster provided nearly the same definition, though with slightly more nuance:

19 A notable exception to this is Sulte (1886), who hoped that French Canadians would one day have their own Littré or Bescherelle. See chapters four and five for more on this. 20 I add this qualifier for those who simply repeated earlier comments on the language, without providing any evidence for their claims. 21 The 5th edition further qualified this statement with “…souvent même, quelque soin qu’ils prennent pour s’en défaire.” This addition implies that a patois is an unwanted manner of speaking. 22 Neither Johnson’s nor Webster’s dictionaries used page numbers.

Jargon, n. [Fr. jargon; It. gergo, gergone; Sp. xerga, jargon, and coarse frieze, serge.]

Confused, unintelligible talk or language; gabble; gibberish; cant. All jargon of the schools. (Webster 1828, Vol. II) We see a much more comprehensive definition of jargon in the DAF, which has three separate, though clearly related, meanings:

Jargon. s.m. Langage corrompu. Cet homme parle si mal le français, que je n’entends point son jargon.

Il se dit aussi, abusivement et par mépris, Des langues étrangères qu’on n’entend pas. Je ne sais quelle langue parlent ces gens-là, Je n’entends pas leur jargon.

Il signifie encore, Le [sic] langage particulier que certaines gens adoptent. Les bohémiens, les gueux, les filous ont leurs jargons particuliers que personne n’entend. Le jargon des précieuses. Le jargon des petits-maîtres.

Ce mot est familier dans toutes ses acceptions. (DAF 1835: Vol. II 64)

Although this term was used less frequently to describe CanFr (though not CanEn), at least in comparison with patois, there is no ambiguity regarding the first definition: a jargon is a corrupted, unintelligible language. There are also several instances of the commentator employing the second definition of jargon, especially in cases where he or she didn’t understand French very well.

The term barbarism has a similarly pejorative meaning, though it is stricter, or more specific than I had imagined. Johnson and Webster give several related definitions for barbarism:

Barbarism. n.s. [barbarismus, Lat]

1. A form of speech contrary to the purity and exactness of any language. 2. Ignorance of arts; want of learning. 3. Brutality; savageness of manners; incivility. 4. Cruelty; barbarity; unpitying hardness of heart: not in use. (Johnson 1785: Vol. I)

Webster provides the same definitions, though he refines somewhat the first meaning:

Barbarism, n. [L. barbarismus. See Barbarian]

1. An offense against purity or style of language; any form of speech contrary to the pure idioms of a particular language. Dryden. 2. Ignorance of arts; want of learning. Shak. Dryden. 3. Rudeness of manners; savagism; incivility; ferociousness; a savage state of society. Spenser. Davies.

4. Brutality; cruelty; barbarity: [In this sense little used, being superseded by barbarity] (Webster 1828: Vol. I)

In French, barbarisme only retains the first meaning, and it is more specific than either definition provided by Johnson or Webster:

Barbarisme. s.m. Faute de langage qui consiste, soit à se servir de mots forgés ou altérés, comme, Un visage rébarbaratif, pour, rébarbatif; ils réduirent, pour Ils réduisirent; soit à donner aux mots un sens différent de celui qu’ils ont reçu de l’usage, comme, Il a recouvert la vue, pour Il a recouvré la vue; soit enfin à se servir de locutions choquantes et extraordinaires, comme Je m’en ai douté, pour Je m’en suis douté. Le barbarisme et le solécisme sont deux grands vices d’élocutions. Faire un barbarisme. (DAF 1835: Vol. I 160)

A barbarisme has a broad range of meanings, though all of these revolve around a lack of precision or appropriateness; a barbarism is a mockery of proper speech or usage, particularly in terms of morphology, a distinction that sets it apart from a solecism.

The term solecism has a long history, dating back to the Ancient Athenians, who described the dialect of those living in Soli (a Greek colony in Cilicia, on the southern coast of modern Turkey; see Webster below) as being corrupt. Johnson defined a solecism thusly:

Solecism. n. s. [σολοικισμος] Unfitness of one word to another; impropriety in language. A barbarism may be in one word, a solecism must be in more. (Johnson 1785: Vol. II)

In other words, a solecism is a problem of syntax, or sentence structure:

Solecism, n. [Gr. Σολοικισμος, said to be derived from Soli, a people of Attica, who being transplanted to Cilicia, lost the purity of their language.]

1. Impropriety in language, or a gross deviation from the rules of syntax; incongruity of words; want of correspondence or consistency. A barbarism may be in one word; a solecism must be of more. Johnson, from Cicero. 2. Any unfitness, absurdity or impropriety. B. Jonson. (Webster 1828: Vol. II)

The DAF provided a much shorter definition for solécisme compared to the one for barbarisme, again stressing an error of syntax:

Solécisme. s.m. Faute contre la syntaxe. Faire un solécisme. Il y a un solécisme dans cette phrase.

Il se dit quelquefois, figurément et par plaisanterie, d’Une [sic] faute quelconque. Un solécisme en conduite. Il fait dans cette science d’étranges solécismes. (DAF 1835: Vol. II 753)

I find it strange that not one of the three dictionaries gave an example of a solecism, whereas the DAF provided several examples of barbarismes; I would have expected at least a sample phrase or two to clarify the matter further.

Finally, although the word appears infrequently, it is worthwhile to define the term dialect, which is incumbent in both a patois and a jargon. Johnson offers a very basic definition, referring to the different varieties of Ancient Greek:

Dialect. n.s. [διαλεκτος]

1. The subdivision of a language; as the Attic, Doric, Ionic, Aeolic dialects. 2. Style; manner of expression. (Johnson 1785: Vol. I)

Webster’s definition is more comprehensive, even compared to the one given in the DAF:

Dialect, n. [Gr. Διαλεκτος; δια and λεγω, to speak; It. dialetto; Fr. Dialecte; Sp. dialecto]

1. The form or idiom of a language, peculiar to a province, or to a kingdom or state; consisting chiefly in differences of orthography or pronunciation. The Greek language is remarkable for four dialects, the Attic, Ionic, Doric and Eolic. A dialect is the branch of a parent language, with such local alterations as time, accident and revolutions may have introduced among descendants of the same stock or family, living in separate or remote situations. But in regard to a large portion of words, many languages, which are considered distinct, are really dialects of one common language. 2. Language; speech, or manner of speaking. South (Webster 1828: Vol. I)

Webster’s comment on the evolution of a language due to geographical isolation and major political events, such as the American Revolution23, support one of his primary goals for writing his own dictionary; the purpose of which was to promote an American language24, which he accomplished in part by standardizing the spelling.

23 Related to this is the first appearance of a supplement to the DAF beginning with the 5th edition (1798), which included a list of words that were created during the French Revolution. 24 Webster clearly states in the preface the importance of a specifically American dictionary: “It is not only important, but, in a degree necessary, that the people of this country should have an American Dictionary of the English language: for, although the body of the language is the same as in England, and it is desirable to perpetuate

Finally, the DAF defines a dialecte in a manner similar to a patois, with the sole distinction that the latter is associated with the common folk:

Dialecte. s.m. Langage particulier d’une ville ou d’une province, dérivé de la langue générale de la nation. La langue grecque ancienne a différents dialectes. Le dialecte attique. Le dialecte ionique. Le dialecte dorique. Le dialecte éolique. (DAF 1835: Vol. I 547)

It is important to note that according to the DAF, there was little difference between a patois and a dialecte, an ambiguity25 which I believe played a significant role in the birth of the “French Canadian patois” myth. This matter is further complicated by texts like the Abbé Grégoire’s Rapport (1794), who had a rather broad definition for patois:

Nous n’avons plus de provinces, et nous avons encore environ trente patois qui en rappellent les noms.

Peut-être n’est-il pas inutile d’en faire l’énumération: Le bas-breton, le normand, le picard, le rouchi ou wallon, le flamand, le champenois, le messin, le lorrain, le franc-comtois, le bourguignon, le bressan, le lyonnais, le dauphinois, l’auvergnat, le poitevin, le limousin, le picard, le provençal, le languedocien, le velayen, le catalan, le béarnois, le basque, le rouergat et le gascon; ce dernier seul est parlé sur une surface de 60 lieues en tous sens. (Grégoire 1794: 3)

In other words, Grégoire considered everything that was not the French spoken in Paris to be a patois, from dialect to regional language. Furthermore, there is the implication that a patois – regardless of whether it refers to a regional language or dialect – is not modern, but rather outdated, old-fashioned, and tied to the Ancien régime. In chapters two and three, we shall see a number of comments from writers like Alexis de Tocqueville (ca. 1831), Isidore Lebrun (1833), and Maurice Sand (1862) referring to the language of la vieille France still being spoken by French Canadians.

Both patois and dialecte are associated with a particular province or region, such as Gascony, Picardie, Normandy, Burgundy, as noted by Grégoire. In other words, patois and dialecte are

that sameness, yet some differences must exist. Language is the expression of ideas; and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas, they cannot retain an identity of language.” (Webster 1828) 25 Tillinger (2013) examines this ambiguity in great detail, an ambiguity which has led to significant confusion regarding the status and nature of the various regional languages and dialects spoken in France.

26 spoken everywhere but in the capital. The main difference between the two, at least according to the DAF, appears to be tied to socioeconomic class and rural vs. urban speakers; whereas a patois is associated with the common folk and peasants, a dialecte is more often than not attributed to city dwellers, with members of the various socioeconomic classes speaking their own sociolects. Significantly, a dialect was alleged to derive from the national language, i.e. the emerging Standard French, which was largely based on the speech and writing of the French élite. Thus far, the matter seems clear.

However, a closer look at the examples highlights a major problem, namely what the authors of the DAF – and Grégoire himself – considered to be a patois, and what they considered a dialecte. All four of the examples provided by the DAF would now be considered regional languages, as would the bulk of the “patois” listed by Grégoire, unless one were to consider each as a dialect of either the langue d’oc or langue d’oïl (See Tillinger 2013). Yet for dialecte, the DAF referred to the various dialects of Ancient Greek, which, despite their differences, were all considered Greek. In short, the examples given for patois are all regional languages or dialects of these languages that fell short of the prominence and prestige that was accorded to French, though where they fit in is ambiguous.

The confusion with the term patois becomes problematic when it is used in two (or more) ways, which seems to have been the case in Canada regarding the status of CanFr. Regardless of the author’s intentions, patois is a loaded term, and once the word came into common usage to describe CanFr in the mid-19th century, educated French Canadians were naturally confused, and offended by the accusation that they did not speak French. In fact, one of the major arguments supporting the legitimacy of CanFr, the so-called language of Louis XIV (or Henri IV, depending on the source), dismissed the French spoken in France as having been corrupted by patois, not CanFr (See 4.1.1.1).

Overview of the thesis

Chapter One (Corpus and Methodology) is dedicated to describing my corpus and the methodology I employed for this dissertation. In section 1.1, I discuss how I assembled the corpus, beginning with a an in-depth description of the bibliographies I consulted, followed by an explanation of the three criteria I used to limit the size of the corpus, and finally, a list of the various genres of texts represented, along with a definition and representative examples for each.

In section 1.2.1, I will provide a brief description of the theoretical underpinnings of my work, and discuss my methodology, which shares similarities to, though is different from, other recent studies on language attitudes. Section 1.2.2 begins with a review of the methodology employed by Josef Schmied in his study English in Africa (1991), whose approach strongly inspired my own, but given the different nature of my study, I explain some of the major adjustments I needed to make, particularly regarding the organization of the commentary. Finally, section 1.2.3 contains a brief explanation of how I have organized the data in this dissertation, and details some of the difficulties I experienced in organizing said data.

Chapters Two, Three, and Four contain all the commentary on CanFr and CanEn in each of the three periods, together with my analysis of each text: 1691-1838 (Chapter two), 1839-1867 (Chapter three), and 1868-1902 (Chapter four). For the sake of simplicity, each chapter is divided into two main parts: impressions of CanFr and impressions of CanEn. These are further subdivided to discuss in turn the language beliefs and stereotypes that originated in the first period, and then spread and gained widespread acceptance (or eventual rejection) in the second and third periods. The first set of observations are categorized under Aesthetics and grammar, and include the following: 1) Quality or purity; 2) Patois, jargon, etc.; 3) Anglicisms (CanFr only); 4) Canadianisms (CanFr) and Americanisms (CanEn); and 5) Pronunciation. The second set of commentary is categorized under Utility and legitimacy, and includes the following two observations: 1) French Canadians don’t speak English, or British Canadians don’t speak French; and 2) The bilingual problem (CanFr only). Each chapter concludes with a summary of the major trends of each period, namely an increase in the occurrences of beliefs and stereotypes about each language; this will directly lead into the following chapter.

Chapter Five is a global analysis of all the commentary from all three periods, and is also where I present my own contributions to studies on both languages, namely what I have termed the emergence of the Canadian voices. This chapter is divided into three parts. In section 5.1, I summarize all the language beliefs and stereotypes about CanFr and CanEn, discuss some of the possible explanations for their frequency or prevalence in a given year or years, and present the data (occurrences and origins of a given belief of stereotype) in three tables: for CanFr, for CanEn, and for both. For the purpose of comparing the commentary on both languages, the data is presented both in terms of proportion, i.e. what percentage of the commentary belonged to a given category, and in volume.

In section 5.2, I define what I mean by the emergence of the Canadian voices, that is, when British and French Canadians began to assume control of discourse on their respective languages, a phenomenon which is largely attributable to tensions between the colonists (Canadians) and the former colonial powers of Great Britain and France. The Canadian voices are characterized by three traits: the opposition to, or rejection of, foreign opinion; conflict between exogenous and endogenous norms; and the progression from an amateur to a profession approach towards the study of language. I discuss each of these three traits in turn for CanFr and CanEn (sections 5.2.1 and 5.2.2), and provide a number of examples of each (sections 5.2.1.1- 5.2.1.3, and 5.2.2.1-5.2.2.3).

Finally in section 5.3, I discuss whether the British and French Canadian voices developed independently of the other (section) 5.3.1, or whether there is evidence for cross influence (5.3.2), i.e., one linguistic community modifying its own discourse according to what the other community thought. I provide a number of examples from French and British Canadian sources that support both scenarios, particularly for CanFr, although I have not yet found sufficient evidence to suggest that British Canadians were swayed by what French Canadians thought of CanEn.

The conclusion is divided into three parts. In the first part of the chapter, I discuss the answers that I found for the research questions I established in this introduction. In the second part, I examine some of the questions that require more investigation; and in the third part, I propose a number of new research questions or projects that my dissertation raises, particularly concerning the development of language attitudes towards the French and English languages in other parts of Canada and the United States.

Finally, the appendices are comprised of short biographical sketches for each commentator, including (where available) the writer’s date of birth and death, nationality, profession(s), and reason for visiting Canada or writing the work(s) in question.

Chapter One Corpus and Methodology

This chapter is divided into two main sections. In the first section, I will discuss the bibliographies and anthologies I consulted in order to build the corpus, and the criteria I established to limit its scope. In the second, I will give a brief theoretical background on language attitudes, perceptual dialectology, and folk linguistics, followed by an analysis of one study that also employed content analysis, which greatly informed the methodology I have employed, though I have had to make a number of modifications to this, which I shall discuss in detail. Finally, I will discuss some of the difficulties I experienced during the analysis stage, and how I resolved or dealt with each issue.

1.1 Corpus

The first section will examine the texts which make up the corpus. Each subsection will cover either one annotated bibliography or the bibliography section(s) of a longer study, and will include a description of the author’s field of interest, the motivation for undertaking the work in question, and the texts found in each one. When available, I will examine the methodologies employed by the author to compile the bibliography26. Finally, I will mention any instances of overlapping references, that is to say, references which appear in more than one source, which is mostly the case among the French-language bibliographies. In the second section, I will describe the three sets of criteria I established, and then conclude with a presentation of the total number of texts, both by source and by genre.

1.1.1 Building the corpus

Commentators from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean – Europeans (the British and the French primarily), Canadians, and Americans – wrote extensively about Canada, its inhabitants, and the language they spoke throughout the 19th century. These texts range from travel literature, to

26 As we shall see, some authors’ methodologies were clear – Avis and Waterston, for example, were very specific on how they assembled their bibliographies – while others were less so. Dulong’s bibliography, for example, was built on Rivard and Geddes’ earlier work, but it is not apparent how Dulong found all of the texts published until 1966.

30 treatises on pronunciation and elocution, and essays defending – or condemning – Canadian usage. In building the corpus, I consulted the following four sources. While I have consulted other works since beginning my research, such as the bibliographies in Dollinger (2008) and Boberg (2010), I’ve found only a handful of texts that weren’t cited in the four below. See section 1.1.1.5 for a list of these texts.

1.1.1.1 Writings on Canadian English (1792-1975)

Canadian linguist and lexicographer Walter Spencer Avis, who contributed much to the study of CanEn throughout his career27, compiled and annotated this comprehensive bibliography with the assistance of Murray H. Kinloch, a founding member of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistics Association (APLA). Writings (1978) is an expanded and updated version of Avis’ previous work, A Bibliography of Writings on Canadian English (1857-1965) (1965), the first bibliography of its kind (in English) published in Canada. Since the publication of the latter, Avis expressed the desire to widen the definition of CanEn, which he initially attributed to Reverend Geikie’s article “Canadian English” (1857). For this bibliography, Avis and Kinloch pushed back the date to 1792, which saw the publication of George Cartwright’s travel journal. In his Journal of transactions and events, Cartwright included a glossary of terms commonly used by English-speaking residents in Newfoundland and Labrador, which arguably marks the beginning of CanEn28.

As I stated in the introduction, the vast majority of the 723 texts that are referenced in this volume were written after 1930, when English-speaking Canadians began to study their language, which in many ways resembled both Standard American and Standard British (i.e. the King’s or Queen’s English) usage, but also possessed its own unique characteristics. Many of the texts included in the bibliography are not original works, but rather reviews or summaries of academic studies. This surge of public interest is one of the main reasons that the authors decided

27 His most well-known work is perhaps A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (1967), in addition to the numerous academic articles he wrote on CanEn in the 1950s and 1960s. See Writings for his long list of contributions. 28 I personally would propose a date closer to 1840, for two reasons: 1) due to its geographical isolation, English developed in a different way in Newfoundland than it did on the mainland; and 2) the first comments on differences between British and Canadian speech only begin to appear after the Revolts of 1837-1838, as two generations of Anglophones had been raised in the Canadas. See for example James Taylor’s travel account, Narrative of a voyage to and travels in Upper Canada (1844).

31 to update the previous work, which contained only 168 references. The study of CanEn, a largely unexplored field in the early 20th century, saw an explosion of interest after the Second World War, due in no small part to the efforts of several prominent Canadian linguists, such as Avis, Scargill, Chambers, and Orkin, to name only a few.

Avis and Kinloch were concerned primarily with linguistic studies of CanEn. As such, most of the texts in Writings are concerned with lexicon, semantics, syntax, and phonology. There are only a handful of texts covering sociolinguistic phenomena. In the introduction, the authors explain that they omitted certain works from the bibliography: works on onomastics, technical glossaries, texts exploring the influence of CanEn on other languages, and pedagogical or prescriptive works (i.e. manuals of style). They did however include articles on the history of the Canadian Linguistic Association (CLA). In writing the bibliography, Avis and Kinloch prepared a list of sources for the benefit of future researchers, entitled: “Sources of an Annotated Bibliography of Writings on Canadian English to 1975.” This list, which I have not yet consulted, is currently kept at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton campus.

The authors admit that their bibliography was incomplete at the time of publication, and welcome further contributions for another edition29. Over the course of my research, I have come across numerous references to CanEn that are not included in Writings, and for this reason, I believe that an updated bibliography would be highly useful, especially given several major, recently published works on the language, such as Boberg’s The English Language in Canada (2010), and Dollinger’s New-Dialect Formation in Canada (2008).

Since Writings is focused entirely on linguistic studies, there is only one instance of an overlapping reference with another bibliography: James Taylor’s Narrative of a Voyage to, and Travels in Upper Canada (1846), a text which also figures in Waterston (see below). I initially found it strange that Avis and Kinloch only cited one travel journal, as there are a number of travel accounts that comment directly on language in Canada during the same period; well- known British writers like Susanna Moodie (1852) and Catherine Parr Traill (1838), for example, cite numerous features typical of emergent CanEn, which was strongly influenced by

29 The authors included an appendix which contained works published after 1975, even those which they did not have the chance to examine before going to press. Naturally, these entries are not annotated.

32 so-called “Yankee” speech patterns. However, much of the metalinguistic commentary in these travel journals is hidden, or tucked away.

1.1.1.2 The Travellers – Canada to 1900

The second annotated bibliography was compiled by Elizabeth Waterston, a former professor of English literature at the University of Guelph, together with a team of collaborators over the course of nearly thirty years. This volume is dedicated to travel literature written (or translated) in English from 1577-1900; the author also included a supplement of references to texts published up to 198730. Waterston, who specialised in travel literature in English, assembled a wide variety of texts, which have proved to be invaluable in my research; although they do not make up the majority of my corpus, nearly all of these texts contain hitherto unseen metalinguistic commentary from Anglophone travellers or immigrants.

The bibliography contains 776 references in chronological order, and includes biographical information (where available) about the author, including date(s) of travel, nationality, profession, as well as topics receiving major coverage in the text in question. Many British travellers and immigrants came to Canada throughout the 19th century, and wrote down their impressions of the country and its people, for the sake of their family or friends back home, or for potential immigrants. These texts can be divided into three categories: informational pamphlets for potential emigrants, tourist guides, and simple travel accounts in the form of a series of letters or a journal. The authors were typically (though not always) of high social standing, including aristocrats, clergymen, businessmen, lawyers, doctors, and professors, among others. None, however, would be considered language professionals, i.e., dialectologists, linguists, or philologists.

Waterston began her bibliographical research for The Travellers in the 1960s during a short research stay in the United Kingdom, where she consulted the collections of the British Museum and the Royal Commonwealth Institute, the National Library of Scotland, and the University of Edinburgh library. Some of the Canadian institutions she visited are the University of Western

30 These are almost all republications of popular works, and first-time publications of hitherto unknown manuscripts or journals, such as Mrs. Simcoe’s Diary, first published in 1965.

Ontario, the Metropolitan Toronto Library31, among others. For the annotations, the author drew upon previous bibliographers’ comments, such as those of Staton and Tremaine (1934), Peel (1973), and Moyles (1976). Only published works were included in the bibliography (so there are no manuscripts), and the author in question must have commented on one or more regions of Canada32.

Since the texts referenced in this volume are almost entirely travel literature and emigration pamphlets in English, there are very few instances of overlapping references with the other three works. It is noteworthy that the opinions expressed in each work are those of an outsider; the only works written by Canadians during this time were travel guides. As we shall see in later chapters, these opinions would have a lasting impact on Anglophones and Francophones alike, who had to subsequently cope with numerous stereotypes about their language, culture, and society.

1.1.1.3 Bibliographie linguistique du Canada français

This bibliography, compiled and edited by Gaston Dulong, is a continuation of James Geddes, Jr. and Adjutor Rivard’s earlier work, Bibliographie du parler français au Canada (1906). Geddes and Rivard were both prominent linguists who greatly contributed to the study of French in North America. They collaborated on the aforementioned bibliography in the early 1900s, and their work was taken up nearly sixty years later by Dulong, a professor of languages and linguistics who specialized in CanFr at Laval University. This bibliography is exhaustive in its coverage of texts written in French of the French language in North America, and can be seen as the French analogue to Avis and Kinloch’s bibliography, though more extensive concerning the wider variety of genres included.

The Bibliographie contains 1054 references presented in chronological order, from the very first text that described the French language in North America in 1691, to 1966, the date of the book’s publication33. Approximately half of the texts are annotated, some more extensively than others. The texts referenced are primarily linguistic studies, and cover matters of lexicon, semantics,

31 This is now known as the Toronto Reference Library since 1998. 32 Canada here refers to the entirety of the Canadian territory, not just Upper and Lower Canada. Most texts do, however, focus on the latter two provinces. 33 By comparison, the 1906 version contained only 584 references.

34 syntax, and pronunciation. Unlike Avis and Kinloch, however, this bibliography also contains numerous references to prescriptive works – which were very popular in Québec in the late 19th century and well into the 20th – as well as travel accounts, and various essays on the language. Dulong explained that he undertook the updating of Geddes and Rivard’s work because it was no longer available at the time, and the number of studies published on CanFr during the 20th century necessitated a newer, more comprehensive bibliography.

In assembling the bibliography, Dulong drew upon what Geddes and Rivard had done, and adhered to their method of presenting the material. The author clearly explains which texts he sought out in the introduction, though he did not specify how he located them. This is somewhat surprising, considering the magnitude of his task. He provides a list of academic journals which frequently featured articles on CanFr – in fact, these articles account for a large quantity of the references in the bibliography – but the matter of how and where he found the other texts, i.e., those not in Geddes in Rivard’s original bibliography, remains unclear.

Perhaps in recognition of this fact, Dulong states at the end of the introduction that the bibliography is incomplete; it is not a complete list of references to all the texts published on CanFr. Nonetheless, the bibliography is impressive, and has been an invaluable resource for locating the numerous texts written during from 1869-1902, which are far more numerous than those written in English. There are relatively few instances of overlap with the English bibliographies, though there are many shared references with the bibliographies of the works described in the following section.

1.1.1.4 Mythe et reflet de la France

The final source that I consulted to complete my bibliography is Jean-Denis Gendron’s essay, D’où vient l’accent des Québécois? et celui des Parisiens? (2007), which contains a number of references to French-language texts that I had not seen before. Since I had comparatively few French-language travel journals, I was eager for different perspectives. In discussing his corpus, Gendron mentioned that he relied largely on Marie-France Caron-Leclerc’s unpublished doctoral thesis, Les témoignages anciens sur le français du Canada (du XVIIe au XIXe siècle): édition

35 critique et analyse (1998)34, the bibliographical references for which are available online at the Trésor de la langue française au Québec (TLFQ) website35, along with biographical information – where available – about each author.

I had already come across some of the 82 texts that Caron-Leclerc studied and analyzed, as some of them overlapped with Waterston and Dulong, but many were new to me. Most of the travel accounts were written by French travellers, though there were a few written by Belgians, whose opinions regarding CanFr and CanEn were quite different than those of their neighbors. Caron- Leclerc (p.7) stated that she consulted primarily Dulong and the various thematic bibliographies in Sylvain Simard’s Mythe et Reflet de la France: l’image du Canada en France, 1850-1914. Simard, a former professor of French literature at the University of Ottawa (1976-1994), and MP for Richelieu (1994-2012), wrote Mythe et Reflet in order to understand the relationship between France and Canada throughout the 19th century, when the former was beginning to “rediscover” the latter after nearly a century of minimal contact.

Simard’s study contains an extensive bibliography (740 book length studies, in addition to several hundred journal and newspaper articles), organized thematically: travel literature, fiction, Canadian and French history, religious history, republished texts (i.e. manuscripts) and documents, social, religious, political, economic, and geographical studies, popular studies on Canada, French-Canadian relations, and language and literary criticism. To assemble these, Simard provides a list of earlier studies, notably Dionne’s three-volume Québec et la Nouvelle- France (1906), and Yon’s (1975) Les Canadiens-français jugés par les Français de France (1830-1939). Since I am mainly interested in travellers’ perceptions of CanFr and CanEn, I consulted only the travel literature bibliography, which is comprised of some 130 texts. Taking into account overlapping references with the other bibliographies, I found a total of 49 texts.

1.1.1.5 Other texts

While many of the texts referenced in the aforementioned bibliographies were available at the various libraries in the University of Toronto system, I was fortunate to find scanned copies of

34 Gendron was one of Caron-Leclerc’s thesis supervisors, along with Raymond Mougeon and Claude Poirier. 35 www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/quebetext/ouvrages_voyageurs.asp.

36 the texts online. I frequently employed the following three sites: the Internet Archive36, Google Books37, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France’s digital library Gallica38. Occasionally when looking for one author’s book, I would come across other texts written by that author which were not referenced in any of the bibliographies. While a small contribution (19 texts) to my corpus, this illustrates that all of the bibliographies I used should be updated to account for items that were missed during their compilation.

In addition to the main bibliographies, I also consulted a number of anthologies and academic articles which contained references to texts not found in any of the bibliographies. The anthologies Le Français au Québec: 400 ans d’histoire et de vie (2000) and Gerald M. Craig’s Early Travellers in Canada, 1791-1867 (1955) contained a few key, early references to CanFr, and Chambers (1993, 2004) also included a few early texts that discussed CanEn, including the first history on Upper Canada, William Canniff’s History of the Settlement of Upper Canada (1869).

Finally, I was able to locate a few texts by references provided in the original literature, or primary sources. The most significant example of this would be Anna Jameson’s citation of a long passage from Washington Irving’s Astoria (1836), in which he describes the language spoken by some voyageurs. This is particularly significant because it clearly demonstrates that commentators were aware of – and in some cases, quite familiar with39 – contemporary works relating to Canada. Maximilien Bibaud’s Le Mémorial des vicissitudes et des progrès de la langue française en Canada (1879) also contained two of the earliest references to the quality and pronunciation written by French Canadians: a pair of articles that appeared in Michel Bibaud’s newspaper L’Aurore in 1817. As we shall see in Chapter Four, the numerous popular studies on Canada were informed almost entirely by earlier travel journals.

In total, I found 19 texts outside of the four main bibliographies, and I am certain that there are more, due to the rarity or unavailability of the original editions. To lend support to this claim, there are several texts that I have not been able to locate, despite references to them in one or

36 www.archive.org. 37 www.books.google.com 38 www.gallica.bnf.fr 39 This sometimes manifested itself in the copying of the source material, often without credit to the original author.

37 more of the bibliographies, the most notable example being Francisque Michel’s infamous (evidently untitled) article on CanFr, which was published in the early 1870s in the Revue Britannique. A few of the journals from the 19th century were not available in electronic format, or through inter-library loan. The Anglo-American Magazine40, for example, saw numerous runs from the 1840s to the first decade of the 20th century, but only a scarce few volumes are available. The texts that I have not been able to locate, however, are very few in number and therefore would not have constituted a significant part of my corpus.

1.1.2 Refining the corpus

The sum total of the texts referenced in the aforementioned sources represents a vast corpus: 2765 total references. Even taking into consideration overlapping references, this would only reduce this number by approximately 400. Only some of these provide information that reflects the authors’ attitude towards CanEn and CanFr. In the following sections, I will discuss the three sets of criteria I have established, defining each and providing several examples. These criteria were necessary not only to reduce the overall number of texts, but also to eliminate any texts that fell into a “grey area”, i.e. those that contained fascinating cultural commentary, but no actual discussion of language.

1.1.2.1 Text selection criteria: what is a Canadian?

The first set of criteria I have adopted establishes some basic, essential parameters. Firstly, the term “Canadian” must be defined, in terms of geography, language, and ethnicity, a definition which is rather different from the contemporary view of Canadian identity, though in line with 18th and 19th century views. Secondly, it is important to specify the language of the texts themselves. Here then is the first set of criteria:

1. Geography. The texts in my corpus must examine the English or French spoken in the territories now corresponding to the provinces of Ontario and Québec; these territories were alternately known as the Province of Québec (1763-1791), Upper and Lower Canada (1792-1841), and the United Province of Canada (divided into Canada

40 Perhaps the most incarnation of the Anglo-American Magazine was the monthly founded by Irish-Canadian publisher Thomas Maclear (1816-1898) in 1852, and which lasted until 1855. An unrelated publication sharing the same name began publication ca. 1900 in London.

East and Canada West), or simply, the Canadas (1841-1867)41. Many of the texts referenced in the bibliographies discuss the Maritimes provinces42, the Canadian West or the Northwest Territories, but do not fall within the scope of my research, so I have omitted them from the pool of texts.

2. Linguistic population. The text must describe the English- or French-speaking inhabitants of the Canadas, i.e., Canadians. Much like the changing names of the provinces, the residents of the Canadas were referred to by several names throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Initially, “Canadian” referred exclusively to the French- speaking inhabitants of both provinces, and this is the way the term was used throughout most of the 19th century. Concurrently, the term “French Canadian” first appeared in the early 1800s, and gradually became the standard term following Confederation. The term “Québécois”, however, was rarely used before the mid-20th century; for this reason, I will employ the term “French Canadian”.

As for English-speaking Canadians, they were initially referred to as British (or English, Scottish, Irish), British Canadians, and finally, simply Canadians43. For the sake of simplicity, I will generally employ the term “British Canadians” throughout this dissertation for those of British descent, which includes the descendants of American Loyalists, residing in the Canadas. However, there are a considerable number of references to “Yankees” residing in Upper Canada during the 19th century, a largely pejorative term which refers primarily to the descendants of the American Loyalists. I will make this distinction only when necessary.

Unless relevant in some way to a discussion of either language, references to other ethnic or national groups (First Nations, Europeans, Americans) are not included. I

41 Despite the official name change in 1841, and later in 1867, many commentators still employed the terms Upper and Lower Canada, even until the end of the 19th century. The catch-all term Canada is occasionally used, though it is not always clear to which one the author is referring; for this reason, the cities the author visits take on a much more important role, at least for this study. 42 I have found numerous observations on both Acadian French (AcFr) and Métis French (MétFr), which could form the basis for a similar study, particularly in the latter half of the 19th century. 43 No one is identified as an Ontarian; if a distinction needed to be made between Francophone and Anglophone, the commentator would often write “English-speaking Canadian,” or “English-speaking resident of Ontario.”

have, however, found a significant number of texts describing the French spoken by various First Nations living in the Canadas; these will be the subject of a future study.

3. Language of the text. The text in question must be written or translated in either French or English during one of the three periods. While a travel account written by a Spanish or South American writer would be interesting in many ways, such a text falls somewhat outside the purview of the present study. While there are not a large number of translated texts in my corpus, the ones that were are of particular note due both to their popularity, and the speed at which they were translated into various languages; Irishman Isaac Weld’s travel journal (1799) was translated into five languages within a year. The number of translated texts in my corpus is minimal; I will address these in the appropriate section.

4. Time. The text in question must have been published during one of the three periods, 1691-1838, 1839-1867, or 1868-1902. The reason for this restriction is that I want to determine both the progression of language beliefs and stereotypes about both languages, as well as contemporary reactions to these. Therefore, I have excluded any texts first published in the 20th century; this includes a number of travel journals and descriptive works discussed in Dulong and Caron-Leclerc, such as Alexis de Tocqueville (c. 1831), and Pehr Kalm (1753-61). I will make references to these texts as necessary, however, as they do contain a wealth of metalinguistic commentary, and help shed light on contemporary views of the languages.

1.1.2.2 Information-based criteria

While many commentators wrote about Canadians and their language, only some of those evaluated – or passed judgment on – the speech. Specifically, I looked for words that had a clear positive or negative connotation. Some texts contain vital, surprising observations on language and culture, while in others language is treated in a casual, almost mundane manner. The following two criteria account for what I consider to be judgments, or evaluations of language:

1. Judgment of aesthetics or grammar. The author must do more than simply mention the language(s) in passing; he or she must also express some opinion concerning the quality of the language, whether positive or negative. The occurrence of words like

pure, corrupt, jargon, patois, unintelligible, provincial(ism), barbarism, or simply bad, indicates that the author is evaluating CanFr or CanEn. Unless related in some way to CanFr and CanEn, I have excluded commentary on other languages spoken in Canada at that time44. I have also considered the usage of the terms Canadian French, Canadian English, or Yankee English as indicative of differences in quality.

2. Judgment of utility or legitimacy. The commentator must call into question the usefulness or legitimacy of either language. For example, many visitors to Canada were struck (shocked, perhaps) by the usage of both languages in Parliament and in the courts, believing that the use of the French language was unnecessary, and led to confusion. On the other hand, British Canadians were criticized for their unwillingness to learn French, despite the obvious benefits they would enjoy from speaking both official languages.

1.1.2.3 Analysis-based criteria

The final set of criteria has two purposes: firstly, it further qualifies what I consider criticism; secondly, it stresses the importance of the authors’ own biographical information, as most commentators were people of high social standing, and published numerous, influential works45. Isabella Bishop, for example, was a well-known explorer and natural historian who published many accounts of her travels throughout the world, and Pierre de Coubertin was the founder of the International Olympic Committee; whatever they wrote would have reached a wide audience, thereby spreading their beliefs and opinions about Canada and Canadians46.

1. All criticism is criticism. In keeping with the basic tenet of folk linguistics (See Preston 1999) – i.e., that what the people believe about language is just as important as the reality about language – I considered opinions from all commentators, regardless of the relative level of expertise they possess, or the social class to which

44 These would include, for example, languages such as Scottish and Irish Gaelic, German, Dutch, and the various First Nations languages. 45 The biographical information comes from the texts themselves (i.e., what the authors wrote about themselves), The Dictionary of Canadian Biography website: http://www.biographi.ca/index-e.html, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/, and for many of the French commentators, from Caron-Leclerc’s doctoral thesis, which in turn is partially based on Simard’s findings. 46 And as a natural consequence, more people would be exposed to their views on CanEn and CanFr, both positive and negative.

47 48 they belong . Often it is the non-experts who are the most critical of the language, while language professionals tend to have a more favourable, or at least objective, opinion. Secondly, it would seem that foreign49 upper class commentators tended to write more harshly of any suspected “defect” or “impurity” in the language, whereas members of the middle and working classes were somewhat more accepting; as above, note that this is only the case for foreign commentators. British and French Canadian commentators belonging to the educated classes were far more critical of these differences.

2. Reported speech. In many cases, the author would not overtly discuss the quality of the language, but in transcribing conversations phonetically, he or she would underline the difference between the “real” or “legitimate” language, i.e., the King’s or Queen’s English and Standard French, and the “corrupt” versions spoken by Canadians. This method of reported speech is common for both languages, and is far more common in the latter half of the 19th century; there are few instances of this prior to 1850.

1.1.2.4 The texts represented in this corpus

Using the sources discussed in section 1.1.1, and applying the criteria established in the previous three sections, the number of texts that I consulted was reduced considerably, especially when taking into account overlapping references. The following table compares the number of initial possible texts from each source with the final tally, together with the percentage of texts (in parenthesis) used.

47 I will address this point further in the section on the methodology of Folk Linguistics and language attitudes. 48 Though they may not see themselves as such, having learned “school French.” 49 Whereas members of the French and British Canadian middle classes were the most critical of their own language, due to their linguistic insecurity.

Table 1.1 Comparison of initial and final number of texts, by source.

Source Initial number of texts Final number of texts (%)

Avis and Kinloch 723 7 (2.4%)

Waterston 776 105 (36.5%)

Dulong 1054 108 (37.5%)

Simard and Caron-Leclerc 212 49 (17%)

Other N/A 19 (6.6%)

Total 2765 288

The corpus is comprised of a variety of genres, which I shall describe in the following paragraphs. The following genres are somewhat broad categories, though I believe that they adequately account for the different kinds of texts written on CanFr and CanEn during the period in question. I have also included representative examples of each text, in order to illustrate the kinds of works that make up my corpus.

1. Travel literature, immigration pamphlets, and travel guides. Travel literature includes any letters, personal journals, or other personal works that were published for public consumption, as well as semi-fictionalized travel accounts, such as Washington Irving’s Astoria (1836) and Georges Lamy’s Voyage du Novice Jean-Paul à travers la France d’Amérique (1898). Some authors wrote solely about their travels in Canada, others about their extended stays in various countries throughout the world. Representative examples include: Isabella Bird’s The Englishwoman in America (1856), the Curzon brothers’ The United States and Canada, as seen by two brothers in 1858 and 1861 (1862), and Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne’s Huit mois en Amérique (1866). Also during this time period, numerous pamphlets and guides were written for the express purpose of advising tourists and potential immigrants to Canada. Examples include: Mrs. Edward Copleston’s Canada: Why we live in it

(1861), Godfrey O’Brien’s The Tourist’s guide to Quebec (1864), George Grant Monro’s Picturesque Canada: the Country as it was and is. (1882)

2. Articles from scholarly or literary journals, including linguistic studies. This includes articles published in various academic journals and book-length works written (typically) by professionals for an educated audiences; although these articles share several similarities with speeches, essays, and discourses, these works are relatively short (around 20 pages in length), and focus on one specific topic. Michel Bibaud’s “Prononciation de la langue française” (1842), A.F. Chamberlain’s “Dialect Research in Canada” (1896), and Benjamin Sulte’s two-part article “L’enseignement du français” (1886-87) are all excellent examples.

3. Newspaper articles. Though a relatively small percentage of the texts come from newspapers, a number of important French Canadian writers (Louis Fréchette, Adjutor Rivard, Jules-Paul Tardivel, and Henri Bourassa) published many articles defending the French language in Canada in the late 19th century, and well into the 20th. A contributor to L’Opinion Publique known as A. Gélinas published four articles on CanFr from 1879-80, James Roy’s article “The French Language in Canada” (1877), which appeared in Canadian Illustrated News, and William Lighthall’s “Canadian English” (1889) are all representative examples. I have chosen to not include the numerous language chronicles (chroniques de langue) for this dissertation for three reasons: firstly, all language chronicles are prescriptive works (see number 7 for dictionaries) – some of which became full-length books, such as Buies’ Anglicismes et Canadianismes (1888) – and pointed out the numerous faults or problems with CanFr; analyzing the hundreds of these that were written in the late 19th century would be largely redundant. Secondly, there is no English-language equivalent, at least in the 19th century. Thirdly, numerous excellent studies have already been done on language chronicles in the past two decades, such as Bouchard (1988, 1998) and Remysen (2012, 2013).

4. Literature. This category includes any fictional work that comments on language; there are relatively few examples of these (only four), though the information contained therein is worth of attention. The four literary works I have included in the

corpus are: Pierre Chauveau’s novel Charles Guérin (1853), Thomas Moore’s Collected Works (1854 edition), Octave Crémazie’s Œuvres complètes (1882), and Paul Féval’s Le Régiment des géants, suivi de Force et Faiblesse (1889).

5. Essays and speeches. These are most often political in nature, and are written in response to a given event, e.g., the passing of a new language law, or a particularly negative article or book written by a foreigner. The texts that I have retained specifically discuss either refuting claims against CanFr, as believed by outsiders, or promoting a certain cause, such as the acceptance of regionalisms/localisms, the need for the Académie française to incorporate Canadian terms into its dictionary, etc. For example, De Bouthillier-Chavigny’s Justice aux Canadiens Français! (1890), and Tardivel’s La langue française au Canada (1901) are both good examples. Several texts began as a speech read before an audience, as was relatively common in the 19th century, before becoming published as a book-length study; several of Napoléon Legendre’s and Oscar Dunn’s essays were born from earlier speeches.

6. Monographs and popular studies. This includes any book-length academic (or partially academic) study of Canada and the Canadians. Though there are relatively few of these in the first two periods, the information contained within is often of great interest, and allows for a slightly different view of the question of language in Canada. Examples of these include William Canniff’s History of the Settlement of Upper Canada (1869), Benjamin Sulte’s eight-volume Histoire des Canadiens- Français (1882), and Eugène Réveillaud’s Histoire du Canada et des Canadiens- français (1884).

7. Prescriptive, normative, and descriptive works on language. This includes any glossaries, dictionaries, treatises on pronunciation and elocution, etc. In other words, any work that has as its goal correction of language errors or faults – or illustrating that these are in fact legitimate linguistic forms – falls under this category. These became quite popular towards the end of the 19th century, when French Canadians took great interest in the future of their language. Examples of this kind of text include Oscar Dunn’s Glossaire Franco-canadien (1880), Raoul Rinfret’s Dictionnaire de nos fautes contre la langue française (1896), and Sylva Clapin’s

Dictionnaire canadien-français (1894) or his New Dictionary of Americanisms (1902).

The table below shows the different genres that make up my corpus, represented both by numbers and percentages. Since the main focus of this study is outsiders’ perceptions of the French and English languages spoken in Canada, it is fitting that travel literature, travel guides, and immigration pamphlets make up over half of the corpus (54.4%). In chapters 2-4 I will discuss the genres by period, which will show some evolving trends, particularly regarding the increasing importance of certain kinds of texts.

Table 1.2 Number of texts by genre

Genre # of texts % of the whole

Travel literature 156 54.2%

Journal articles 38 13.2%

Monographs and popular studies 27 9.4%

Essays and speeches 26 9.0%

Newspaper articles 22 7.6%

Prescriptive and normative works 15 5.2%

Literature 4 1.4%

1.2 Methodology

In the following sections, I will explain the methodology that I have employed to interpret the data, i.e., the numerous citations from each text, and how said data will be represented in each individual chapter, along with the authors’ biographical information in the appendices. This section is divided into three parts: 1) Theoretical background, where I will briefly outline the various fields of study whose methods I have employed; 2) Categorization of data, which begins with an analysis of an earlier study, and proceeds to the presentation of my own

46 methodology; and 3) Other considerations, where I will discuss some of the difficulties I experienced over the course of the textual analysis.

1.2.1 Theoretical background

My methodology is drawn from three closely related fields: language attitudes research, perceptual dialectology, and folk linguistics. The latter two disciplines are concerned with the attitudes and beliefs about language by non-experts, thus the methodologies employed in all three disciplines are very similar, and often interchangeable (See 1.2.2). Given that perceptual dialectology and folk linguistics are so similar in methodology and purpose, I have chosen to describe them together. Finally, I will discuss the methodological approaches common to each field of study, and specifically, the basic methodology that I have adopted: content analysis.

1.2.1.1 Language attitudes

Firstly, it is necessary to define the term “language attitude.” There are several definitions of attitude that have been put forth since the early 20th century, most drawing from psychology; I find myself in agreement with Welsh linguist Peter Garrett (2010)50, who draws upon Sarnoff’s definition of attitude: “a disposition to react favourably or unfavourably to a class of objects.” (Sarnoff 1970: 279) The objects in this case are, then, the language and the people who speak it. According to Garrett, the use of the term disposition in the definition is important: “as a ‘disposition’, an attitude can be seen as having a degree of stability that allows it to be identified.” (Garrett 2010: 20) In other words, dispositions are more fixed or grounded than other psychological concepts, so a researcher can identify it more readily; otherwise, language attitude research would be vague, constantly fluctuating, and ultimately meaningless.

Ryan, Giles, and Hewstone (1988) proposed three assessment tools for studying language attitudes: 1) (content) analysis of societal treatment of language varieties, 2) direct measurement, and 3) indirect measurement. Garrett (2010) also briefly describes a fourth assessment method, which is a combination of the previous three. Since I am employing the first approach – content analysis – I will expound on this one only, and cite several examples.

50 Garrett’s book Language Attitudes has had a major influence on this study, both in terms of methodology and general approach to the subject.

The content analysis approach is described by Ryan et al. thusly:

All techniques which do not involve explicitly asking respondents for their view or reactions would be classified under this category. These include observational, participant-observation, and ethnographic studies; demographic and census analyses; analyses of government and educational policies; analyses of literature, government and business documents, newspapers, and broadcasting media; and analyses of prescriptive language books. (Ryan et al. 1988: 1068)

This method is used primarily in cases where the subject in question is unavailable due to restrictions of time or space. Given that I am studying language attitudes during the 19th century, this is the method that I have employed. One example of a content analysis-based study, which is also an instance of societal treatment, was undertaken by German linguist Josef Schmied (1991), who studied arguments for and against the use of English in Africa by examining letters written to various newspapers. In doing so, Schmied was able to categorise the numerous arguments under several headings, which I will discuss in detail in section 1.2.2.1. A second example would be Cheris Kramarae’s study (1982), which focused on beliefs about gender-related differences by analysing publicly available literature (e.g. self-help books, advice guides, etc.) and various documentation. Kramarae examined more than 100 advice books, and through a careful examination of the advice given, a number of widely-held beliefs about gender roles were found, most of which were sexist.

As mentioned in section 1.1.2.4, I have analysed the content of 288 texts from a variety of genres. In choosing the citations, I copied the passage in its entirety, the page number(s), and any information that may add to the author’s meaning, such as biographical details, the location (city, town, rural area, etc.), other interlocutors, etc. The combination of these elements gives a more complete picture of each commentator, and informs his or her attitude towards CanFr or CanEn. In the following two sections, I will discuss why everyone’s language beliefs or stereotypes are important, regardless of their socioeconomic status or level of expertise with language.

1.2.1.2 Perceptual dialectology and folk linguistics

Perceptual dialectology and folk linguistics both focus on the same subject: non-experts’ opinions and beliefs about language. Preston, who has published a number of works in both fields, says the following:

Perceptual dialectology, then, represents the dialectologist’s-sociolinguist’s- variationist’s interest in folk linguistics. What do nonspecialists have to say about variation? Where do they believe it comes from? Where do they believe it exists? What do they believe is its function? (Preston 1999: xxv)

The term folk linguistics encompasses virtually all of non-experts’ beliefs about language: the origin of words, accent, language change, the relative “value” of one language over another, etc.

What is important in both fields is that it does not matter whether these beliefs are erroneous or not; the fact that they are widely-held beliefs is reason enough to study them. Niedzielski and Preston state this in the following way:

[…] folk linguistic beliefs may help determine the shape of language itself. It would be unusual to discover that what nonlinguists believe about language has nothing to do with linguistic change; in one sense, of course, that has been a principal focus of investigation in the more than thirty year old tradition of quantitative (or “Labovian”) sociolinguistics. (Preston and Niedzielski 2000: viii)

Many so-called language myths have been around for centuries, and yet they still persist and continue to shape and influence the public’s perception of language.

The methods employed in perceptual dialectology and folk linguistics are varied, though they tend to involve relatively simple tasks. Preston points out that while studies on language attitudes are getting more and more refined, simple, essential questions are just not being asked:

Though language attitude research has become more and more concerned with careful characterizations of input and of respondent protocols, there are few studies in which the amazingly simple task “tell me where you think this voice is from” was made part of the research. (Preston 1989: 3)

Sample tasks include asking participants to identify a particular voice, imitate an accent, and draw a dialect map, among others.

While none of the 19th century authors I have studied drew anything resembling a dialect map, they recorded other bits of information, which fall under the purview of folk linguistics and perceptual dialectology. A number of authors, for example, transcribed their conversations with English and French-speaking Canadians, in which the latter were shown to speak differently than their European (or even American) counterparts. The visitors, of course, spoke Standard English

49 or French51. Other references were made to Canadians’ (poor) speech habits, the strange idioms they used, and numerous other deviations from “proper” French, i.e. Parisian, or the King’s or Queen’s English. Very few of the commentators were language professionals, yet this did not prevent them from making observations on the languages, despite their lack of language expertise, or even competence.

1.2.2 Categorizing the observations

There are many ways in which I could have organized the criticisms or observations of CanEn and CanFr; throughout the process, I have experimented with several possibilities. From the beginning, the most obvious danger would be to create too many categories, which would prevent a meaningful analysis of the texts. I have found it useful to draw upon the five main arguments that Josef Schmied established for his study on attitudes towards English in several African countries, but have modified it in several important ways. In the following section, I will describe the Schmied’s study, analyse his categorization of the arguments, and briefly discuss some of the examples he provided for each one.

1.2.2.1 Stereotypes, beliefs, and attitudes

In chapter 7 of English in Africa, Schmied discusses language attitudes towards the English language in Africa, where he notes that he means in fact three distinct ideas: 1) language stereotypes, which he describes as “subconscious and affected,” or “idealized abstractions;” 2) language beliefs, which are partially based on fact, and generally manifest themselves when “practical issues are at hand”, such as choosing the language or languages of instruction for primary schools in a country where multiple languages are spoken; and 3) attitudes towards variations within a language (which he subdivides into pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar). Throughout the course of my study of the texts, I have come across all three ideas, each one being more prevalent than the others at certain points.

51 Or at the very least, they believed that was the case; Thomas Anburey (1789) and the Curzon brothers (1862) claimed to have heard two unattested words for pomme de terre or patate, which would naturally call into question their actual degree of competency in the language.

1.2.2.2 Language stereotypes about English in Africa

Language stereotyping is a pervasive phenomenon that is responsible for a number of misunderstandings about a given language, the people that speak it, and the culture in which it thrives. Whenever a language is described as being “easy” or “hard”, “beautiful” or “ugly”, “logical” or “clear”, we are dealing with language stereotypes52. Schmied explains this further:

These characterizations are to a large extent subconscious and it is not possible to explain them fully on a purely rational basis. They seem to be directly related neither to phonological, morphological or semantic features of the language so described, nor to the sociolinguistic background of the informants’ speech community, although both must obviously contribute to the stereotype. (Schmied 1991: 165)

While certain notions such as precision or clarity may have some basis in fact, oftentimes they are taken at face value, and are perpetuated as a stereotype. The latter is of particular significance for French, which has long had the reputation of being a clear, logical language, a belief best illustrated by Antoine de Rivarol’s claim that “Ce qui n’est pas clair, n’est pas français.” (1794)

Of particular interest for this study, is the last part of this definition, where Schmied refers to the characteristics of the speech community. As we shall see in section 1.2.2.4, many of the common stereotypes are actually about the speech community – British and French Canadians – due to the language that they speak. In other words, the language spoken confers some quality upon the speech community. For example, all French speakers are logically-minded, as French is the most logical language, or all speakers of Italian must be good singers due to particular prosodic elements of the language. Such notions are groundless, but similar ideas are very common – and highly influential – in the texts written throughout the 19th century, and well into the 20th.

1.2.2.3 Schmied’s five categories of arguments based on language beliefs

The following is an abbreviated presentation of the five types of arguments that Schmied utilized in his work, along with some of the specific arguments. Schmied does not explicitly state why he

52 It bears repeating that stereotypes are often based on fact. As a language instructor since 2004, a frequent complaint that I have encountered regarding French is that it is “difficult.” Difficult compared to what? French certainly has more verb tenses and adjectival forms than English, for example, but it doesn’t have a case system like Russian, or three writing systems like Japanese.

51 established the five categories; the reader is left to infer – with some difficulty – his reasoning. As such, it is unclear why he considered argument “A” to belong under heading “1”, for example, when it could – or should – belong under another. These headings and the complete list of common arguments can be found in chapter 7 of his book (p. 168-71).

1. Communicative arguments. Schmied notes that these are “closely related to the sociolinguistic environment”, e.g. during the interactions between one or more groups in English. Language is primarily seen as a communication tool, and is judged on its capacity to do just that. a. An African language is more effective for communication than English. b. Complex concepts can be expressed more easily in English than in an African language. 2. National arguments. These are “developed within the context of the modern African nation-state in the attempt to maintain and strengthen it.” In other words, the language is considered in terms of its contribution to the creation or maintenance of national identity, unity, etc. a. Favouring English may create class differences in the nation. b. The discouragement of English language teaching is harmful to our national interests. 3. Personal arguments. These are briefly characterized as being pertinent to the individual or small communities, i.e., the particular benefits a given speaker of the language gains by virtue of speaking it. a. English is useful for getting a job. b. Speaking good English shows that someone belongs to the modern educated society. 4. Educational arguments. Schmied simply states that these are the “most hotly debated” in the newspapers, but doesn’t further qualify these arguments. It seems that the educational arguments presented here are concerned with individual performance, whereas those presented under national arguments concern the whole of education, and the language’s place in the nation. a. If a student is good at English, he is good at other subjects too.

b. Favouring the students’ use of English too much undermines principles of national education53. 5. Cognitive arguments. Schmied declares that the cognitive arguments are possibly the most important arguments of the five, perhaps because these give rise to (negative) stereotypes. a. Knowing African languages only means being less educated54. b. Being a foreign language, English is not suitable for the African mind.

Although this is only a sample of the arguments that Schmied presented, it is clear that there are some problems with his categorization. Since the main arguments were not adequately defined, there are some which seem misplaced; either they belong elsewhere, or a new category is required to account for differences in magnitude, e.g., local vs. national, or individual vs. societal. In the next section, I will present a modified form of Schmied’s categories adapted to my needs for both language stereotypes and beliefs, clearly defining each category.

1.2.2.4 Language stereotypes of Canadians

Most of the commentary that I have found is based somewhat on fact, or at the very least, includes (mostly) objective criticism: noticing differences in pronunciation between CanFr and Standard French, or CanEn and BritEn, that CanEn and CanFr speakers use different words, or that the educational standards were lacking in the early 1800s, etc. However, it must be mentioned that the observers almost exclusively considered Canadian speech as inferior to their own variety. In other words, these foreign commentators believed that BritEn and Standard French were good or normal, while CanEn and CanFr were bad, based on the differences – often viewed as “corruptions” or “deviations” – between the prestige variety of the language and the one spoken in North America55. There are also a number of common stereotypes about Canadians based on the language they spoke; in other words, “Canadians are X because they

53 Here we come back to education at the national level. 54 Again, we have a reference to education, which is not related to an individual’s cognitive capabilities. It may however be a question of perception. 55 It is only towards the end of the 19th century that French Canadians, such as Napoléon Legendre, consider CanFr not only of being good, but a legitimate variety of French. This notion does not appear to have taken root with British-Canadians until much later (1950s-60s).

53 speak Y”. Here are five of the most prevalent stereotypes about French and British Canadians in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Canadians are unintelligent, ignorant, and superstitious, particularly French Canadians. Related to this is the notion that French Canadian women are more intelligent and better educated than the men, who are often characterized as bumbling, or incapable. The latter belief was very common in the early 1800s, when public education was rare in both provinces. An example of this would be Irish traveller Isaac Weld’s comment about Canadian men and women:

Few of the men can read or write; the little learning there is amongst the inhabitants is confined to the women: a Canadian never makes a bargain, or takes any step of importance, without consulting his wife, whose opinion is generally abided by. Both men and women are sunk in ignorance and superstition, and blindly devoted to their priests. (Weld 1799: 241)

French Canadians do not speak French; they speak a patois, or jargon. Anglophone writers used this word primarily to indicate that they spoke an inferior, corrupt variety of French56, whereas Francophones used the term to imply either that it was merely a regional variety (typically qualified as Norman, occasionally Picard or Breton even) of French, or a degenerate branch of the language. Isabella Bishop gives this account of the languages heard on a street in Montreal: “On all sides a jargon of Irish, English, and French is to be heard, the latter generally the broadest patois.” (Bishop 1856: 255)

French Canadians are lazy and indifferent. This is another common characterization of all the residents of Lower Canada in the early 1800s, especially, but not limited to, rural areas. Thomas Hamilton shares his opinion on the indifference of French Canadians: “The lapse of three generations [since 1761] has witnessed no advancement, moral or intellectual, in the Canadians of the Lower Province. They are now precisely where they were at the period of the conquest.” (Hamilton 1833: 361)

English-speaking Canadians are rude and uncouth. This is one of the more interesting stereotypes I found, as the modern stereotype is the opposite. Yet many authors noted the rudeness of the people residing in Upper Canada throughout the 19th century. Susanna Moodie’s

56 Towards the end of the 19th century, this turned into a belief that French Canadians didn’t speak French at all, a fear that some French Canadians shared. See Lacasse (1880).

54 account of life in “the bush” describes many experiences with her rude, Yankee neighbours. The following short passage is declaration from one of the “Yankee girls” that lived near Moodie: “Now, don’t go to call me “gal”- and pass off your English airs on us. We are genuine Yankees, and think ourselves as good – yes, a great deal better than you. I am a young lady.” (Moodie 1852: 63)

French Canadians didn’t learn or speak English, and the reverse, that British Canadians didn’t speak or understand French. When speaking of French Canadians, this stereotype refers to those living in both rural and urban areas, despite ample evidence to the contrary, as those living in major cities needed to speak both languages. British Canadians’ inability to speak French in Parliament or in the courts was often mocked as well. Charles Weld illustrates a common critique of the residents of Upper Canada: “At present few persons in Upper Canada are conversant with French, and consequently Members of Parliament hear long speeches which they do no comprehend.” (Weld 1855: 143)

As I have gone over the commentary, I have come to the conclusion that dividing each chapter into two parts – stereotypes and beliefs – is unnecessary, as it distracted from the primary purpose of this thesis: the study and analysis of attitudes towards French and English in Canada. So while I have ultimately elected to not include strictly cultural or educational observations in my analysis, I will refer to them as necessary. The only times the issue of language and culture/religion/education will be present in the following chapters is when the author clearly states that there is a link between them. For example, several authors describe CanEn as “degenerate” because of its apparent connection with Yankee culture would count, whereas a complaint that X and Y are rude because they are Yankees, would not.

1.2.2.5 Language beliefs about CanFr and CanEn

Firstly, I need to mention here that although I share a common interest with Schmied – studying language attitudes in former British (and French in this case) colonies – ours goals are different; whereas Schmied focused on arguments for and against the use of English in several African countries, I am concerned with the commentary – whether positive or negative – on English and French in Canada, and the ramifications thereof. As a result, the following categories are not presented as arguments, but as observations. The logic behind this subtle shift stems from the simple fact that not all of the commentators presented “arguments” for or against CanFr and

CanEn; although there were plenty of arguments regarding the legitimacy of both languages, especially at the end of the 19th century, far more of the data would be better described as “remarks” or “observations” on language. When necessary, I will make the distinction when a given author is arguing a certain point, rather than merely commenting on some aspect of the language.

Secondly, because of this difference, the categories I have employed are different, in order to reflect better the authors’ commentary. I had originally chosen to follow the five-category model, which I ultimately abandoned in favour of a simple two-category model: Aesthetics and Utility. By the end of this section, the reader should have a clear notion of the major language beliefs and stereotypes common during the 18th and 19th centuries in Canada.

1. Aesthetics and grammar. This heading includes the author’s opinion on CanEn and CanFr, in regards to pronunciation (the Canadian twang or drawl), vocabulary (neologisms or slang, often characterized as Americanisms or Yankee speech in the case of CanEn, Canadianisms and archaisms in the case of CanFr), the patois or jargon question, and writing style (often described as having been “corrupted” by American usage). These are primarily subjective criticisms (save specific, accurate accounts of differences in pronunciation), and are among ones most commonly encountered. a. Language quality or purity b. Patois, jargon, etc. c. Anglicisms (CanFr only) d. Canadianisms (CanFr) and Americanisms (CanEn) e. Pronunciation 2. Utility and legitimacy. This category is concerned with CanEn and CanFr as tools for communication, independent of their aesthetic quality. I have also included normative concerns under this heading, as a movement to legitimize CanEn and CanFr by writing a dictionary, publishing prescriptive works, etc. is a political act. a. Refusal to learn the others’ language b. Bilingual problem or linguistic legitimacy (CanFr only)

My reasoning for the reduction of the categories from five to two is twofold: 1) as I began writing each chapter with all five categories, and their respective subcategories, I found that my

56 initial framework, largely following Schmied’s model, didn’t correspond with the data; and 2) since this is a linguistic study, any commentary on culture, education, and politics when it does not directly relate to the either of the two languages, does not belong here. Reducing the categories clarifies the organization, and will allow the reader to follow the changing discourse more readily.

1.2.3 Other considerations

In this final section on methodology, I will describe some of the major issues that came up during the analysis phase of the project, and explain how the data (i.e., the passages from each text) will be presented, both in chapters 2-4, and in the appendices. The difficulties I experienced throughout the process of writing the dissertation are directly related to the final organization of the data, and the influence is bidirectional: (re)organizing the data led me to question and review some of my earlier data, and an examination of the data spurred me to organize the data in a different way.

The first major difficulty in organizing the data stems from the authors’ commentary themselves. Until the end of the 19th century, when we see a sharp, distinct increase in the number of scholarly works on language being written, earlier observations on language tended to be colourful asides, rather than the main focus of the work in question. These asides, ranging from a sentence or two to several paragraphs in length, did not often lend themselves to neat categories.

For example, some commentators simply stated that the voyageurs spoke bad/corrupt/archaic French and left it at that: that citation would have gone under language quality, and then I would have moved on to the next one. Other observers, however, wrote more nuanced accounts of the language, tying in a discussion of culture, religion, politics, and ethnicity; I initially thought to split such passages up into several parts, and discuss them in turn under the appropriate category (education, culture, nation, etc.), though the results were often confusing, in my opinion. In order to circumvent this issue, I have chosen to cite each passage in its entirety under the most appropriate subcategory: if the author is highly critical of Anglicisms, and happens to mention purity, I would place that passage under Anglicisms. There is often overlap with other categories in each passage, which I will comment on after each one.

The second and third difficulties I encountered in the analysis stage stem from my own deviation from the criteria I established; namely, that the text in question must discuss the language spoken by British and French Canadians, and that the commentator must evaluate that language. I had found another 150 texts that comment on various aspects of Canadians – dress, education, religion, political leanings (i.e. ideology), etc. – but none of these evaluated the language in any way. Also among those texts, I found some where CanFr or CanEn is mentioned, but again, the author made no judgment regarding the language. The elimination of these 150 texts from the corpus was the motivating force behind the simplification of the categories. I have however kept those passages where the term Canadian French is used, as its usage indicates there is some difference between it and Standard French.

Chapter Two Origins of language beliefs and stereotypes

This chapter will discuss the origins of the various beliefs and stereotypes about CanFr and CanEn, which first took root in the mid-to-late 18th century. This chapter is divided into two parts: the first dealing with observations on CanFr, and the second with CanEn. The beliefs that developed and spread during this period would continue to evolve, and eventually be taken for granted by generations of later visitors. As discussed in the previous chapter, I have split discussion of each language into two broad categories – Aesthetics and grammar, and Utility and legitimacy – which are both subdivided into several subsections.

Aesthetics and grammar

1. Quality and purity 2. Patois, jargon, etc. 3. Anglicisms (CanFr only) 4. Canadianisms, Normanisms, and archaisms (CanFr); Americanisms (CanEn) 5. Pronunciation

Utility and legitimacy

1. French Canadians don’t speak English, British Canadians don’t speak French 2. Bilingual problem (CanFr only)

Note that only some of these apply to both languages; therefore, there will be fewer sections for CanEn. In the final section (2.3), I will highlight any emerging patterns from the data.

In total, I have found 50 texts that comment on the aesthetic quality or utility of the French and English languages during this period. The following table shows the number of texts published during this period by the author’s nationality. I have elected to present both the figures for the British as a collective, and for the English, Irish, and Scottish individually. The table is organized in descending order, with the nationalities who contributed the most on top, on those who contributed the least at the bottom. Percentages have been rounded to the nearest tenth of a percent.

Table 2.1 Texts with reference to CanFr and CanEn, by nationality: 1691-1838.

Nationality # of texts % of whole

British 30 60%

English (17) (34%)

Scottish (10) (20%)

Irish (3) (6%)

American 757 14%

French 7 14%

French Canadian 4 8%

British Canadian 1 2.0%

Swedish 1 2.0%

Total 50 100%

It is noteworthy that most (60%) of the commentators were of British origin, almost all of whom (save Jefferys and Anburey) came to North America after the establishment of Upper and Lower Canada in 1792, while most of the French commentators wrote prior to 1760. At the beginning of sections 2.1 and 2.2, I will also present a table showing the number of texts – also organized by nationality and genre – that contain commentary on that language only.

In addition to the issue of nationality, it is important to establish which texts contained commentary on CanFr and CanEn, i.e. genre. The following table presents the observations organized by genre; unsurprisingly, travel journals contain the most references during this first

57 This figure takes into account Theodore Dwight’s two travel books. I will note instances of multiple works by the same author for each chapter.

60 period. Like the first table, and all those to follow, the table is organized in descending order: the genre with the most texts appearing at the top, and those with the least appearing at the bottom.

Table 2.2 Texts with references to CanFr and CanEn, by genre: 1691-1838

Genre # of texts % of whole

Travel literature 40 80%

Monographs 5 10%

Newspaper articles 4 8%

Journal articles 1 2.0%

Total 50 100%

This is not to say that other works were not written about Canada or the Canadians during this first period; rather, that only the above contained commentary about CanFr and CanEn. Although these proportions would change in the following two periods, with monographs, journal articles, and prescriptive and normative works making up a much greater percentage of the whole, travel literature would continue to be the primary source of observations on CanFr and CanEn, right up until the beginning of the 20th century.

2.1 Early impressions of Canadian French

References to CanFr are much older than those to CanEn, due to the simple fact that there were very few English speakers living in the Canadas at that point58, though the situation would quickly change with several waves of immigrants from Great Britain in the first half of the 19th century. By the end of the 17th century, Québec (founded in 1608) and Montréal (founded in 1642) were well-established, and settlers lived all along the St. Lawrence River, well into what is the province of Ontario today. I have found only a handful of references to CanFr before the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), after which there is a long period of silence in terms of

58 Most English speakers lived on the East Coast, in either Nova Scotia or Newfoundland, though even these were sparsely populated during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Halifax, for example, only reached 5,000 inhabitants in the first quarter of the 19th century.

61 metalinguistic commentary: it wasn’t until several years after the end of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) that the number of travelers and immigrants59 to the north increased significantly. Some of the travellers, who often held government positions or served in the military, wrote and published accounts of their experiences in the Province of Québec, or as it would be known after the Constitutional Act of 1791, Lower Canada60. Among the descriptions of wildlife, climate, government workings, and military matters, there is a surprising amount of information on French Canadians and their language. Some commentators were highly critical in their remarks, while others wrote glowing accounts of the Canadians and their language.

The existence of such widely varying accounts on the quality or purity of CanFr during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with an eventual tendency towards negative assessment, are precisely what drove Gendron (2007) and Bouchard (2012) to pursue their own studies on the matter. As we shall see in this chapter, and to a lesser extent in chapters three and four, a consensus was never reached regarding CanFr; in other words, there was never a point at which foreign commentators universally considered the language spoken by French Canadians to be “bad”, patois, corrupt, etc. Throughout the 19th century, we find observers who held CanFr in high esteem – these were more often than not French travellers – or were somewhat ambivalent about the language. In order to understand these comments better, I shall discuss the author’s motivations/ideological biases (when available) for describing CanFr either positively or negatively, which will help to explain why we such a diverse range of opinions among the different nationalities.

During this first period, 46 of the 50 texts that I analyzed contained some reference to the aesthetic quality or utility of CanFr. The following table breaks down the number of commentators by nationality. Considering that very few French visitors were able to visit the Canadas following the English Conquest, the vast majority of the commentators were English speakers.

59 The earliest being the Loyalists; Maya Jasanoff (2012) estimates that around 6,000 settled in Québec, and 33,000 settled in the Province of Québec during and after the war. 60 I will employ the term Lower Canada for the remainder of the chapter, as nearly all of the texts were published after its establishment.

Table 2.3 Texts with references to CanFr, by nationality: 1691-1838

Nationality # of texts % of whole

British 26 56.5%

English (14) (30.4%)

Scottish (9) (19.6%)

Irish (3) (6.5%)

American 7 15.2%

French 7 15.2%

French Canadian 4 8.7%

British Canadian 1 2.2%

Swedish 1 2.2%

Total 46 100%

Note that of the seven texts written by French nationals during this period, four were written prior to 1760. As for the remaining three texts – La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt’s Voyage (1799), Volney’s Tableau du climat (1803), and Lebrun’s Tableau statistique (1833) – only the latter was written from first-hand experience among French Canadians; neither La Rochefoucauld- Liancourt nor Volney were able to visit the Canadas during their years’ long stay in North America. It will be important to keep this fact in mind when discussing these two authors’ works, as they both relied entirely on second or even third-hand information.

Concerning the genre of the texts that contained references to CanFr, the proportions are nearly identical to those presented in Table 2.2; the vast majority (78.3%) was travel journals, with monographs and newspaper articles trailing significantly behind. As we shall see in the following sections, however, some of the richest commentary can be found in the early Québec newspapers.

Table 2.4 Texts with references to CanFr, by genre: 1691-1838

Genre # of texts % of whole

Travel literature 36 80%

Monographs 5 11.1%

Newspaper articles 4 6.7%

Journal articles 1 2.2%

Total 46 100%

2.1.1 Aesthetics and grammar

Travelers to Lower Canada, regardless of their knowledge of French, felt compelled to comment on the language spoken and written by French Canadians. These commentators were chiefly concerned with the so-called “purity” or “quality” of the language, two vague, yet loaded terms that really meant how closely it resembled the French spoken in France (i.e. Standard French); or rather, how they perceived French was spoken in France, an important distinction. Several observers also commented on pronunciation and vocabulary, though these were relatively uncommon until the middle third of the century.

2.1.1.1 Quality or purity

The first commentators who wrote about CanFr praised it for its purity, or striking resemblance to the French spoken in France; specifically, the French spoken by the élite. In fact, it wasn’t until the beginning of the 19th century that the purity of CanFr was called into question, and even then, some writers – both foreign and local – continued to believe that Canadians spoke the noble, though antiquated, language from the reign of Louis XIV. As we shall see in the following two chapters, opinions on this matter would change significantly, though not entirely predictably, throughout the 19th century.

The first person to comment on CanFr was French missionary Chrestien Le Clercq (b.1641), who first came to New France in 1673 in order to set up a mission in Gaspé; Le Clercq wrote an account of his mission, the two-volume work Premier établissement de la Foy dans la Nouvelle

France (1691). In the second volume of this work, Le Clercq recounted being told that the inhabitants61 of New France spoke excellent French: “Il [Père Germain Allart62] nous assurait que nous y trouverions meme un langage plus poli, une énonciation nette et pure, une prononciation sans accent.” (Le Clercq 1691: Vol. II 15-16) Considering how little time Allart spent in New France, it is noteworthy that he advised Le Clercq on the language spoken there. Was there a rumour circulating that Canadians didn’t speak French well?

The next reference to the language to CanFr comes from another French clergyman, Abbé Joseph Thoullier d’Olivet (1682-1768), who published the work Remarques sur la langue française (1736)63. D’Olivet claimed that CanFr was identical to the French spoken at court:

On peut envoyer un opéra au Canada, et il sera chanté à Québec, note pour note, sur le même ton qu’à Paris. Mais on ne saurait envoyer une phrase de conversation à Montpellier ou à Bordeaux, et faire qu’elle y soit prononcée, syllabe pour syllabe, comme à la Cour. (Thoullier d’Olivet 1767: 40-41)64

From the context, it does not appear that d’Olivet was referring only to the “language of music” in this passage, as he employed the terms “phrase” and “conversation”. Although the push to suppress the use of regional languages wouldn’t reach its apogee until after the French Revolution, this passage reveals a certain amount of disdain for the French spoken by those outside of the Île-de-France; the insinuation that even people across the ocean speak French better than the Southerners is a less-than-subtle jab.

Jesuit priest Pierre Charlevoix (1682-1761), who travelled and lived in New-France on two different occasions, wrote the highly influential, six-volume work Histoire et description générale de la Nouvelle-France (1743). Charlevoix shared Allart’s views, stating: “Les

61 It is not entirely clear from the context to which settlers Le Clercq (or rather Allart) was referring to, as much of the former’s time was spent among the Micmacs, whereas the latter was in Québec for only a few months before returning to Europe. 62 Germain Allart (1618-1685) was a French bishop, was responsible for the reestablishment of the Recollects in New France, a mission which he undertook at the behest of Louis XIV. Allart arrived in Québec in August 1670, and was back in Paris by December of the same year. 63 The edition I am referring to is the 1767 reprint. 64 D’Olivet’s mention of Montpellier and Bordeaux is likely a reference to either the regional languages spoken there (i.e. Occitan for the former and Gascon for the latter), or the regional varieties of French associated with those cities, pejoratively known as patois. L’abbé Grégoire noted in his Rapport sur la nécessité et les moyens d’anéantir les patois et d’universaliser l’usage de la langue française (1794) that at least six million French citizens spoke a language other than French, another six million spoke barely adequate French, and only three million could speak French well.

Canadiens, c’est-à-dire, les Créoles65 du Canada, respirent en naissant un air de liberté, qui les rend fort agréables dans le commerce de la vie, et nulle part ailleurs on ne parle plus purement notre Langue. On ne remarque même ici aucun accent.” (Charlevoix 1743: Vol. I 279) That no observable linguistic changes – or more likely, changes that were so minor as if to be imperceptible – had taken place in over fifty years is astonishing: it speaks to a high degree of linguistic homogeneity, a quality that many later travellers admired about the language, well up until the end of the 19th century. It was in fact one of the major qualities that defenders of the language like Sulte would use to justify the legitimacy of CanFr. See 5.1 for an in-depth discussion of this issue.

French historian Claude-Charles, dit Bacquville de la Potherie (1663-1738), whose colossal work Histoire de l’Amérique septentrionale (1753)66 was published well after his death also observed that the language had not changed: “On parle ici parfaitement bien sans mauvais accent. Quoiqu’il y ait un mélange de Presque toutes les Provinces de France, on ne saurait distinguer le parler d’aucune dans les Canadiennes […]” (Bacqueville de la Potherie 1753: Vol. I 279) In 1760, English cartographer Thomas Jefferys (c.1719-1771) provided the first English-language account of CanFr in his work, The natural and civil History of the French Dominions in North and South America. Like his French contemporaries, Jefferys believed that the language was pure: “It is remarked of the Canadians that their conversation is enlivened by an air of freedom, which is natural and peculiar to them; and that they speak the French in the greatest purity, and without the least false accent.” (Jefferys 1760: 9) It must be noted that Jefferys’ opinion reads like a translation of Charlevoix, which may be indicative of an early acceptance or reappropriation of prior commentary on the language, without further reflection or investigation.

Following the Treaty of Paris in 1763, nothing was written on the quality of CanFr for more than thirty years67. In 1799, Irish explorer Isaac Weld (1774-1856) published a highly popular68

65 According to the DAF (5th edition), a créole is the: “Nom qu’on donne à un Européen d’origine qui est né en Amérique.” (DAF: Vol. I, 345) 66 Bacqueville de la Potherie had been working on the project since at least 1722. 67 An anonymous British traveller wrote a series of letters about his travels in Canada and the United States, which were first published in 1912 as Canadian letters: description of a tour thro’ the Provinces of Lower and Upper Canada in the course of the years 1792 and ’93. In one of the letters, the author commented: “French is much spoken in this town [Québec], but by no means with purity, to instance, in the words lait and beaucoup, they sound the t in the former, and p in the latter […]” (Anonymous 1912: 5)

66 account of his travels in North America, Travels Through the States of North America and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. Weld made a vague comment about the French language in Canada: “The French retain; in a great measure, the manners and customs of their ancestors, as well as the language.” (Weld 1799: 225) It can be inferred from this that CanFr is essentially the same as the language spoken in France; more specifically, the French spoken by the middle and upper classes. Considering that the French Revolution was still ongoing at this point, it is important to note that there was still evidently no discernible difference between the language spoken by Canadians and the French.

In 1807, Scottish painter George Heriot (1759-1839), who briefly served as the deputy postmaster general for British North America in 1799, made a passing reference to “rusticity,” a quality he did not explain, but which can presumably be attributed to farmers, or habitants: “Rusticity, either in manners or in language, is unknown even to those who reside in situations the most remote from the towns.” (Heriot 1807: 255) Although this term dates back to the early 16th century, “rusticity” was absent from Johnson’s dictionary, while Webster did not record a linguistic meaning for the term. The OED gives two meanings that refer exclusively to rusticity of language: “2.a. Of language or literary composition: lack of polish or refinement; inelegance; (without negative connotations) rural character or style. b. An example of this; a rustic word, phrase, or idiom; a rusticism; (also) a rustic composition. Usu. In pl.” From the context, it is likely Heriot (and Lambert, see below) had this first meaning in mind, though since he did not provide any examples, it is not certain.

Englishman John Lambert (b.1775) came to Canada with his uncle in order to promote the growth of hemp in Upper Canada. While little came of that venture, Lambert wrote the popular, three-volume work Travels through Lower Canada, and the United States of North America (1810) with the express goal of providing updated information on the Canadas; incidentally, Lambert’s comments on CanFr were widely known and repeated or discussed by later writers,

68 By the end of 1799, Weld’s book was already in its 4th edition (the only one I have been able to find), and translated into French, Dutch, and German.

67 and remain influential and controversial. In this first passage, Lambert pointed to the corrupting influence of Anglicisms on the language:

This intercourse between French and English has occasioned the former to ingraft many Anglicisms in their language, which to a stranger arriving from England, and speaking only boarding-school French, is at first rather puzzling. The Canadians have had the character of speaking the purest French; but I question whether they deserve it at the present day. (Lambert 1810: Vol. I 87-88)

While seemingly innocuous, I believe that Lambert’s comment about “boarding-school French” is typical of many British and American travellers; with a few notable exceptions, most had learned some French in school, but were wholly unprepared for what they encountered in Lower Canada. On the topic of pronunciation, which was often intimately tied with notions of quality or purity, Lambert went into greater detail, and offered a possible explanation:

The Habitants are said to have as little rusticity69 in their language as in their deportment. The colony was originally peopled by so many of the noblesse, disbanded officers and soldiers, and persons of good condition, that correct language and easy and unembarrassed manners were more likely to prevail among the Canadian peasantry than among the common rustics of other countries. Previous to the conquest of the country by the English, the inhabitants are said to have spoken as pure and correct French as in old France; since then they adopted many Anglicisms in their language, and also have several antiquated phrases, which may probably have arisen out of their intercourse with the new settlers. For froid (cold) they pronounce fréte. For ici (here) they pronounce icitte. For prêt (ready), they pronounce pare; besides several other obsolete words which I do not at present recollect.

Another corrupt practice is very common among them, of pronouncing the final letter of their words, which is contrary to the custom of European French. This perhaps may also have been acquired in the course of fifty years communication with the British settlers; if not, they never merited the praise of speaking pure French. (Lambert 1810: Vol. I 176)

In this final sentence, Lambert made a (erroneous) hypothesis about the quality or purity of French, which evidently was influential among later British commentators: either French Canadians had always spoken excellent French, from the time they first landed in North America; or, their language had devolved over time due to their constant contact with the British settlers, or was present from the beginning.

69 It is not clear whether Lambert was familiar with Heriot’s work, and repeated the term “rusticity” to describe CanFr, or whether it was coincidence.

In 1817, American writer Joseph Sansom (1766-1826), a member of the American Philosophical Society, emphatically stated that the language spoken in Canada was not a patois, though conceded it was not exactly Standard French:

The French tongue, however, has been very little deteriorated in Canada. The Peasantry coming from different provinces, left their respective allotments of the ‘patois de chez nous’ behind them, in the land of their ancestors; and their Posterity now speak but one language, which is very tolerable French. (Sansom 1817: 240)

It can be inferred from this passage that there were observable differences between CanFr and Standard French; otherwise Sansom would not have bothered to mention it. The qualifier “very little deteriorated” would suggest that the language had deviated from the “good” French in some way. As for “very tolerable French,” it is unknown what Sansom meant, as he provided no examples to support his belief; evidently, it was not “bad” French.

In 1819, Yale professor of chemistry Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864) took a short trip to Québec, and published his account of this trip, Remarks made on a short tour between Hartford and Québec in 1820. In the following long passage, Silliman compared CanFr favorably to the speech of the lower and working classes in other countries:

It is conceded, I believe, that the French gentry in Canada speak and write the language with purity. We heard an eminent French gentleman, at the agricultural dinner, sing ‘God save the King’ in French; but it is often said, that the common French Canadians speak only a spurious and corrupted French, having only a remote resemblance to that of France. But there seems reason to doubt the correctness of this opinion. Mr. W------, who, in youth, learned to speak the French language in France, not only found no difficulty in conversing with the common people – (and we had considerable intercourse with them) – but he gives it as his opinion, that the French spoken by them is, if anything, more pure than that used by the country people in France, and that it is as good as the English spoken by the common classes of society in the United States. In many instances, the phraseology of the country people was considered as remarkably apposite, and even, occasionally, elegant as I have already quoted the opinion of Charlevoix on this point; and there seems to have been, in this respect, very little change, since his time. (Silliman 1820: 363)

Of the texts currently available, Silliman was the first to make the distinction between the speech of upper and lower class French Canadians; not only did members of the upper classes and the clergy speak excellent French on account of their education, but so did rural Canadians, or

69 habitants, with only some deviation from what was considered “good” French, contrary to the belief of some commentators.

In 1821, Scottish doctor John Howison (1797-1859) commented on the voyageurs’ speech, which was often derided through the use of numerous derogatory epithets: “They [the boat’s crew] had kindled a fire upon the beach, and were making ready supper. Some reclined around the fire, talking barbarous French, and uttering the most horrible oaths.” (Howison 1821: 41) For Howison, it appears that the voyageurs’ French was not barbarous because of their vulgarity, though that certainly was part of the problem, but due to some quality CanFr had come to possess, i.e., barbarisms. In 1826, English traveller Charles Henry Wilson (dates unknown) made a similar observation:

It is a compliment due to the Canadians employed in navigating the numerous boats and batteaux [sic] up and down this fine, this second river in the world, that no men on earth labour more; yet the ditty (in corrupt French) serves as a stimulus to exertion. (Wilson 1826: 50)

It is possible that both commentators are referring to the influence of First Nations languages on CanFr – namely lexical borrowing – though it is not certain from the context.

In 1828, a French Canadian known as M.D.70 wrote a short article entitled “Mes Pensées”, which appeared in La bibliothèque canadienne71. The author lamented the state of the language in Canada, citing solecisms, problems of pronunciation, and the influence of Anglicisms:

Rien ne dépare tant un idiome que les mots et les tours barbares qu’on y introduit mal à propos; et les personnes qui ont à cœur la pureté de leur langue devraient réprouver de tout leur pouvoir, et tourner en ridicule, cette manie d’anglifier le français, qui paraît devenir plus générale de jour en jour. On ne peut s’empêcher d’être surpris, en voyant comment on défigure, dans ce pays, la première comme la plus universelle des langues de l’Europe. Les étrangers se font gloire de bien parler le français; et cette langue est présentement dans presque tous les pays de l’Europe, une branche essentielle de l’éducation; et nous, qui avons l’avantage de la parler naturellement, nous en faisons assez peu de cas pour la défigurer.

70 Apart from the various anonymous authors, “M.D.” is one of the few commentators whose identity I have not been able to document. 71 La Bibliothèque canadienne, ou Miscellanées historiques, scientifiques, et littéraires was founded by Michel Bibaud in 1825, and was replaced by L’Observateur in 1830, a publication which only lasted a year. La Bibliothèque, to which Bibaud was a frequent contributor, contained numerous scholarly articles on Canadian history, society, and literature.

Combien de fautes ne remarque-t-on pas dans la manière dont prononcent cette langue des personnes, qui, vu l’éducation qu’elles ont reçue et les maîtres sous lesquels elles ont étudié, devraient la prononcer parfaitement bien. Que de fautes de construction, et d’Anglicismes surtout, d’autres ne font-ils [sic] pas, en écrivant? (M.D. 1828: 237-38)

While the author does not provide any specific examples, the issue is clear: CanFr had been damaged by its contact with English, and even educated Canadians continued to make “mistakes,” or employed English expressions.

The following year, Sir George Head (1782-1855), a military officer and elder brother to then- Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada Francis Bond Head (1793-1875), made several comments about CanFr in his travel journal Forest scenes and incidents, in the wilds of North America (1829). In this first passage, Head described his travel guides’ rowdy nature:

The guides were boisterous vulgar fellows, who joined loudly in the conversation, roughly intruding upon their neighbours with elbows and shoulders. I frequently withdrew my chair to make way for them; but hints were entirely thrown away upon men so nearly related to the aborigines of the country. They, in fact, knew no better, and speaking bad French, in a haughty, imperious tone, seemed determined to assert a miserable independence. (Head 1829: 106)

Taken together with Howison and Wilson’s descriptions of the voyageurs, the image is unambiguous: uncouth, rude, Frenchmen with aboriginal heritage who speak bad French. Later, Head recounted the difficulties in trying to sleep after doing a portage that day:

The dogs disturbed us; for they ran about and trod upon us; they growled; and twice before the morning there was a battle-royal among them, with the whole room up in arms to part them by throttling and biting the ends of their tails. What with the noise, and the shouting, and swearing in bad French, we were in a perfect uproar. (Head 1829: 142)

As with Howison, it does not seem that the French was bad because of the swearing, but because of some issue of quality that Head does not elaborate on. In the third and final passage, Head wrote about his carriage driver, a young boy:

He had not proceeded far, when he stopped at a house; when I inquired what detained him, “C’est mon [sic] pipe, Monsieur!” Nor would he stir without “mon [sic] pipe;” and I was kept waiting several minutes while the people of the house were lighting it. At last he got it, and, giving a few hard whiffs, cracked his whip, called the horse all the names he could think of, and chattered away and grumbled

in bad French, as if he felt his consequence hurt by the manner I had treated him. (Head 1829: 149)

Although there is a definite trend towards increasingly negative views about CanFr by the end of the 1820s, I have found a handful of references that contradict – or perhaps, ignore – those accounts. For example, French Canadian writer and journalist Michel Bibaud (1782-1857) published a passage from an unnamed American’s travel journal72, which had presumably been translated into French: “Nous pouvons hardiment faire une Remarque, c’est que les Français canadiens parlent leur langage plus purement qu’aucuns autres émigrés que nous ayons vus.” (Bibaud 1829: 223) While it is clear that the author thought highly of Canadian speech, it is less apparent what he meant by the other immigrants; immigrants of French origin, or simply immigrants who spoke French?

In 1832, Scottish politician John MacGregor (1797-1857) made the following observations about CanFr, which highlight the difference between upper and lower class French. In the first passage, MacGregor wrote disdainfully about the language spoken in the marketplace: “The brawling and vociferation in bad French, and broken English, that takes place, might well conjure up the confused spirits of old Babel.” (MacGregor 1832: Vol. II 481) When MacGregor met with the French Canadian élite, however, he was struck by their speech: “They speak French as purely as it is spoken in Paris.” (MacGregor 1832: Vol. II 482) Outside of the comments made nearly a century earlier, this is the first reference to ParFr as being the standard to aspire to.

In the same year, Scottish writer Andrew Picken (1788-1835), published the two-volume work The Canadas, which was based entirely on notes and letters written by John Galt (1779-1839), who founded the city of Guelph in 1827. Despite never having set foot in the Canadas, Picken included two comments about CanFr. In the first passage, Picken pointed out the connection between language, culture, and religion:

Lower Canada, having originally been a French colony, its first inhabitants were French, and their descendants are its present chief occupants, under the general name of Canadians. Speaking a provincialism of the French language, and professing the Roman Catholic religion, the Canadians still manifest an

72 I have been unable to find any information on this anonymous American, as Bibaud provides only a short passage with little explanation. The section in question is entitled “Agriculture en Canada”, in which the author described farming along the Saint Lawrence, as well as French Canadians’ living situations.

attachment to the laws and customs, the institutes of which were originally brought from the mother country; and since the province fell by conquest into the hands of the English, by the liberal policy of the British government their laws have been but little disturbed. (Picken 1832: 49-50)

Like his contemporaries, Picken also commented on the language spoken in the marketplace, repeating what by then was a common set of catchwords:

[…] the habitants, or peasantry, of the province, with their wives and daughters, mingled with Indian Squaws in small carts from Lorette; the canaille from the suburbs of St. Roch, with the rude carters in the city, all vociferating a Babel of bad French and broken English […] (Picken 1832: 207-08)

It is clear from passages like this one that “bad French” was associated with the lower and working classes, whose interactions with the British and the indigenous population had changed their language for the worse, at least in the estimation of certain foreign commentators.

In 1833, British soldier Edward Thomas Coke (1807-1888) was the first to discuss CanFr from the French Canadian point of view. In the following passage, Coke relates what was apparently the French Canadians view of the language they spoke:

If you ask a Canadian in what part of the globe the purest French is spoken, he will reply “upon the shores of the St. Lawrence,” and assign as the reason for such being the case that a patois was introduced in the old country when the canaille gained the ascendancy during the Revolution of 1792, and that the correct language falling, with the princes and nobles, Canada alone, which has not been subject to any such convulsions, retains the language in its original purity. (Coke 1833: 175)

It is important to note here that Coke’s French Canadian interlocutor erroneously believed that the canaille (literally, rabble) were responsible for the Revolution, when it was in fact primarily the doing of the Bourgeoisie; throughout this dissertation, we shall see a number of statements by Canadian and foreign commentators alike that are not based on fact, but rather (folk) beliefs. Unfortunately, Coke did not discuss where or how he learned of this belief; the only other French Canadian to comment on CanFr (Bibaud 1817, section 2.1.1.2) was rather pessimistic about the matter. However, given that Coke employed the indefinite article – “a Canadian” – this would suggest that this was a somewhat commonly held belief among French Canadians. These two beliefs, that CanFr was the purest form of the language, or that it was just on the verge of

73 becoming a patois unless drastic steps were taken, would characterize the discourse on language throughout the 19th and well into the 20th century.

In the same year, British traveller James Boardman (dates unknown) wrote a glowing assessment of French Canadians and their language. For part of his tour through the Canadas, Boardman travelled with an American and a young French Canadian, and the three would often amicably disagree on matters concerning each nation. In this passage, Boardman shared his French Canadian companion’s views on his own people and language:

With this happy mortal, Canada was nothing less than the modern Garden of Eden: its frame-houses were the most delightful places of residence on the earth; the diet of the Canadian farmers was fit for kings; the dialect was one which the Parisians themselves might study with advantage; the religious establishment was a model for all other nations; the productions of the soil were the envy of the neighbouring territory; and even the highway over which we were jolting, at any other season of the year was superb! (Boardman 1833: 388)

It is noteworthy that Boardman qualified CanFr as a dialect of French, and his French Canadian interlocutor evidently considered it in some way superior to the variety spoken by Parisians. Did his travelling companion hold a common Canadian belief, as suggested by Coke’s text? Several pages later, Boardman contradicted somewhat his erstwhile companion’s beliefs:

I have said that my first impressions, on landing in America, were the high character and independent bearing of the labouring population, and the absence of rabble: those on landing in [Lower] Canada were the suavity and politeness of the natives, whose air and manners were as perfectly those of their parent country as was their language. (Boardman 1833: 393)

The commentary about the quality or purity of CanFr during this first period has somewhat surprised me: rather than seeing a clear, unambiguous transition from positive to negative observations about the language, there was no consensus. On the one hand, there are those who believed that lower class French Canadians and the voyageurs spoke bad or broken French, while on the other hand, commentators like Silliman and Boardman found the language spoken in Lower Canada to be just as good or pure as the language spoken in France.

2.1.1.2 Patois, jargon, etc.

The term patois appears in Constantin-François de Chassebœuf (1757-1820), the Comte de Volney’s Tableau du climat et du sol des Etats-Unis d’Amérique (1803), a work which he began

74 writing during an abbreviated stay in the United States from 1795-179873. Volney dedicated a portion of his appendices to the French-speaking population in what was the former Province of Québec, which correspond to the states of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky. While interesting for the political, cultural, and social commentary, this passage is significant because Volney admitted that his notions about CanFr were incorrect: “Le langage de ces Français74 n’est pas un patois comme on me l’avait dit, mais un français passable, mêlé de beaucoup de termes et de locutions de soldat.” (Volney 1803: Vol. I 400-01) It is significant that Volney claimed to have been told prior to his arrival that the Canadians (or in his words, the French) spoke a patois, because all previous commentators deemed it pure, and identical to the French spoken in France75. I have not found any references to a French Canadian patois that predate Volney, though Le Clercq’s commentary over a century earlier suggest that such a belief existed in France. See 5.1 for a discussion of this possibility.

Returning to Travels through Lower Canada, Lambert described the language(s) he heard being spoken in the markets as a jargon: “A curious sort of jargon is carried on in the market-place, between the French who do not understand English, and the English who do not understand French.” (Lambert 1810: Vol. I 87) It is possible that Lambert, as well as Picken and Macgregor (both in 1832), were observing the phenomenon of code-switching among the British and French Canadian merchants of Québec and Montréal, or perhaps even a pidgin. As we have already seen, neither French Canadians like Bibaud nor the British had a favourable opinion of the two languages (or people) blending.

In 1817, we see the appearance of the first French Canadian commentary on CanFr, which were published in L’Aurore76. The first of these was published under the pseudonym “Grammaticus”

73 In 1797, President John Adams accused Volney of espionage, with plans of a French reoccupation of Louisiana. He was deported in 1798. 74 Specifically, Volney was referring to the French-speaking population in and around Poste-Vincennes, now Vincennes, Indiana. Poste-Vincennes was founded in 1732 by French Canadians as a fur station. By the time Volney visited the area, it was part of the Illinois Country, which was still largely inhabited by Francophones. 75 In his posthumously released travel journal Aventures militaires au XVIIIe siècle (1935), French soldier Jean- Baptiste d’Aleyrac completed dismissed the existence of a patois in New France: “Il n’y a pas de patois dans ce pays. Tous les Canadiens parlent un français pareil au nôtre. Hormis quelques mots qui leur sont particuliers, empruntés d’ordinaire au langage des matelots, comme amarrer pour attacher, hâler pour tirer non seulement une corde mais quelque autre chose […]” (Aleyrac 1935: 31) 76 L’Aurore was a short-lived weekly newspaper founded by journalist and writer Michel Bibaud in 1817. It would later merge with Le Spectateur canadien in 1819, before ending its run in 1822.

75 in the 7 July edition (see 2.1.1.5), and the second was written on 24 July, but published in the 4 August77 edition under the pseudonym “un Québécois.” Both authors discussed differences of pronunciation between CanFr and the French spoken in Europe, though the latter also deplored the French language as it was spoken and written in Canada, and highlighted a fear that would hang over French Canadians for well over a century:

Je lis les Journaux [sic] Français qui se publient à Montréal, et je m’apperçois [sic] qu’ils sont écrits avec pureté, et même avec élégance: ce qui me fait croire qu’on ne fait pas chez vous, même en conversant, les fautes grossières que l’on fait si communément ici. Nous comptons surement parmi nous un grand nombre de personnes qui parlent bien leur langue, et qui pourraient la bien écrire: mais il y en a d’autres que vous prendriez plutôt pour des Allemands ou des Hurons qui commencent à bégayer le Français, que pour des Canadiens qui ont reçu une certaine éducation. Les Anglicismes et surtout les barbarismes sont déjà si fréquents, qu’en vérité je crains fort que bientôt nous ne parlions plus la langue française, mais un jargon semblable à celui des îles Jersey78 et Guernesey. (Un Québécois 1817: [3])

In addition to being the first comparison of the quality CanFr with that of Standard French, this editorial marks the first appearance of the term “barbarism” to describe CanFr, a term which was often reserved for describing the speech of the voyageurs, but which would later be frequently employed in the titles of prescriptive works and language chronicles; see Boucher-Belleville’s Dictionnaire des barbarismes et des solécismes les plus ordinaires en ce pays (1855), and Buies’ column Barbarismes canadiens (Le Pays, 1865-66). With the usage of these two pejorative terms, Bibaud painted an unflattering portrait of his fellow Canadians: barbarians who were incapable of speaking their own language properly.

In 1828, the term patois was used for the first time by an Englishman, astronomer and army officer Mark Beaufoy (1764-1827), to describe the language spoken by French Canadians. Beaufoy’s Tour through parts of the United States and Canada, published posthumously under the name “A British Subject”, is harsh in its portrayal of French Canadians. In this passage, Beaufoy emphasized the relationship between their language and customs:

77 In chapter three of Le français au Québec: 400 d’histoire et de vie (2000), Danièle Noël cites the date of July 17th for the appearance of this editorial, but this date is not possible; L’Aurore was published on Mondays (14th, 21st, and 28th in the case of that July). 78 Given the context, it is likely that the author means Jersey Legal French, a variety of French used largely for administrative purposes on the Channel Islands. Jersey Legal French retains many terms from NorFr, which could be what the author was alluding to.

From “Couteau de Lac” [sic] to the village and rapids of Cedars, the road passes along a well-cultivated country, where the language spoken is a French patois; and by a contented and healthy-looking peasantry, who are evidently resolved to leave things in the same state as their fathers left them. (Beaufoy 1828: 117)

While not the first to allude to French Canadians’ conservative nature, the fact that Beaufoy linked cultural conservatism with the term patois is an important one, and would help explain in part later claims that French Canadians only spoke an old Norman patois, or that French Canadians were stuck in the past, i.e., they were not a modern or progressive people.

Shortly thereafter, Scottish solider Basil Hall (1788-1844) referred to the antique quality of CanFr in his three-volume work Travels in North America (1829): “Towards sunset, the sky became suddenly overcast by a thunder-cloud, upon which the Voyageurs, as these boatmen are called, held a council of war, in a corrupted, or perhaps antiquated sort of French, of which I understood very few words.” (Hall 1829: 362) Although previous commentators like Lambert commented on uniquely Canadian words and pronunciation, this is the first instance I have found to the “antique” quality of CanFr, which is ostensibly a reference to what the French language sounded like before the French Revolution.

While we have seen several positive comments about the language French Canadians spoke, there was a steady increase in the number of negative comments about the quality of CanFr, which was thereafter referred to almost exclusively as corrupt, bad, or a patois. In 1834, Swedish businessman and writer Carl David Arfwedson (1806-1881) claimed that the “patois” French Canadians spoke was incomprehensible:

The real Canadians, I mean the descendants of French colonists, are of diminutive size, strongly built, with lively, healthy, sun-burnt faces, and, upon the whole, contented and happy. Their eyes are black and sparkling, their cheeks thin, and the chin pointed. They speak French, but it is a kind of patois, which no Frenchman can understand. (Arfwedson 1834: 339-40)

This statement is remarkable for its stark contrast with other contemporary accounts; while the voyageurs were accused of speaking bad French, and other French Canadians of speaking their own variety of French, neither were described as being unintelligible to French speakers, let alone visitors from France. Even American writer Theodore Dwight (1796-1866), who wrote disparagingly about the language he heard spoken in Montréal, didn’t describe it in such terms: “French, of a harsh and uncouth dialect, is dinned in your ears by market-men and women,

77 watching their baskets of root, herbs, &c. […]” (Dwight 1834: 300) Once again, the image portrayed of French Canadians is one of an unrefined, almost barbarous, people.

The final three texts are of particular interest due to the commentators’ literary fame: American author Washington Irving (1783-1859); Catherine Parr Traill (1802-1889), an English writer who settled near Peterborough, and sister to Susannah Moodie and Samuel Strickland (see chapter three); and Anna Jameson (1794-1860), a prominent Irish writer and world traveller. Later commentators were well acquainted with these authors’ works, and they were frequently referred to; Jameson’s book in particular saw several editions published during the 19th and 20th centuries.

In 1836, German-American businessman John Jacob Astor (1763-1848) commissioned Washington to write an account of the Astor Expedition (1810-1812)79. Astor gave Irving access to his personal notes, and requested that he live at the Astor estate until the work was completed. The following passage is a colourful description of the voyageurs on the crew:

The dress of these people is generally half civilized, half savage. They wear a capot or surcout, made of a blanket, a striped cotton shirt, cloth trousers, or leathern legging, moccasins of deer skin, and a belt of variegated worsted, from which are suspended the knife, tobacco pouch, and other implements. Their language is of the same piebald character, being a French patois, embroidered with Indian and English words and phrases. (Irving 1836: 23)

For Irving – or perhaps Astor – the voyageurs did not speak French, but a language peppered with disparate elements.

In the same year, Jameson travelled from New York to Toronto to visit her husband Robert, who was Chief Justice of Upper Canada at the time. In 1838, James published a journal of her time spent in Upper Canada, the three-volume Winter Studies and Summer Rambles. Jameson spent much of her time in Toronto, as well as among some of the native tribes near the end of her stay. She also described two encounters with French Canadians. In the first passage, Jameson compared the residents along the Thames River (in the southwest of Upper Canada) to the habitants of Lower Canada:

79 Astor’s primary motivation for the expedition was to control the fur trade from Missouri all the way to the Pacific, which put him directly in opposition with the British-controlled Pacific Fur Company. In 1811, members of the expedition established Fort Astoria on the mouth of the Columbia River. The Fort remained in Astor’s control for two years, when it was taken over by the Pacific Fur Company, who ran it thereafter.

The banks of the Thames are studded with a succession of farms, cultivated by the descendants of the early French settlers – precisely the same class of people as the Habitans in Lower Canada. They go on exactly as their ancestors did a century ago, raising on their rich fertile lands just sufficient for a subsistence, wholly uneducated, speaking only a French patois […] (Jameson 1838: Vol. II 280)80

Like Beaufoy and Picken, Jameson saw a strong link between the Canadians’ patois and their adherence to old customs. Later, she recounted meeting a French Canadian in Michigan:

The little hamlet opposite to Detroit is called Richmond. I was sitting there to-day on the grassy bank above the river, resting in the shade of a tree, and speculating on all these things, when an old French Canadian stopped near me to arrange something about his cart. We entered forthwith into conversation; and though I had some difficulty in making out his patois, he understood my French, and we got on very well […] It was quite curious to find in this remote region such a perfect specimen of an old-fashioned Norman peasant […] (Jameson 1838: Vol. III 315)

As a former governess, author, and student of European literature81, Jameson was ostensibly well-acquainted with “school French”, yet still had difficulty understanding CanFr, much like Lambert. The possibility that Jameson herself – and other British visitors to the Canadas – were less competent in communicating in French in non-scholarly contexts than they believed does not appear to have crossed their minds. Traill had a similar experience while travelling through Lower Canada: “I have some little difficulty in understanding Monsieur Paul, as he speaks a peculiar dialect.” (Traill 1838: 15)

In an effort to sum up this section, it suffices to say that travellers to Lower Canada had two conflicting views regarding the quality or purity of CanFr: was it good, or was it a patois or jargon? Or was the reality somewhere in between the two? For a century, every visitor to the province noted that the French spoken there was virtually identical (or superior) to the variety spoken in France. But after Lambert’s work was published in 1810, CanFr was described more and more often as corrupt, bad, and simply not French, such that in a mere forty years’ time, outsiders’ perceptions of the language had changed dramatically. As we shall see in the following two chapters, however, the matter is not so clear-cut.

80 It does not appear, however, that Jameson spent more than a few days in Lower Canada, which casts some doubt on her observations. 81 Many chapters of Winter Studies are dedicated to her commentary on contemporary German, French, and Italian literature.

2.1.1.3 Anglicisms

The number of comments on the existence and negative influence of Anglicisms on the French language spoken in Canada during this first period are few in number, though they are among the first criticisms of the language. The comments by Lambert (1810), “un Québécois” (1817), and M.D. (1828) all warned against the deleterious effects the usage of English words and phrases had on the language. While it is doubtful that Bibaud and M.D. were the only French Canadians who were concerned by the increasing usage of Anglicisms, it is only during the second and third periods that they receive the attention that they merit. This absence of commentary during the first third of the century might be explained by Bouchard’s conclusion (2012) that the years 1841-1842 marked the true turning point for French Canadians and their language, which we shall see in chapter three.

2.1.1.4 Canadianisms, Normanisms, and archaisms

The first comment on CanFr by an English speaker regarding its vocabulary was British soldier Thomas Anburey (1759-1840), who fought under General Burgoyne’s command during the American War of Independence, and apparently witnessed Jane McCrea’s murder82. Anburey published a two-volume account of his travels in North America, Travels through the interior parts of Canada (1789), in which he relates the following amusing account of his attempt to buy potatoes from a French Canadian farmer:

[…] as indifferent a Frenchman you know me to be, I was obliged to be the interpreter on this occasion. I however made the inhabitants understand me very well, till I asked for some potatoes by the usual school word of pommes de terre, and by which I understand they are called in France; yet, notwithstanding the Canadians are allowed to speak as pure French as at Paris, I could not make them comprehend what it was I wanted, the man continually saying Monsieur, je suis bien fâché de ne pouvoir comprendre ce que vous souhaitez; at the same time expressing great uneasiness, as I repeatedly assure him, que j’étais bien sûr qu’il en avait, which seemed to vex him still more. However, in walking over his plantation, I happened to see a parcel in the corner of the shed; pointing to them I said, Voilà ce que je demande, upon which, with great joy to his countenance, he

82 Jane McCrea (1752-1777) was a young woman living in Saratoga, who was allegedly killed and scalped by Native Americans allies of the British. Burgoyne chose not to punish those responsible for fear of losing all the allies, a choice which inadvertently boosted propaganda efforts for the colonists.

exclaimed, oh! Monsieur, ce sont des putat, putot83 […] (Anburey 1789: Vol. I 43)

In addition to the then-unpublished manuscripts of Pierre Potier (1743-58) and Jacques Viger (1810), several other travellers during this period like Lambert (1810), de Tocqueville (ca. 1831), and Lebrun (1833) also noted words and meanings unique to Canada, though these were relatively rare until the middle of the century. More common were comments on the number of Anglicisms, a point that became central to the debate on the legitimacy of CanFr in the latter half of the century.

In 1833, Frenchman Isidore Lebrun (b. 1786) also commented on the Norman influence on CanFr, and stated that Canadians no longer spoke the French of Louis XIV:

Le principal [soutien de la nationalité canadienne-française] est et doit être la langue, et ils ne la purifient pas des défectuosités qui lui sont restées depuis presque un siècle, ou qu’elle a reçues du contact de l’anglicanisme84. Le français que parle le Bas-Canada n’est plus le langage du XVIIe siècle, quoiqu’il conserve une forte empreinte de style réfugié85. (Lebrun 1833: 271)

Lebrun was among the first to stress the important link between the French language and Canadian identity and nationality, a view that became much more prominent towards the end of the century, and came into full force in the early 20th century.

In summary, observers began to notice that French Canadians employed many non-standard terms (i.e., words that weren’t found in the DAF), including borrowed words from English. While not always seen as a negative – later commentators and language activists would fully embrace Canadianisms (like Dunn, Clapin, among others) – the Canadian response to the influence of English was wholly negative; beginning with Maguire in 1841, many prescriptive

83 Here we have reason to doubt the author’s command of French; while patate is certainly one word for potato, the forms “putat” and “putot” are highly unlikely, and likely the result of poor comprehension on Anburey’s part. 84 This is either a rare variation of Anglicisme that only Lebrun used, or a term that refers to contact with the Anglicans (i.e. the British); in either case, I have found no other instances of this word, and it appears in none of the dictionaries of the 19th century. 85 According to the DAF, 6th edition (1835), the style réfugié is: “Le style des écrivains protestants qui, étant sortis du royaume, ont ignoré les changements introduits par l'usage dans la langue française.” (DAF 1835: Vol. II 596) The Protestants in question being mostly Huguenots who were forced to leave France following the revoking of the Edit de Nantes in 1685.

81 works would be published during the 19th century in an effort to purge the foreign elements86 from the language.

2.1.1.5 Pronunciation

Much like we have seen with Anglicisms, there are surprisingly few references to French Canadian pronunciation, apart from those we saw in the first two sections, Lambert’s comments in particular. The paucity of commentary on differences between French Canadian and French pronunciation, while they undoubtedly existed prior to 1841, only became a matter of serious discussion following Maguire, Demers, and Bibaud’s debate (see section 3.1.1.5). However, we can see the beginnings of this debate in the two editorials written by “Grammaticus” and “un Québécois”, both of which discuss in great detail the differences they noticed between the CanFr and Standard French pronunciation. “Grammaticus” began his editorial by citing d’Olivet (see 2.1.1.1), and acknowledging its popularity:

Par où il semble dire qu’on prononce le Français [sic] dans ce pays-ci, de la même manière qu’à Paris. C’est aussi ce que j’ai oui-dire [sic], et même ce que j’ai lu quelque part ailleurs. Mais s’il en est ainsi de notre manière de prononcer, en lisant, en chantant et en déclamant, il n’en est pas tout-à-fait de même dans la conversation. Le commun peuple, et même bien des personnes instruites se trompent par exemple sur le son de la voyelle eu, la faisant grave, quand il faudrait la faire aigue, ou aigue quand il faudrait la faire grave. (“Grammaticus” 1817: [3])

It is noteworthy that “Grammaticus” wrote that “common folk” and educated French Canadians alike had difficulty distinguishing the eu sound. This would indicate that all French Canadians, except those who made the concerted effort to sound more like the French, shared a common pronunciation, or rather, were subject to the same phonological rules.

“Grammaticus” then continued into a discussion of the most frequently cited differences between CanFr and Standard French pronunciation, i.e. the diphthong oi and the problematic e. I have chosen to present this passage in its entirety, as it is rich with information, particularly concerning the examples he used:

86 Or those elements perceived to be foreign; Blain de Saint-Aubin (1867), for example, noted that hypercorrection was a common phenomenon among the French Canadians he met.

Mais la faute que l’on fait en parlant, c’est à l’égard du son de la diphtongue oi, généralement, on prononce les mots moi, toi, et même je bois, je crois, je vois, et quelques autres peut-être, comme s’ils étaient écrits; moe, toe, je boe, ou je boué etc. Cette prononciation est assurément très vicieuse, et il est probable qu’elle n’a lieu que dans ce pays-ci. Il parait qu’en Suisse, dans les Pays-Bas, et dans plusieurs provinces de France, oi se prononce oâ ou ouâ, lors-même que cette diphtongue n’est pas suivie de s, de x ou d’un e muet, ni d’une syllabe féminine dans le corps d’un mot: c’est le son que lui donne Dufief87 dans son Dictionnaire, bien que dans sa Grammaire il lui donne le son de l’è ouvert. Cette prononciation est peut-être aussi fautive que la précédente, du moins quant à la plupart des mots. L’Abrégé du Dictionnaire de l’Académie donne à la diphtongue oi le son de l’è ouvert toutes les fois qu’elle n’est pas suivie de s, de x d’un e muet, ou d’une syllabe féminine au milieu d’un mot, et le son de l’è circonflexe, dans le cas contraire. (“Grammaticus” 1817: [3])

From this passage it is clear that 1841 was not the beginning of the debate about the legitimacy of CanFr pronunciation; “Grammaticus” was well aware of differences in pronunciation, and had consulted authorities (i.e. dictionaries) on the French language to account for these differences. “Grammaticus” closed by explaining the importance of pronouncing the French language well, which can only come from the French:

Si quelqu’un trouvait que je ne rencontre pas juste, qu’il releve [sic] mes erreurs et je lui serai obligé. Mon désir est de bien prononcer ma langue, et de la voir bien prononcer par mes compatriotes. L’art de bien prononcer ne doit pas être regardé comme assez indifférent pour qu’il ne vaille pas la peine qu’on en parle: et il vaut mieux se corriger plus tard que jamais des fautes que l’on fait à cet égard. Je regarde même ces fautes comme presque impardonnables, dans ceux qui ont eu occasion d’étudier au collêge [sic] de Montréal, où l’on a l’avantage d’avoir des professeurs qui, s’ils ne sont pas nés à Paris, ont du moins résidé assez longtems dans cette capitale, pour prendre le ton de la belle prononciation Française. (“Grammaticus” 1817: [3])

For his part, the “Québécois” largely agreed with what “Grammaticus” had written several weeks earlier, remarking that French Canadians ought to pay more attention to the language that they spoke:

J’ai lu avec plaisir la pièce signée Grammaticus dans le 18e Numéro de votre Journal. Je pense comme l’auteur de cette pièce, que nous devrions faire plus d’attention que nous n’en faisons généralement, à la vraie prononciation de notre langue. La manière dont on prononce ordinairement moi, toi, etc. dans la

87 “Grammaticus” was here referring to Nicolas Grouin Dufief’s Dictionnaire nouveau et universel, des langues française et anglaise (1810), which was published both in French and English.

conversation, doit paraître ridicule à un Parisien et même à un provincial. Mais s’il est important de bien prononcer, il l’est encore plus de bien parler, je veux dire de bien construire ses phrases, de n’employer que les mots propres, et d’éviter les solécismes et les barbarismes. (“Un Québécois” 1817: [3])

In other words, while he believed it was certainly important to pronounce the language well, this “Québécois” was far more concerned with the quality of the speech or writing itself.

In addition to the passages cited in the previous sections, I have found only one more remark on pronunciation. Head mentioned in passing a peculiarity (in his estimation) about French Canadian pronunciation: “The Canadians have a way of their own of pronouncing French; thus, la hache they call la hawche, and so forth.” (Head 1829: 160) It is possible that Head was referring to the low posterior vowel /α/; the fact that he mentions it at all indicates that it was different than what he was accustomed to. This particular trait was remarked upon by several later commentators like Kohl (1861), who greatly exaggerated its use. Generally speaking, most commentators who remarked upon differences in pronunciation between CanFr and Standard French believed that these differences were indicative of a decrease in quality or purity; see chapters three and four for numerous examples of this.

2.1.2 Utility and legitimacy

Compared to observations on aesthetics and grammar, there are relatively few, though important comments on the utility and legitimacy of CanFr. British and American visitors to Lower Canada had essentially two problems in communicating with French Canadians: firstly, the latter allegedly did not speak English, which some travellers twisted to mean that they refused to learn or speak English; secondly, the use of both French and English in many different contexts was confusing, and caused some British commentators to question the purpose of the French language in a British colony.

2.1.2.1 French Canadians don’t speak English

This observation can be seen in two related, but different ways: either that French Canadians didn’t or wouldn’t speak English, or that they would use French in almost every context to the exclusion of English. Writing this now, it seems an odd complaint, considering that Lower Canada had been inhabited by Francophones since the beginning of the 17th century. Yet many assumed that since the Canadas were a British colony, French Canadians ought to know English.

That some did not confounded travellers, some of whom recommended against settling in Lower Canada for this very reason88.

In 1799, two travellers – the one French, the other Irish – stated plainly that Canadians did not want to learn or speak English. French duke La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (1747-1827), who fled from France in 1792 and travelled to North America in 1794 for several years, detailed his trip in the eight-volume Voyage dans les Etats-Unis (1799). Despite never having set foot in Lower Canada (though this was not due to a lack of desire to do so; he was banned from doing so), La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt mentioned on several occasions French Canadians’ alleged aversion to speaking English. In this first passage, La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt provided a liberal estimate of the number of French Canadians who spoke English:

Quoiqu’il en soit, tout ce que nous voyons de Canadiens habitans ou matelots, et nous n’avons pas laissé que d’en voir en assez grand nombre, exprime une extrême satisfaction de retrouver des Français de la vieille France, et nous montrent un respect et une prévenance, auxquels depuis long-tems nous n’étions pas accoutumés. Je ne puis rien dire du caractère de ce peuple chez qui nous ne sommes pas encore, mais tous ceux que nous rencontrons sont vifs, actifs, ardens, gais, chantans. La dixième partie d’entr’eux ne sait pas un seul mot d’anglais, et se refuse à l’apprendre. (La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt 1799: Vol. II 149)

Throughout Voyage, La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt wrote positively about French Canadians, though he was convinced that they were almost wholly ignorant of English. In the second passage, he gave a much lower estimate:

J’ai dit que les manières françaises étaient conservées dans toutes les familles canadiennes; que peu, c’est-à-dire, peut-être à peine un Canadien sur cent, savent l’anglais; qu’ils ne veulent l’apprendre; que parmi ceux qui le savent presqu’aucun ne veut le parler, excepté ceux à qui leurs places donnent des rapports continuels avec le militaire. (La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt 1799: Vol. II 181-82)

La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt’s final comment about the military foreshadowed Volney’s similar assertion four years later. Perhaps the military expressions were in fact picked up from the British soldiers with whom the French Canadians were serving.

88 John Talbot, for example, quite clearly stated that immigrants from Great Britain would be better off in Upper Canada, where they would find people more like themselves in language and culture.

Isaac Weld, whose early opinions on Canada later proved to be very popular and enduring, found that few French Canadians spoke English, and those who did spoke it poorly: “They have an unconquerable aversion to learn English, and it is very rare to meet with any person amongst them that can speak it in any tolerable manner; but the English inhabitants are, for the most part, well acquainted with the French language.” (Weld 1799: 225) This passage is of particular interest for two reasons. Firstly, for its use of the term “unconquerable”, a veiled reference to France’s loss in the Seven Years War; despite breaking ties suddenly with France, French Canadians had not yielded their language or culture to the British. The British government would not succeed, Weld seems to suggest, in inducing French Canadians to adopt the English language. Secondly, Weld’s belief that the British settlers spoke French generally well was simply not supported by contemporary accounts, and definitely not in the late 19th century.

Although more common in later periods, there are a few references to a breakdown in communication between French Canadians and the British, because the latter’s command of French was inadequate. In his Letters from Canada (1809), English businessman Hugh Gray (dates unknown) remarks that the British (Canadians) put themselves at a disadvantage in Parliament by speaking French: “The Canadians will not speak English; and Englishmen are weak enough to indulge them so far as to speak French too, which is to their disadvantage […]” (Gray 1809: 101) The sentiment that the British government had been too lenient with French Canadians in the matters of their language, laws, and culture was a common, until and even after the Confederation.

While I have chosen to include only those passages wherein the author makes a judgment about the utility of the language – in this case, French Canadians’ allegedly inability to speak English – I have come across many commentators who noted the ubiquity of French in Lower Canada, and the relatively weak position of the English language. In short, the common perception that persisted throughout the 19th century was that French Canadians either wouldn’t or couldn’t speak English, preferring French whenever possible, despite the fact that most city dwellers had to speak both languages, a fact which is alluded to numerous times in the latter half of the century.

2.1.2.2 The bilingual problem

Travellers to Lower Canada noted that having two languages in use led to confusion, not only for those speaking, but for the listeners as well. For this reason, there was a strong push in the early years of the 19th century for the “defrenchification” of the province. In other words, French Canadians needed to become English. In the October 27th, 1806 edition of the Quebec Mercury89, an editorial written by “Anglicanus” strongly argued for the “defrenchification”90 of the province. I have chosen to cite several passages from this article, as it raises some informative (and controversial) points about British attitudes towards French Canadians at a very early stage. In the first passage, the author alluded to the Napoleonic War as a primary reason for “fixing” the province through assimilation:

This province is already too much a French province for an English colony. To unfrenchify it, as much as possible, if I may be allowed the phrase, should be a primary object, particularly in these times, when our arch-enemy is straining every nerve to frenchify the universe. Gladly would he exterminate every vestige of the English language and the English name. Can this then be a moment for proposing publications that must have a tendency to make the province still more French when it is already too much so. And that in opposition to an English publication whose beneficial effects are generally acknowledged. The reader will not be at a loss to perceive that I allude to a proposed French periodical paper. [Presumably Le Canadien91] […] My complaint, is against the unavoidable result of an unnecessary cultivation of the French language, in a country where common policy requires its diminution, rather than its further dissemination. (Anglicanus 1806: 337)

In an effort to stymy the influence and reach of Napoléon overseas, the author suggested, Canada must become a wholly English colony, both in culture and in language. The author then continued by claiming (accurately) that nationality was directly tied to the mother tongue: “A French education will form a Frenchman, whatever the government he is born under. The man

89 The Quebec Mercury (1805-1863) was an English-language newspaper based in Québec, and was founded by Thomas Cary (1751-1823), who briefly served as secretary to Governor Robert Prescott (1798-1799). The Mercury was strongly biased towards British Canadians, and frequently promoted the idea of cultural and linguistic assimilation, as discussed in this editorial. 90 A much less offensive sounding term was “amalgamation”, though its end goal was the same. 91 Le Canadien (1806-1810, and then sporadically until 1893) was a French language weekly paper published in Lower Canada, whose founders were all members of the Parliament of Lower Canada (Blanchet, Panet, Taschereau, Borgia). Le Canadien was strongly opposed to the English party, specifically the government of James Craig. Acting on information published in English-language paper The Quebec Mercury, who claimed that French Canadians and Americans were plotting against England, the paper was shut down, and its founders arrested and jailed in short order.

87 whose mother tongue and ordinary language is French, on leaving the province, goes not to England, as his country, but to France.” (Anglicanus 1806: 337) In other words, so long as French Canadians spoke French, they would never be “true” Englishmen. Anglicanus concluded by underlining the important link between language, nationality, and the newspapers:

To a certain extent the French language is, at present, unavoidable in this province; but its cultivation, beyond what may be necessary, so as to perpetuate it, in an English colony, can admit no defence, particularly in the present times. Nothing can have a stronger tendency to disseminate and establish a language than periodical publications. Nothing then should call up the support of the public, whose object or tendency is to give that bias to the public mind, and that language to the public eye, ear and tongue, which ought not, in sound policy, to be encouraged. To counteract France we must be Englishmen.

After forty seven years possession of Quebec, it is time the province should be English. (Anglicanus 1806: 337)

While Anglicanus did not explicitly call for banning the use of French in Canada, his message is clear: if your mother tongue was not English – and it ought to be in a British colony – steps would be taken to remedy that oversight.

This controversial piece received a reply a month later in the November 29th edition of Le Canadien. The piece was signed by “Anglo-Canadiense” (Anglo-Canadian), yet it was written in French; the author’s origin would explain his sympathy towards opposing Napoléon, yet he categorically condemns any motion to “defrenchify” the province:

Qu’il soit nécessaire de s’opposer au débordement du torrent de l’ambition Françoise, aucun bon sujet ne le niera; c’est un sentiment sur lequel tous les amis de la liberté doivent être d’accord; et une vérité aussi bien reconnue, qu’elle est universellement sentie: mais avancer que cette opposition puisse être effectuée, même en partie, par un changement de langage ou de manières en Canada, et que par conséquent le Canada doive être défrancisé, c’est une proposition qui, ridicule en elle-même, paroîtra, je crois, également impolitique par les remarques suivantes. (Anglo-Canadiense 1806: 7)

The author proceeded to explain why such a proposition is ridiculous, namely because French Canadians would never cease being descendants of the French colonists, yet that made them no less loyal servants than any other residents of the Canadas:

Cependant au moment de l’indépendance les Canadiens étoient certainement plus François qu’ils ne le sont à présent, les impressions du Gouvernement François

plus récentes; le contraste avec le Gouvernement Anglois plus frappant, et pourtant la loyauté Canadienne n’a pas été ébranlée. Pourquoi donc défranciser le Canada? Pourquoi abolir une éducation qui peut former de si bons sujets? non, les Canadiens, si on leur laisse leurs coutumes et leurs manières, tout en parlant comme les François, et mangeant comme eux de la soupe, ne cesseront jamais d’être ce qu’ils ont été jusqu’à présent. Les Ecossais ne se sont pas montrés mauvais sujets pour avoir conservé l’habillement de leurs pères: les Galois pour avoir gardé leur dialecte et leurs manières primitives, et un Canadien n’en sera pas moins bon sujet, pour parler cette langue, dans laquelle il avoue une fidélité perpétuelle aux Anglois, et dans laquelle il continue de se réjouir de leur succès. (Anglo-Canadiense 1806: 8)

In short, Anglo-Canadiense completely refuted Anglicanus’ claim that one’s language indicates loyalty or nationality: one could speak French (or Gaelic, Welsh, or Irish, or any of the many languages spoken in the British Empire) and still be a loyal subject to the Crown. Although many British travellers would recognize this fact, there are still some who questioned their loyalty, well up until the beginning of the 20th century.

In 1809, Hugh Gray was concerned that having two languages in use for official purposes created unnecessary problems. Gray proposed the following solution: “It seems highly expedient, and decidedly for the advantage of the Canadians themselves, that the English language should be universally prevalent in Canada.” (Gray 1809: 337) In 1818, Scottish historian Eneas Mackenzie (1778-1832) largely agreed with Gray’s sentiment, and expressed disbelief at the minimal effect of English-language schools had on curbing the spread of French:

Language – The French language is still retained by the descendants of the French settlers in Lower Canada. It is evidently in the interest of the British government, as well as of the Canadians, that the English language only should be spoken; but the means of effecting this desirable change have been strangely neglected. English schools have indeed been established in some parts of the country; but few or none of the Canadians have ever sent their children to them. (Mackenzie 1818: 556)

Here, Mackenzie may have been referring to the fact that many French Canadians were taught by the Catholic priests, who had been in charge of education in the province since the late 17th century. Scottish traveller John Morison Duncan (1795?-1825) implicated the Catholic Church in spreading the French language in Lower Canada, which was protected (and promoted) in Montréal:

These academies [Le Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice and New College92], although in many respects useful, tend grievously to perpetuate the French language and Romish religion in the province, and consequently to prevent the thorough amalgamation of its French inhabitants, with those of British descent. There could scarcely be a wiser legislative measure than the establishment of an English college, on a liberal scale and unrestricted system. (Duncan 1823: Vol. II 165-66)

Other British travellers (though not Americans) were critical of the influence of the Catholic Church in Lower Canada, blaming it for maintaining French culture and customs, ignorance and superstition among the rural Canadians, and interfering with national unity and progress. Scottish social reformer and early feminist Fanny Wright (1795-1852), for example, held the same view on the matter:

Concerning the security of the tenure to lie in the ignorance of the people, they [Catholic priests] enforce every prohibition calculated to preserve it entire; such as marrying with heretics, reading any book without the permission of the confessor, and learning the English language. (Wright 1821: 277)

In his travel journal Six Months in America (1832), English cricketer Godfrey Vigne employed a loaded term to describe the usage of both languages in court: “Pleadings may be written in either language, and English and Canadian French are spoken almost indiscriminately in the courts.” (Vigne 1832: Vol. II 171) This short passage is of interest for two reasons: firstly, the term “indiscriminately” implies that neither language had precedence over the other; secondly, Vigne was the first to qualify the language as “Canadian French”, rather than simply French.

I will conclude this section with two short passages from Scottish philosopher Thomas Hamilton (1789-1842), who wrote a rather prejudiced account of North Americans entitled Men and Manners in America (1833), and English traveller Henry Cook Todd (d. 1862), who made a number of insightful comments on CanFr and CanEn in his journal Notes upon Canada and the United States (1835). Hamilton’s views of the French Canadians summed up what many of his British contemporaries believed; namely, that the government had made a mistake in allowing the French Canadians to retain their language, law, and culture:

92 It is unclear to which institution Duncan is referring: McGill – the first university in Montréal – opened in 1821, though it has always been an English-speaking university. It is possible that Duncan meant the Collège de Montréal, which was founded by the Sulpician Order in 1767, though it was never referred to as New College.

When Lower Canada first came into the possession of Great Britain, the latter committed a great error in not insisting that her language should be adopted in all public instruments. The consequence is, that eighty years have passed, and the people are still French. The tie of community of literature does not exist, and the only channel by which moral influence can be asserted or maintained has been wantonly closed. The people read – when they read anything – French books; French authorities are quoted in the law courts; the French language is spoken in the streets; French habits, French feelings, French prejudices, abound everywhere. The lapse of three generations has witnessed no advancement, moral or intellectual, in the Canadians of the Lower Province. They are now precisely what they were at the period of the conquest. (Hamilton 1833: 360-61)

This passage bears striking similarities to the editorial written by Anglicanus nearly thirty years earlier, but almost seems to pity the French Canadians for their lack of cultural and intellectual advancement. For Todd, the use of two languages was more than an inconvenience; it was and would be the source of the Canadas’ problems for many years to come:

This province [Lower Canada] being originally settled by the French, their language is constantly spoken, the continuance of which, on annexation to the British Empire, was a great political oversight, and has contributed, more than any other cause, to the unhappy differences that prevail in this part of Canada. (Todd 1835: 87)

In short, it was believed that the best way for the British government to proceed with the French Canadians would be to eliminate their language and culture using a variety of methods: a mandatory English-language education (made difficult by the ubiquity of French Catholic schools), a steady stream of British immigrants to overtake the native population (a policy first promoted by Governor General James Craig), and a variety of bills that would forbid the use of French in courts, Parliament, etc. By 1838, all of these beliefs were well-known, and enjoyed favour in some (British and British Canadian) circles throughout the century.

2.2 Early impressions of Canadian English

Discussion of emergent CanEn differs significantly from that of CanFr for several reasons: first, there simply weren’t enough Anglophones residing in the Canadas prior to 1791, and those that did were nearly all British soldiers, and therefore temporary residents. In other words, there were no “British Canadians” apart from those residing in the Maritime Provinces. Secondly, because those Anglophones residing in Upper and Lower Canada were recent immigrants, not enough time had passed for there to be any changes in language and culture. The influx of the American

Loyalists before, during, and after the American War of Independence would be one such major change. Thirdly, English was the language of the political, economic, and cultural élite; in other words, the language of the majority. It was therefore never in danger of being replaced or “corrupted” by French; the real threat, it seems, was the Americanization of both language and culture.

For these reasons, the references to British-Canadian language are significantly fewer than for CanFr: only 8 of the 50 texts contained commentary on CanEn, but the richness of the content more than makes up for the numbers. The following table illustrates the country of origin for the eight commentators. Since only the British discussed CanEn, I have shown the figures for England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Table 2.5 Origin of texts on CanEn, by nationality: 1691-1838

Nationality Number of texts % of whole

English 5 62.5%

Irish 1 12.5%

Scottish 2 25%

Total 8 100%

Even in this early period, these commentators found something to critique, especially concerning the innovations or “corruptions” that were occurring because of American, or Yankee, influence on the educational system, which in turn affected the language. As for dividing the texts by genre, there is no need for this period, as all 8 texts that contain commentary on CanEn are travel journals or emigration pamphlets. It is not until 1857 that we begin to see the first article (Geikie’s infamous “Canadian English”) published on CanEn, and 1869 that the first monograph appears (Canniff’s History of the settlement of Upper Canada).

2.2.1 Aesthetics and grammar

Although most English-speakers in the Canadas were recent immigrants – the vast majority of which settled in the two provinces between 1790 and 1840 (See Chambers 2004, Dollinger 2008

92 and Boberg 2010) – travellers noted significant changes93 to the language beginning in the 1820s; namely, the questions of purity, correct (British) pronunciation, vocabulary and “phraseology”, or Americanisms. The contact of different dialects – American, Scottish, and Irish, in addition to numerous English varieties – and languages – Irish and Scottish Gaelic, German, Dutch, and native languages – led to the formation of a variety of English that was neither American nor British, but one that bore features of the two, as well as its own unique characteristics.

2.2.1.1 Quality or purity

The first comment on CanEn comes from John Harriott (1745-1817), a magistrate of the Thames Police, who wrote a two-volume account of his life and travels, Struggles through life. (1807). While only mentioning the English language in passing, his observation is an important one: “[English] is universally understood and better spoken by the whole mass of people, from Georgia to Quebec (an extent of more than 1200 miles), than by the bulk of people in the different counties of England.” (Harriott 1807: Vol. II 13-14) Like earlier visitors to Lower Canada, Harriott believed that the English spoken in North America was of higher quality, or at least more comprehensible than many of the varieties spoken in the British Isles. Later commentators would alternate between two extremes regarding CanEn: either it was a heterogeneous mix of different accents from back in Great Britain, or it was a uniformly spoken by all.

In 1824, Irish inventor and immigrant Edward Allen Talbot (1796-1839) wrote an account of his short time spent in Upper Canada, Five years’ residence in the Canadas. In the following passage, Talbot noted the numerous dialects of English spoken in Upper Canada, and noted the tendency for new settlers to imitate American manners and customs in every conceivable way, including language:

These emigrants, having generally been of the lowest class of society in their respective countries,- and consequently mere cyphers except in their own immediate sphere,- as soon as they arrive in Canada, begin to assume an appearance of importance, and to be quite ashamed of their former unassuming

93 The first comment on CanEn was written in 1807 by John Harriott, though he noted that there were no changes to the language whatsoever, unless linguistic homogeneity could be considered a change.

manners and native customs. The most absurd notions of equality and independence take instant possession of their vertiginous and unreflecting minds. As they [immigrants to the Canadas] travel through the Province and mingle with its inhabitants, they hear the dialects and peculiarities of their respective nations decried and ridiculed, while those of America, both Republican and Monarchical, are invariably defended and extolled. The first, and, as they conceive it, the most essential study in which they can engage in this new state of existence, is therefore to imitate everything American; and so successful are they in their endeavours to copy the example of those by whom they are surrounded, that, before they have spent a single season in the Province, they exhibit the most ludicrous specimens of ignorance and affectation that this or any other country can produce. (Talbot 1824: Vol. II 10)

It is noteworthy that AmEn was praised by some at this point, as many British critics were ferocious in their attacks on the “corrupt” dialect. H.L. Mencken’s American Language (1919), contains numerous examples of such criticisms. This positive appraisal of AmEn, however, was according to Talbot symptomatic of new immigrants’ learned “ignorance” upon settling in North America.

Five years later, Scottish naval officer Basil Hall (1788-1844) noted the opposite in his three- volume work on North America, Travels in North America (1829): “I may here take occasion to remark, when treating of these customs or other refinements, that in every part of Canada we found the inhabitants speaking English, and acting and looking English, without any discernible difference.” (Hall 1829: Vol. I 265) Considering that most residents of Upper Canada at that time were recent immigrants, who were strongly encouraged to settle in Canada following the War of 1812 to offset Republican leanings among the colonists (Chambers 1993, 2004), this is hardly surprising; no one had been there long enough for their speech or manners to change appreciably, especially among members of the middle and upper classes, i.e. city dwellers. As we shall see in Moodie’s account (1852), those who settled in rural areas were quite different from their urban counterparts.

In 1829, Scottish engineer John Mactaggart (1791-1830) expressed his disdain for the preponderance of British slang in North America, and its potential deleterious effects: “The fancy, pickpocket, and vulgar slang of Great Britain continues to increase in America [including the Canadas] and New Holland, and it may ultimately sap the foundations of our noble classical language.” (Mactaggart 1829: Vol. II 324) Mactaggart did not provide any examples of the slang to which he referred, but the fact that he mentioned it at all is important: the emerging CanEn

(and AmEn) were already “corrupted” by slang, and would only further deviate from its “classical” state94.

English reverend Isaac Fidler (dates unknown) served as a missionary in Thornhill beginning in 1832, recorded his observations about life in Upper Canada in the fascinating work Observations on professions, literature, manners and emigration, in the United States and Canada (1832). Fidler makes an accurate prediction about the future of English in North America, stating that Canada would doubtlessly follow the example of the United States:

I will venture to affirm, that there is a greater uniformity of speech throughout the United States, than through any other region of similar extent and population […] In Canada we find all the dialects of England in full force. There is not the same system of teaching as in the States, nor the same extent of traveling. Yet I think it quite probable, that the Canadians will eventually lose the different dialects, in the same manner as is felt in America, and, perhaps, by similar means. (Fidler 1833: 195)

Considering that the English-speaking residents of Upper Canada came from many different places – the United States, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and many parts of England – it is no wonder that many varieties of English coexisted in the early 19th century. Much like English in the United States, a common variety (or rather, a few varieties) would eventually emerge; in fact, by the end of the 19th century, we see an increasing number of comments on the nature and characteristics of the English spoken by Canadians, as distinct from both AmEn and BritEn; see section 4.2 for a discussion of some of these comments.

In summary, it is evident that there are already two conflicting narratives on CanEn: some believed that the language spoken in Canada had been corrupted by slang95, and the presence of multiple varieties of English could be a problem for comprehension, whereas commentators like Harriott and Hall found the emerging CanEn to be perfectly intelligible, the latter believing it to be nearly identical to the language spoken back home. These two points of view will define the discourse on CanEn well into the 20th century.

94 Mactaggart’s use of the word classical to describe the English language is a surprising one, as it refers almost exclusively to the languages spoken in ancient Greece and Rome, or a “classical education”, which also emphasized a good knowledge of both. 95 This would likely have been brought over to North America by lower class immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, and the poorer regions of England.

2.2.1.2 Americanisms

In addition to the comments regarding the heterogeneity (or not) of English in Canada, I have found several references to the (negative) American influence on the language. While not stated explicitly in the texts themselves, this was likely due to Loyalists who settled in Upper Canada at the end of the 18th century, speaking their Mid-Atlantic dialect of English, as well as the popularity of American schoolteachers and schoolbooks in many Upper Canadian schools. Talbot mocked many of middle and lower class residents for their speech his second volume, especially immigrants from the United States. In this passage, Talbot picked apart some of their peculiar phrases:

They [Upper Canadians of American origin] will give you a rapid sketch of the history of their lives, recounting, with a minuteness that is truly astonishing, the various difficulties which they encountered in effecting their first settlements, and concluding the whole with a summary of their present prospects, be they favourable or unfavourable. But it is very difficult to understand them; for they misapply many words that are used in common conversation and mingle in every sentence half a dozen of the vilest imprecations. A wealthy man they term a clever man; hard labour is *** d-----d tough work, a pretty girl, a spry lass, a good house is either a most royal or a most righteous building, - two terms which I presume are not of Republican origin; a man of an irritable or passionate disposition, is invariably, – and, I think, not inappropriately, – termed an ugly man; and a woman who is attentive to her domestic concerns, is always a fine woman.

It is absolutely necessary to spend a year or two in the country before you can obtain much information by conversing with the people; for the phraseology which they employ, to say nothing of the various other modes in which they distort the King’s English, is so different from that of the mother-country, as completely to change the idiom of the language […] (Talbot 1824: Vol. II 55-56)

It was a clear exaggeration on Talbot’s part to claim that American-born Canadians are virtually incomprehensible for the better part of two years; nonetheless, he underlined several words and differences in speech that would come up frequently, and his belief that Americans were corrupting the King’s English was evidently common through much of the 19th century. One example of differences in pronunciation and meaning comes from Todd, who noted the similarities between AmEn and the emergent CanEn: “Many terminations in ine are chanted, as

96 en-gine96 and genu-ine; whilst in the mis-adoption of would for should97 he is joined by the Canadians.” (Todd 1835: 8)

Nowhere was the threat of the King’s English being replaced or changed by AmEn felt more deeply than in the education system; specifically, the policy of hiring schoolteachers from America, who would bring with them their American schoolbooks. One British visitor to Upper Canada was appalled by this, as he believed a pro-American agenda was being promoted in the classroom. Thomas Rolph (1801/2-1858), an English surgeon and emigration agent, was outraged by what he found:

It is really melancholy to traverse the province and go into many of the common schools; you find a herd to children instructed by some anti-British adventurer, instilling into the young and tender mind sentiments hostile to the parent state; false accounts of the late war in which Great Britain was engaged with the United States; geography setting forth New York, Philadelphia, Boston, etc., as the largest and finest cities in the world; historical reading books, describing the American population as the most free and enlightened under heaven; and American spelling-books, dictionaries and grammar, teaching them an anti-British dialect and idiom. (Rolph 1836: 262)

I would like to focus on the final sentence, which really underlines British feelings towards American influence: the idea that children were being actively encouraged to abandon British speech in favour of American English; spelling, pronunciation, grammar, etc. As we saw in section 2.1.2, the English were implementing similar measures to render French obsolete; perhaps Rolph noted the similarities and saw that CanEn was on the same path.

In 1838, Traill made two observations on the influence of American speech and manners in Upper Canada. Echoing Harriott’s earlier statement about the homogeneity of English in North America, Traill compared the speech of the “Yankee” settlers favourably to their English counterparts:

With the exception of some few remarkable expressions, and an attempt at introducing fine words in their every-day conversation, the lower order of Yankees [in Canada] have a decided advantage over our English peasantry in the use of grammatical language: they speak better English than you will hear from

96 Presumably Todd means [aIn] for [In]. 97 This seems as unlikely possibility, given the very different meanings of these two modal verbs; however, this confusion is discussed at length by Dollinger in chapter 10 (p. 249-66)

persons of the same class in any part of England, Ireland, or Scotland. (Traill 1836: 82-83)

This statement in fact mirrors what visitors to Lower Canada said (and would say for nearly a century) about the French spoken by the habitants: “pure”, but characterized by archaisms, provincialisms, and Anglicisms. Perhaps in an effort to bury her faint praise, Traill then harshly criticized these Yankee settlers, claiming them to be poor imitations of the British:

Persons who come to this country are very apt to confound the old settlers from Britain with the native Americans; and when they meet with people of rude, offensive manners, using certain Yankee words in their conversation, and making a display of independence not exactly suitable to their own aristocratical [sic] notions, they immediately suppose they must be genuine Yankees, while they are, in fact, only imitators; and you well know the fact that a bad imitation is always worse than the original. (Traill 1838: 83)

The term Yankee comes up frequently in the travel literature, and it has proven difficult to understand the referent in certain cases – American citizens travelling in Canada, or “Americanized” Canadian citizens, i.e. the descendants of the Loyalists? Typically, a Yankee refers to someone from New England, occasionally used for someone from New York, and it is a term that is almost always used pejoratively, especially when used by a British commentator. However, given the prevalence of this term used by commentators travelling in Canada, a Yankee also refers to anyone displaying stereotypical American traits.

Although she does not employ the term Yankee, Jameson echoed Traill’s statement in describing poor service she received while staying at an inn in Niagara Falls. This was the first of many complaints about inns98 in Upper Canada, which were universally seen as being inferior to their American counterparts in every way:

To those who have been accustomed to the servile courtesy of English innkeepers, the manners of the innkeepers in the United States are not pleasant. I cannot say they ever discomposed me: I always met with civility and attention; but the manners of the country innkeepers in Canada are worse than anything you can meet with in the United States, being generally kept by refugee Americans of the lowest class, or by Canadians who, in affecting American manners and phraseology, grossly exaggerate both. (Jameson 1838: Vol. II 110-11)

98 This would be the Clifton House, built in 1833. Many travellers to Niagara Falls noted their disappointment with the establishment, particularly its “American” character.

In Traill and Jameson’s estimation, then, certain settlers in Upper Canada made the conscious effort to adopt American expressions and pronunciation, which is different than the case in Lower Canada, where French Canadians adopted English words because either they did not have a word for it yet, as the Industrial Revolution led to the creation of thousands of words in a short period of time, or it became necessary as a result of language contact (Parliament, courts of law, etc.)

Of particular importance for this dissertation is the observation that the inhabitants of Upper Canada would imitate either American or British speech and manners (occasionally both), the latter leading to what Chambers (2004) referred to as “Canadian Dainty”, whereas the former would invariably be considered Yankees, even if they had been born in Canada. The coexistence of two distinct linguistic and cultural groups helps explain not only the seemingly contradictory accounts of CanEn in the following two periods, but also the tensions between some British Canadians and the British government.

2.3 Conclusion

In this chapter, we have seen the origins of several language beliefs about CanFr and CanEn. In both case, these beliefs took root quite early on – at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century – and proved to be influential enough that later writers would either quote pages of another’s work, or simply took for granted whatever was already written. This is the particularly the case with the notion of patois, which quickly evolved into a stereotype about Canadians’ speech, and which would continue to be perceived as such throughout the following two periods.

It is also important to note the similarities and differences between the commentaries on both languages. Although the references were far more numerous in this first period – 46 to 8 – the nature of the commentary was essentially the same, and occurred at roughly the same time, albeit with a slight delay for CanEn, for reasons already discussed in section 2.2. Perhaps the most important similarity between the languages is this: whereas CanFr was seen as being “corrupted” by Anglicisms, CanEn was quickly seen as being “corrupted” by American, or Yankee speech; both of these processes were taking place at the same time, and would inform discourse about both languages – as well as reactions to these accusations – for the rest of the century.

While French Canadians would later go to great pains to eliminate Anglicisms in an effort to purify their language, returning it to its “original state”, many upper class British-Canadians would emphasize British speech habits, customs, and dress, in order to accentuate the difference between them and the members of the middle and lower classes, who were strongly influenced by American culture. Both language communities were divided into essentially two different camps: those for language purification (a push towards Standard French, or BritEn), and those for promoting or defending the burgeoning Canadian variety. As we shall see in the following two chapters, French Canadians were much more outspoken about the issue than their British counterparts, but the latter would eventually become heavily invested in the issue, especially in the early-to-mid 20th century.

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Chapter Three Perpetuation of language beliefs and stereotypes

The second period begins with the aftermath of the Rebellions of 1837-38, which led to the British North America Act of 1840 (the establishment of the United Province of Canada), and ended with the Confederation of Canada in 1867. This period, while largely peaceful, saw several major changes to Canadian society, including; a continuous stream of immigration from the British Isles (notably from Ireland as a result of the Potato Famine), the temporary banning of the French language from official government use99, the reestablishment of official communication and cooperation between French Canadians and France100, and the not-so-distant threat posed by the American Civil War (1861-1865). Tourism to the Canadas also increased during this time, with travellers writing accounts of their travels: while some wrote “sketches,” “rambles,” or “tramps,” throughout the provinces, others focused more on practical matters: military preparedness, education, immigration, economy, and national unity.

While analyzing the commentary on both languages, I have noticed a few major trends that illustrate the differences and similarities between this period and the previous one. Firstly, there was a definite increase in the amount of (negative) commentary on both languages, with commentators being especially critical of differences in pronunciation, the influence of AmEn and BritEn, and quality or purity. Secondly, comments on linguistic phenomena (pronunciation in particular) were more detailed; observers generally provided several examples, and more comparisons were made between Canadian and European (or American, in the case of CanEn) speech. Thirdly, French Canadians began writing more on their own language, with both prescriptive works, such as those of Maguire (1841), Boucher-Belleville (1855), and Gingras (1860, 1867), and the works of prominent writers like Chauveau (1853) and Taché (1859), strongly influencing the discourse on language in Canada for years to come.

99 Section 41 of the British North America Act expressly bans the use of the French language in Parliament and courts of law. This section was repealed in 1848. 100 The arrival of the French warship La Capricieuse in Québec on July 14th, 1855 is frequently cited as being the impetus for the renewal of diplomatic and economic ties between the two governments, beginning with the establishment of a French consulate in Québec in 1859.

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There are 73 texts written during this period that comment on CanFr and CanEn, nearly a 50% increase in the number of texts from the previous period101. In the following table, we see a clear increase in texts written by French and French Canadians, though the British still dominated.

Table 3.1 Texts with references to CanFr and CanEn, by nationality: 1839-1867.

Nationality # of texts % of whole

British 38 52.1%

English (24) (32.9%)

Scottish (8) (11%)

Irish (5) (6.8%)

French102 14 19.2%

French Canadian103 13 17.8%

American 3 4.1%

Unknown104 3 (2) 4.1% (2.7%)

British Canadian 2 2.7%

German 1 1.4%

Total 73 100%

101 This increase is largely due to the increasing number of visitors and immigrants to Canada during this period. 102 Marmier wrote two journals entitled Lettres sur l’Amérique (1851) and En Amérique et en Europe (1860); Blain de Saint-Aubin wrote two articles, “Des locutions communes aux langues Française et Anglaise” (1866) and “Passé, Présent et Avenir probable de ‘la langue française au Canada’” (1867). 103 Bibaud wrote two articles during this period, “Etudes grammaticales” (1842) and “Prononciation de la langue française” (1842), and Gingras published two prescriptive works: Recueil des expressions vicieuses et des anglicismes les plus fréquents (1860) and Manuel des expressions vicieuses les plus fréquentes (1867) 104 There are three texts for which I have not been able to determine the author’s nationality: The Canadian Tourist (1856) by an anonymous author, T.D. L’s A peep at the western world (1863), and O’Brien’s The Tourist’s guide to Quebec. (1864). “L” is of British origin, so I have included him in the figure for British; hence the apparent discrepancy between the sums of English, Scottish and Irish contributors.

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As for the different genres represented, we see the first prescriptive and normative works, the first discourses/essays/speeches on language, and an appreciable increase in the number of journal articles written.

Table 3.2 Texts with references to CanFr and CanEn, by genre: 1839-1867.

Genre # of texts % of whole

Travel literature 53 72.6%

Scholarly articles 5 6.8%

Pres. and Norm. works 4 5.5%

Essays and speeches 4 5.5%

Monographs 3 4.1%

Literature 2 2.7%

Newspaper articles 2 2.7%

Total 73 100%

There is a marked increase in the number of travel journals and emigration pamphlets that mentioned CanFr and CanEn during this period than in the previous one, though the overall percentage is lower, due to the presence of the other genres. This increase may be accounted for in part by the rapid economic and social development of the Canadas during that time, in addition to the population boom in urban areas as a result of planned emigration schemes from Great Britain: with more people thinking of settling in the Canadas, travel journals with updated information were invaluable.

3.1 Impressions of Canadian French

The stereotypes and beliefs examined thus far – that French Canadians spoke a patois, refused to learn English, and hindered national progress – gained widespread acceptance among travellers to the Canadas, to the point where few questioned them. This period can thus be characterized by

103 a steady denigration of CanFr by outsiders, including a strong push by certain Anglophone commentators for what they termed amalgamation; the elimination of all French elements from Canada, a cause which was seemingly popular following the Rebellions of 1837-38. From the French Canadian point of view, however, there emerges a different vision of CanFr: a language “tainted” by English, yet also ancient and pure, a belief shared by some French travellers.

Although more texts were published overall during this period, only 66 commented on CanFr; however, the observations were richer, and the citations longer. As one can see below in table 3.3, the proportion of the author’s origins has changed somewhat, though British commentators are still in the majority for the reasons mentioned above.

Table 3.3 Texts with references to CanFr, by nationality: 1839-1867.

Nationality # of texts % of the whole

British 33 49.3%

English (21) (31.8%)

Scottish (6) (9.1%)

Irish (5) (7.6%)

French 14 20.9%

French Canadian 13 19.7%

American 3 4.5%

Unknown 3 (2) 4.5% (3%)

British Canadian 1 1.5%

German 1 1.5%

Total 67 100%

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As in the second chapter, I created the following table to get a sense of the different genres of texts written during this period. Travel literature continues to be the most abundant source of commentary, while we also see the first examples of prescriptive or normative works, as well as more scholarly articles on the language. The publication of the former is of particular importance, as it allows for an insight into French Canadians’ views on their own language.

Table 3.4 Texts with references to CanFr, by genre: 1839-1867.

Genre # of texts % of texts

Travel literature 48 71.6%

Journal articles 5 7.5%

Prescriptive or normative 4 6%

Monographs 3 4.5%

Speeches and essays 3 4.5%

Literature 2 3%

Newspaper articles 2 3%

Total 67 100%

3.1.1 Aesthetics and grammar

As seen in the previous chapter, there was a clear shift in the discourse regarding the quality or purity of CanFr; characterized throughout the 18th century as “pure” or “without accent,” from 1810 onward CanFr began to be described in increasingly negative terms: bad, corrupt, jargon, patois. Few commentators, however, provided examples to illustrate their beliefs; for several authors, it appears to be more a case of repeating previous comments (sometimes verbatim) than firsthand observation. After 1839, more and more commentators noticed differences between CanFr and Standard French. One major development during this period is that one can see the emergence of two different camps: those who believed CanFr to be a pure, illustrious descendant

105 of 17th century French, and those who saw it as a degenerate form of the French spoken in France, long since corrupted by English (and American) influence.

3.1.1.1 Quality or purity

Contrary to my expectations, commentators during this second period were still evidently conflicted about the so-called quality or purity of CanFr, though it is clear by the end that the language needed to be “fixed” in some way. Of particular significance is the emergence of the belief that French Canadians (habitants specifically) spoke better French than their counterparts in France, e.g. French peasants, a belief which ultimately served as a backhanded compliment: on the one hand, that the habitants spoke such a homogeneous, correct (even pure) version of French was praiseworthy; on the other hand, there was the implication that city dwellers – including members of the upper classes – did not speak very good French, presumably due to their daily contact with the English.

To my surprise, the originator of this belief was not French Canadian, but a British traveller. In 1845, Scottish lawyer and prominent geologist Charles Lyell (1797-1875) found that the inhabitants of Canada East spoke French better than Normans and Bretons, specifically, while also noting strong similarities between the look of their respective material cultures:

The French spoken in those provinces of the mother country is often far less correct, and less easy to follow, than that of the Canadians, whose manners are very prepossessing, much softer and more polite than those of their Anglo-Saxon fellow-countrymen, however superior the latter may be in energy and capability of advancement. (Lyell 1845: Vol. II 116)

American traveller J.C. Myers (dates unknown) would later repeat this observation nearly verbatim, having received his information from a “kind and intelligent Englishman” (possibly Lyell himself). In both cases, we see an emerging, competing belief about CanFr; that it is a superior, or perhaps more legitimate form of French than that spoken by French farmers.

In 1849, British priest A.W.H. Rose (dates unknown) qualified the language as “Canadian French”, a term which seemed to have a decidedly negative connotation by that point: “In this part of Canada one had need to rub up one’s French, if one knows any. A stranger, on first arriving, from the continual jabbering of Canadian French by the habitans around him, has some ado to persuade himself that he is in an English colony.” (Rose 1849: Vol. I 48) While Rose

106 attributed CanFr to the habitants specifically, American author William Cullen Bryant (1794- 1878) associated it more with the voyageurs and Métis. For example, Bryant refers to the language thusly in a conversation he had with a Métis in Sault Sainte Marie: “‘Oh, messieurs, je vous servirai,’ said he, for he spoke Canadian French; ‘I go, I go.’” (Bryant 1850: 280) Bryant later described the people residing in a small village105: “These people are descended from the French voyageurs and settlers on one side; they speak Canadian French more or less, but generally employ the Chippewa language in their intercourse with each other.” (Bryant 1850: 283) Bryant’s qualifying phrase “more or less” is open to interpretation: it could be in reference to the frequency with which the villagers spoke the language, otherwise they spoke Chippewa; or, the language they spoke was CanFr, but with some deviations from the norm.

Although a few intrepid Frenchmen had come to Canada during the early 19th century (Lebrun, de Tocqueville), there is a noticeable increase in the number of French commentators on the language from 1850 onward, starting with Théodore Pavie, a famous travel writer. In a follow-up to Souvenirs atlantiques (1833), in which he detailed his first trip to Canada, Pavie wrote an article entitled “L’Amérique anglaise en 1850,” which appeared in the Revue des deux mondes (1850). While his first book contained no references to the quality or purity of CanFr, Pavie gave a harsh assessment of the language spoken by French Canadians in the article, though he did not go so far as to label it a patois:

Sur la rive droite du Saint-Laurent au contraire, dans l’espace compris entre Gaspé, qui marque la pointe extrême du continent, la rivière Point-Jean et Saint- Lévi, en face de Québec, sont répandus en grand nombre les anciens colons français, ceux que les Anglais désignent par le nom de french colonists. Leur quartier-général est le comté actuel de la Rivière-du-Loup. Plus civilisés à tous égards que leurs compatriotes les Acadiens du Nouveau-Brunswick, ils représentent la vraie race canadienne française, les premiers occupans, – après les Indiens, – de cette partie du continent américain. Ils parlent un vieux français peu élégant; leur prononciation épaisse, dénuée d’accentuation, ne ressemble pas mal à celle des Bas-Normands. En causant avec eux, on s’aperçoit bien vite qu’ils ont été séparés de nous avant l’époque où tout le monde en France s’est mis à écrire et à discuter. (Pavie 1850: 988)

105 Bryant did not name the village in question, but from the vague description he gave of his location, Bryant was near a Hudson Bay Company on Whitefish Bay, located along the Canada West-Michigan border.

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From the travel journals I have read, including the ones that do not figure among the 287 texts, this is the first comparison between French Canadians and Acadians, the latter being seen in a decidedly unfavourable light. More important for this study, however, is Pavie’s assessment of the language spoken by French Canadians: old, strongly influenced by NorFr, “thick” pronunciation, and with an irregular accentuation.

A year later, French travel writer Xavier Marmier (1808-1892) published the first of four books on his travels in North America, Lettres sur l’Amérique (1851). Marmier agreed with Pavie that the language spoken in Canada was somewhat antiquated, but it was decidedly not a patois: “Ici, l’on a gardé l’usage de notre langue, cette élégance, cette sorte d’atticisme du grand siècle. Le peuple lui-même la parle assez correctement et n’a point de patois.” (Marmier 1851: Vol. I 95- 96)

French Canadian politician and writer Pierre Chauveau (1820-1890), who would later become the first premier of the Province of Québec (1867-1873), wrote Charles Guérin, roman de mœurs canadiennes (1853). In the novel, Chauveau strove to accurately portray the habitants’ speech, a decision which upset some of his readership, who complained that he exaggerated. In a later edition of the book, Chauveau wrote a lengthy response addressing the issue:

Note F – Beaucoup de nos lecteurs ont trouvé que nous avions exagéré les fautes de langage que commettent nos habitants. Nous ne sommes point fâchés de cette exagération, en admettant qu’elle existe dans notre livre, car tel qu’il y est représenté, le langage des Canadiens les moins instruits serait encore du français et du français meilleur que celui que parlent les paysans des provinces de France où l’on parle français. On ne saurait trop admirer la sottise de quelques touristes anglais et américains qui ont écrit que les Canadiens parlaient un patois. Le fait est que, sauf quelques provincialismes, quelques expressions vieillies mais charmantes en elles-mêmes, le français des Canadiens ressemble plus au meilleur français de France que la langue de l’Yankee ressemble à celle de l’Anglais pur- sang. Il est arrivé au Canada absolument la même chose qu’aux Etats-Unis; les habitants des diverses provinces de la mère patrie ont fondu ensemble les particularités de langage et d’accent de leur pays et il en est résulté un moyen terme qui diffère un peu de tous ces accents divers, mais qui se rapproche plus qu’aucun d’eux de la prononciation admise pour correcte par les hommes instruits des grandes villes européennes. Telle est du moins l’opinion de plusieurs voyageurs français, parmi lesquels il se trouve au moins un académicien, le

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célèbre M. Ampère106, qui doit certainement y entendre quelque chose, autant peut-être que messieurs les touristes anglais et américains. (Chauveau 1853: 377- 78)

Chauveau’s response is noteworthy for several reasons. Firstly, he admitted to having exaggerated the habitants’ speech, yet argued that they still spoke better French than most French farmers107. Secondly, Chauveau was the first French Canadian to comment on outsiders’ views of CanFr, illustrating that there was some awareness about language beliefs and stereotypes; he did not, however, appear particularly worried about what others thought about the language, dismissing their beliefs as “idiocy”. Finally, Chauveau correctly stated that dialect- leveling, which had occurred in French-speaking Canada over a century earlier, was happening in the United States, the eventual result being a (mostly) homogenous dialect.

William Kingston (1814-1880), a prolific writer of boys’ novels, had a strongly negative opinion of French Canadians in general (see 3.1.2.1 for his views on the utility of CanFr). In an early part of his journey across Canada, which he detailed in Western Wanderings, or, a pleasure tour in the Canadas (1856), Kingston recounted his encounter with some natives, and indirectly commented on the quality of French in Canada:

We visited most of the habitations in succession, shaking hands with the squaws and men, and saying “Boo joo,” “Boo joo,” they answering “Boo joo,” – a corruption, evidently of “Bon jour,” which they have learned from the Canadian voyageurs, who themselves do not speak the purest French. (Kingston 1856: Vol. I 161)

This assessment of the voyageurs’ French, along with Laurence Oliphant’s (see 3.1.1.2) makes it very clear that the language they spoke was not French one ought to imitate. Rather, it had deviated significantly from “pure” French.

In his informative monograph La France aux colonies (1859), French historian François Edme Rameau (1839-1917) had high praise for French Canadians and their culture, particularly regarding the rapid development of a national literature. This was obviously a far cry from

106 Jean-Jacques Ampère first wrote a short account of his travels in North America in 1853, but published a book- length version in 1856; I have elected to work from the latter, which I will discuss shortly. 107 Having consulted the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, it does not appear that Chauveau visited France prior to the publication of his novel. His assertion that French Canadians spoke just as well if not better than French peasants may be further indicative of the existence of this particular language belief in the early 19th century.

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Durham’s assessment only twenty years earlier. Rameau summarized his opinions on French Canadians and their language thusly:

La vivacité du trait qui distingue ces tableaux et l’atticisme de l’esprit français qui s’y retrouve feront pardonner aisément la longueur de cette citation108. Nous avons cru utile d’ailleurs de faire ainsi connaître quelques spécimens de la littérature canadienne109, à peu près ignorée en France, et qui mériterait d’y être plus connue. Nous espérons donc que le lecteur français nous saura bon gré de lui avoir montré que sur les bords du Saint-Laurent notre langue n’a pas plus dégénéré que notre caractère. (Rameau 1859: Part II 208)

It is clear from the final line that Rameau was referring to the written quality of French in Canada, and not to the spoken. Many later commentators would heavily criticize journalists for their poor writing and use of Anglicisms; it is important to see that other forms of writing were praised by foreigners at that time.

In his second book on North America, En Amérique et en Europe (1860), Marmier was happy to find the French language in such a good state in Canada, especially after having spent so much time among the Americans:

Quel Bonheur de retrouver à la place de ces faces de dollars qui trônent dans les comptoirs de New-York, la riante et vive physionomie, le sourire cordial du Canadien, d’entendre après le sifflement de l’idiome du Yankee, résonner à deux mille lieues de Paris, la chère langue du sol natal, pure et correcte, dans la rustique demeure du paysan comme dans celle de l’habitant des villes. (Marmier 1860: 17)

While earlier commentators had made a distinction between the speech of the habitants and the city-dwellers, Marmier’s comment here suggests that there was no appreciable difference between the two, further complicating the matter of who spoke the “best” or “purest” French.

In 1861, Scottish immigrant John Carruthers (d. 1866), who had lived in Canada West for nearly forty years, explained his difficulties in conversing with some French Canadians near Windsor:

The man of the house tried to talk English, and I tried to talk French, but neither of us could understand the other. This part of Canada [Southwest Ontario] was originally settled by some Frenchmen, who intermarried with the Indians. They

108 Rameau cited a long passage from what is probably the Abbé Ferland’s Observations sur un ouvrage intitule “Histoire du Canada,” etc. par M. l’abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg (1853, 1854), which originally appeared in the Journal de Québec from January-February of 1853. In the passage, Ferland discussed life in Labrador. 109 That is, Ferland’s text and a snippet of one of Etienne Parent’s essays.

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made sole use of the French language, but probably not in its purity; although had it been more pure it is not likely I would have found it more intelligible. It is quite a different thing to learn to read a language and to speak it or understand it when spoken. (Carruthers 1861: 152)

Thus far, Carruthers is the only Anglophone to admit that his poor command of spoken French prevented him from communicating with French Canadians; while an honest admission, it did not prevent him from judging the purity or legitimacy of their language. It would seem that Carruthers relied on earlier writers’ accounts of the language, as he clearly stated that he would be unable to evaluate the language’s purity otherwise.

In the same year, German historian and travel writer Johann Georg Kohl published Travels in the United States and Canada110 (1861). In an early passage, Kohl described what could be described the first evidence of French Canadian linguistic (and also cultural) insecurity vis-à-vis the French:

Even well-educated Canadians are quite unconscious of the difference, and a pretty young Canadian lady once informed me, as of something quite comic, that the Parisians pretended the Canadians did not speak the purest French. She told me this in the most regular Conodo dialect, and then appealed to me as to whether she had the slightest provincial accent. She said she had once made a tour in France, and found that the peasantry spoke a much coarser and less intelligible dialect than any in Canada, and this I could confirm, but I really could not reconcile my conscience to telling her she had no provincial accent. (Kohl 1861: 99-100)

The woman’s concern with outsiders’ opinions of her language was also common among British Canadians, although the latter were more concerned with their cultural standing (See 4.2.1). Kohl later remarked that colonial speech has a tendency to evolve in a particular way, and North America was no exception:

In most colonial countries it may be noticed that the language of the higher classes, when they do not keep up any communication with the refined society and the literature of the old country, tends to degenerate, while the peasantry, who lead a less narrow and stagnant life than in their original homes, lose something of their coarseness. (Kohl 1861: 100-101)

110 The book was originally published in German in 1856 as Reisen in Canada und durch die Staaten von New York und Pennsylvanien. In addition to his commentary on CanFr, Kohl’s book also contains an early description of Pennsylvania Dutch.

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While I don’t agree with the entirety of Kohl’s assessment, considering his somewhat inaccurate description of French Canadian pronunciation (see 3.1.1.5), what he wrote here about the linguistic situation in Canada has some truth; see Elliott’s theory (1884) for a more nuanced explanation of this. As we have seen, the habitants were widely praised for the supposed purity of their language, while urban French Canadians would be criticized for their adoption of English words and other speech habits. (See 3.1.1.3)

The English Curzon brothers (dates unknown), who visited North America individually in 1858 and then in 1861, expressed some doubt about the purity of the French spoken in Montréal: “The language which is spoken, though called French, would puzzle a Parisian to understand. The fact is, the dialect seems to have depreciated very much from the original; thus, instead of calling a potato pomme de terre, they call it by the incomprehensible name of potac […]” (Curzon 1862: 94) This final comment recalls Anburey’s conversation (1789) with the French Canadian farmer about the putat or putot, thereby casting some doubt on the Curzon brothers’ competency in French.

In 1867, French musician and composer Emmanuel-Marie Blain de Saint-Aubin (1833-1883) made two important observations about CanFr in his article “Passé, présent et avenir probable de la ‘Langue française au Canada’”. He firstly admonished his countrymen for depicting CanFr in a negative light in the press. Secondly, he affirmed that CanFr was similar to NorFr, and repeated the belief that it was of somewhat better quality. I have chosen to cite both passages in their entirety, as Saint-Aubin touches on several topics related to the perception of CanFr:

Le second [motive for choosing to speak on this subject] est un vif désir de ramener à leur juste valeur certaines assertions faites à la légère, par des voyageurs Français, relativement à la langue Canadienne. Je ne parlerai pas des autres erreurs tout aussi graves qui embellissent les écrits de ces aimables touristes: il me faudrait une semaine pour vous les signaler toutes. J’ai lu un grand nombre de ces “Relations de Voyages;” elles m’ont beaucoup amusé, je vous assure, et je me disais parfois: “Il n’y vraiment rien de plus drôle qu’un Français qui parle du Canada!”

Il est pourtant une distinction à établir: Des hommes sérieux, qui ont résidé assez longtemps parmi vous, ont su, dans leurs écrits, vous rendre pleine justice. Vous les connaissez et il n’est pas nécessaire que je vous les nomme, cela, du reste, m’entraînerait trop loin. Mais, d’un autre côté, combien de gens superficiels, qui n’ont fait que traverser le pays à toute vapeur, ont répandu, à tort et à travers, sur

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votre compte, des erreurs malheureusement trop accréditées à l’étranger et parmi nos compatriotes anglais. (Blain de Saint-Aubin 1867: 17)

Blain de Saint-Aubin was the first “outsider”111 to explicitly state that French tourists to Canada were eager to judge the language, much like the British and Americans. The second paragraph highlights the disparity between what outsiders believed about the language, and what locals actually knew.

Blain de Saint-Aubin later qualified CanFr as being a near equal to ParFr, at least in terms of the accent, a belief that achieved some degree of popularity in the following period (see 4.1.1.1): “L’accent de ces hommes et une pureté de langage peu commune en France chez les populations rurales me frappèrent singulièrement, si bien que je demandai à l’un d’eux s’il était Français et originaire des environs de Paris […]” (Blain de Saint-Aubin 1867: 17) While there is little reason to doubt Blain de Saint-Aubin’s assessment of the quality of the language spoken in Canada, it is peculiar that he would make such a comparison to ParFr in this article, when four years later (1871) he ridiculed the notion that ParFr was worthy of imitation; see 4.1.1.1 for his discussion with Lady Monck.

French Canadian translator Jules-Fabien Gingras (1829-1884) published the Manuel des expressions vicieuses les plus fréquentes (1867), an update of his anonymously published Recueil des expressions vicieuses des Anglicismes les plus fréquents (1860). In the introduction, Gingras alluded to Maguire’s Manuel, noting that the quality of CanFr had actually gotten worse, not better, in the intervening years:

Il est avéré que depuis vingt-cinq ans, bien loin de s’être épuré, notre langage a été se viciant de plus en plus, et cela bien que dans le cours de cette période il ait été publié quatre manuels constatant, à leur date respective, le progrès toujours croissant de ce mal. (Gingras 1867: II)

Finally, French Canadian doctor and writer Hubert LaRue (1833-1881) wrote a highly detailed and critical piece entitled “Nos qualités et nos défauts: la langue française au Canada,” which appeared in Mélanges historiques, littéraires et d’économie politique (1867). LaRue began by addressing the then-old question of whether French Canadians spoke well or not:

111 Outsider in the sense that Blain de Saint-Aubin was not a native of Canada; he did however live in Québec City since 1859.

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Notre langue! Est-il bien vrai que nous l’ayons conservée jusqu’ici, en dépit d’obstacles de toute nature, dans sa pureté primitive? Parlons-nous le français comme le parlaient nos aieux? A ces deux questions on peut répondre: oui et non. Voyons donc quelles sont nos qualités sur ce point, quels sont nos défauts. (LaRue 1867: 9)

The real value of LaRue’s article is his organization of language quality and other special characteristics by profession; whereas earlier (and later) commentators alluded to differences in speech between the classes, LaRue clarified that certain professions speak CanFr in a particular way:

Pour apporter plus d’exactitude dans l’examen que nous allons faire, je crois qu’il est convenable de diviser notre population en quatre classes: 1º la classe des cultivateurs; 2º celle des artisans, gens de métiers; 3º celle des marchands, négociants; 4º celle des hommes qui appartiennent aux professions libérales.

Classe des cultivateurs. Nos cultivateurs ont-ils conservé dans sa pureté primitive, je dirai même dans son originalité, la belle langue de leurs ancêtres? Oui; et nous avons droit de nous en féliciter.

[…] En effet, c’est à la campagne – on ne saurait trop le répéter – qu’existe toute la moelle, toute la sève de notre nationalité canadienne-française. (LaRue 1867: 9)

We have clearly entered into the period where the habitants’ language is placed on a pedestal for its purity and conservative flavour112. LaRue’s claim that French Canadian nationality draws its strength from that class, and by extension, their language, would characterize discourse on CanFr for decades.

Next, LaRue commented on the language of the artisans and tradesmen, as well as the merchants and other businessmen and women, which he finds somewhat less pure, due in large part to the influence of the English language:

Le langage de nos artisans, charpentiers, menuisiers, journaliers, manœuvres de toute espèce, n’est pas, certes, des plus châtiés. A tout instant, ils émaillent leurs discours d’expressions anglaises qu’ils francisent souvent de la manière la plus bizarre. En voici un exemple frais éclos que j’ai recueilli, ces jours derniers, de la bouche d’un homme de police. Parlant d’un mécréant qui avait fait du tapage dans les rues de la ville, et avait offert quelque résistance aux ordres de Sa Majesté, notre homme disait à un sien camarade: “J’ai fini par le prendre et le mettre

112 LaRue’s assertion that the habitants are the true inheritors and preservers of French is an important one, as it precedes Remy de Gourmont’s similar beliefs about French peasants by over thirty years.

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dedans; mais X. le magistrat est venu le bailer.” (to bail, admettre à caution). (LaRue 1867: 16)

LaRue then listed a number of terms employed by this class of workers, which were to be avoided, but did not blame them for their language faults:

Cependant, je suis assez disposé à excuser nos artisans. En effet, il ne faut pas s’attendre que ces braves gens vont traîner avec eux, aux lieux de leurs travaux, un Fleming et Tibbins113, ou un Dictionnaire de l’Académie. C’est à nous, messieurs, de les instruire, c’est à nous de leur donner, surtout, le puissant enseignement de l’exemple. Or, cet exemple, les classes instruites peuvent-elles se vanter de le propager autour d’elles? c’est ce que nous verrons tout-à-l’heure. (LaRue 1867: 17)

LaRue, himself a member of this fourth class, demanded much from his fellow professionals, whose duty it was to protect and pass on the French language intact, both to future generations, and to members of less-educated classes:

Passons aux hommes instruits, à ceux qui appartiennent aux professions dites libérales.

J’ai l’honneur d’appartenir à cette classe; mieux que n’importe qui, je sens que j’ai une très-large part à prendre dans les reproches que je vais lui adresser; on ne devra donc pas être surpris de m’entendre user largement de la particule Nous!

Avec nous, donc, hommes instruits ou censés l’être, nous avons le droit de nous montrer difficiles. Placés à la tête de notre société, nous en sommes les premiers gardiens ; et si notre langage n’est pas épuré, s’il n’est pas parfaitement français, nous n’avons aucune excuse valable à donner. Cependant, si l’on veut se faire une idée des tortures inouïes que nous faisons subir tous les jours à notre langue, nous n’avons qu’à assister à certaines plaidoiries de nos Palais de Justice, ou bien encore, à certaines séances de la Chambre des Communes ou de la Chambre locale. (LaRue 1867: 18-19)

In the third period, complaints about the language spoken by lawyers and politicians were very common, and these were often the motivation for some of the numerous prescriptive works that were published. In short, for CanFr and French Canadian nationalism to flourish, the foremost duty of the educated class was to safeguard the language.

113 This would be a reference to the bilingual Grand dictionnaire français-anglais et anglais-français (1844-1854) by Charles Fleming and J. Tibbins.

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It is difficult to draw a simple, elegant conclusion to this section, as there has not been one unifying voice, but many conflicting ones. I can however outline some of the major trends that appeared during this period. Firstly, the belief that the habitants spoke better French than their European equivalents gained acceptance among certain crowds. This belief appears to have originated in Canada, and quickly spread to outsiders. Secondly, CanFr was commonly compared favourably to NorFr and other regional dialects/languages, but unfavourably to ParFr, although this would change in the third period. Finally, regardless of its alleged correctness or purity, CanFr was seen as having deteriorated or degenerated, deviating further from the French spoken in France, a change due in large part to English influence.

3.1.1.2 Patois, jargon, etc.

The belief that the language spoken by French Canadians was not French, but a patois, gained significant acceptance during the second period, particularly among British commentators. Although commentators like Shaw (1856) and Day (1856) wrote precise, detailed observations about the language they encountered, most of the commentary appears to be based largely on hearsay; in other words, no justification was given for labelling CanFr a patois, it was just a given. While this belief was clearly on the rise during this period, not all commentators were convinced, with some completely dismissing the notion.

In 1842, British soldier Richard Bonnycastle (1791-1847) published the first of three books on his time in British North America, The Canadas in 1841, in which he further fuelled the belief that French Canadians spoke a patois:

The old French settlers in this part of Upper Canada [near Windsor] are in larger numbers than elsewhere; and here, at nearly one thousand miles from Québec, you meet the same Jean Baptiste114 face and feature, and hear the patois which was formerly the vernacular of the Canadas. The Upper Canadian Frenchman retains, however, his loyalty to England, with this native good-humour and bienseance; and I know few more estimable people than the farmers and French gentlemen of this part of the world. (Bonnycastle 1842: Vol. I 272)

What sets Bonnycastle apart from other British commentators is the length of time spent in Upper Canada; Bonnycastle was stationed in Fort George and Kingston in 1826, and resided in

114 The nickname Jean-Baptiste was undoubtedly tied to the Saint’s Feast Day (June 24th), which acquired a political and nationalistic significance in the 1830s.

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Canada until his death in 1847. His comments were tempered by his over fifteen years’ experience in the colony, and were otherwise noticeably positive on French and British Canadians. In a later passage, however, Bonnycastle makes some inaccurate– yet surprisingly specific – comments about CanFr:

There your canoe glides swiftly along under the influence of the ever-moving paddle, and the incessant song; which latter, unless you have been long in Picardy, Normandy, or Artois, you will not understand a word of, as it is composed of very few words, and those unintelligible to the French scholar. I had the advantage, if it may be called one, of hearing a great deal of bad French spoken, when with the army of occupation115, and have been able to make out such burdens of the wholly fictitious boat-songs of Moore116 […] (Bonnycastle 1842: Vol. II 15-16)

This passage is of interest for the erroneous claim regarding the origins of CanFr; while roughly a third of the original colonists arrived from Normandy, and would doubtlessly have retained some regionalisms117, NorFr bears little resemblance to Picard, a regional language that has more in common with Walloon than French. This oversimplification is telling; for many travellers, all patois were the same: a variety of French that he or she did not understand. The fact that Bonnycastle, who was allegedly well-versed in French, would make such a specific claim suggests that he was familiar with contemporary beliefs about the language. Although Bonnycastle pointed to the supposed unintelligibility of a French Canadian song, his reference to the regional languages or dialects of the aforementioned places makes it qualify as a judgment or assessment of CanFr itself.

In 1844, Irish politician John Robert Godley (1814-1861), who would later found the Canterbury Association in New Zealand118, published an account of his time in North America, Letters from

115 From the context, it is unclear to which occupying force he is referring: Bonnycastle occupied Maine in 1814, France the following year, and spent the last twenty years of his life in Kingston, defending said city during the Rebellions of 1837-38. 116 Bonnycastle is referring to Irish poet Thomas Moore’s famous “Canadian boat song”, which was written during a visit to the Canadas in 1804. The only possible explanation for Bonnycastle’s use of the term “fictitious” in this context is that Moore’s “boat song” was not based on a “real” song, but one he composed himself. 117 Clapin (1894) discusses this very issue in the introduction of Dictionnaire canadien-français. See 5.1.1.3. 118 In 1848, Godley and Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796-1862), a close associate and friend of Lord Durham, founded the Canterbury Association, whose goal was to establish an Anglican colony on the South Island. Settlement began in 1850.

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America. While passing through Cobourg (Canada West), Godley noted the rich mixture of languages spoken in the area, and broadly stereotyped the speaker of each language:

Then you have the provincial peculiarities of every part of the British Islands contrasted with those of European and American foreigners: one man addresses you in a rich Cork brogue, the next in broad Scotch, and a third in undeniable Yorkshire; the Yankee may be known by his broad-brimmed hat, lank figure, and nasal drawl: then you have the French Canadian, chattering patois, in his red cap, blue shirt, sash, and moccasins; the German, with his blue blouse and black belt; and the Italian, following the usual trades of his country, image-making and confectionery, and as easily distinguished as at home. (Godley 1844: Vol. I 201)

While I have suggested that earlier commentators may have repeated what they heard or read about French Canadians and their language, it is evident from this passage that Godley leaned heavily on stereotyping. These stereotypes would have ostensibly been well known by the 1840s.

British soldier and sports119 writer Frederic Tolfrey (b.1795) found that French Canadians spoke a “delicious” or “delectable” patois, to which he alluded on several occasions. I have chosen to include two short passages here, in which Tolfrey recorded his interlocutors’ conversation:

During the whole of this wary proceeding, my companion François was exclaiming at intervals, in the most delectable patois120 “Mais, mon Dieu! Qu’est qu’il dira-t’on che maître s’ils tuent les canards privés! Mais regardez donc! – ils vont tirez sur ces pauvres bêtes.” (Tolfrey 1845: Vol. I 148)

Later, Tolfrey observed a brief exchange between a French Canadian man and woman: “The woman accosted him in a French-Canadian ‘patois,’121 but not as on the former occasion with supplications for charity. ‘Renvoyez votre serjent,’ she exclaimed; ‘il faut que je vous parle!’” (Tolfrey 1845: Vol. II 164) Unlike other British observers, Tolfrey appears to have appreciated French Canadian speech, but it was still a patois for him.

In 1852, English traveller Edward Sullivan (1826-1899) detailed his trip throughout the Americas in Rambles and scrambles in North and South America. While in the Canadas, Sullivan spent much time in the wilderness among the voyageurs and Métis, whose language he

119 In this context, Sports refers to hunting, fishing, canoeing, etc. Tolfrey’s first published work, The sportsman in France (1842), was apparently successful, which led to a book on Canada, and another, Jones’ (Jones being the name of the publisher) guide to Norway in 1848. 120 The italics are all present in the original. 121 It is not clear why Tolfrey chose to both italicize the word and put it into quotations.

118 criticized on several occasions. In the first passage, Sullivan described a boating trip along St. Mary’s River: “The wind being fair for our return, we hoisted our blankets for sails, and spanked along merrily at the rate of four or five knots and hour, enlivened by the French patois Chansons of the Canadian boatmen” (Sullivan 1852: 61) Somewhat later, Sullivan wrote about the French spoken by his Métis guide: “He reminded me very much of some of the Chamouni122 guides: he spoke a sort of demi-semi-intelligible French; his son, nothing but Chippeway.” (Sullivan 1852: 65) In discussing a journey with his journey with a Canadian voyageur and his son, Sullivan went so far as to call it “broken”:

Leaving our canoe at Still-Water [located in eastern Minnesota], we struck across a small prairie for St. Paul’s [then the capital of the Minnesota Territory]. We took our Canadian voyageur and his son. The latter had never seen a town at all, and had no idea of any building larger than the trader’s hut at La Pointe [located in Northern Wisconsin]. It was very amusing to see his astonishment at almost every thing [sic]. He had never seen a vehicle of any description, and his delight at the wagon [sic] which took our luggage was intense. Being accustomed to the almost invisible trail of the woods, he could scarcely understand the broad path that led from Still-Water to La Pointe and Tiyah! Quel chemin! in broken French was uttered every instant. (Sullivan 1852: 83)

Yet for all the harsh epithets Sullivan employed to describe CanFr, he never elaborated on why he thought that, which leads me to believe that he wasn’t accustomed to “non-school French”, or that he was simply repeating what previous commentators had written. Like many of his contemporaries, Sullivan did not provide enough information – or evidence – to demonstrate how or why the French spoken by Canadians was “broken” or “demi-semi-intelligible.”

In 1853, English author Samuel Strickland (1804-1867), brother to Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Traill, made a peculiar comment regarding the antiquity of the language spoken in Canada: “French is spoken here – not, however, very purely, being a patois as old as the time of Henry IV of France, when this part of Canada was first colonized.” (Strickland 1853: Vol. I 9) While it is certainly true that Henry IV funded Samuel de Champlain and Pierre Dugua’s expeditions to North America, this is the only instance in which a commentator refers to the language of the late 16th century, rather than the French spoken during the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715).

122 Sullivan was possibly referring to Franco-Provençal, a Romance language spoken in Southeastern France (in Chamonix), Switzerland, and Italy.

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The next commentator, British author and diplomat Laurence Oliphant (1829-1888), made a distinction between the language of the voyageurs, and the variety spoken by a “typical” French Canadian. Oliphant, who recounted his travels from Canada West to the Minnesota territory in Minnesota and the far west (1855), alternately disparaged and complimented the voyageurs’ speech in this first passage: “The voyageurs are half-breeds, but pique themselves very much on their French origin; look upon the ‘sauvages’ with immense contempt, and talk an old Norman patois, which is very intelligible.” (Oliphant 1855: 178) Unlike some of his contemporaries, Oliphant found CanFr to be perfectly intelligible, despite a strong Norman influence. Later, Oliphant commented on the diverse mix of languages spoken in St. Paul, Minnesota: “Of course, the Anglo-Saxon language, in its varied modifications of Yankee, English, Scotch, and Irish, prevails; but there is plenty of good French, and the voyageurs’ patois, Chippeway or Sioux, German, Dutch and Norwegian.” (Oliphant 1855: 281) The comparison between “good French” and the voyageurs’ patois is an important one, as it implies that the French spoken by the majority of Francophones in North America was both legitimate and “intelligible”.

In her book The Englishwoman in America (1856), English explorer and prolific travel writer Isabella Bishop (1831-1904) stated that CanFr was an unintelligible patois on several occasions. In Montréal, Bishop described the mix of languages she encountered: “On all sides a jargon of Irish, English and French is to be heard, the latter generally the broadest patois.” (Bishop 1856: 255) Later, while visiting Montmorency, Bishop criticized the language spoken by some French Canadians in a cabaret:

We drove back for some distance, and entered a small cabaret, where some women were diligently engaged in spinning, and some men were superintending with intense interest the preparation of some soupe maigre. Their patois was scarcely intelligible, and a boy whom we took as our guide spoke no English. (Bishop 1856: 286)

Englishman William Fergusson (1823-1904) continued to perpetuate this belief in recounting his stay in Québec: “And many of the names over the shops are French. It is a French patois you hear the people speaking to each other.” (Fergusson 1856: 477) In what is revealing itself to be major trend, neither writer provided any examples or evidence to support the belief that CanFr was a patois.

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In his Passages in the life of a soldier (1857), Scottish soldier James Edward Alexander (1803- 1885) attributed patois to all French Canadians, not just the voyageurs: “All are perfectly polite to one another, and to strangers. It takes some time to understand their patois French.” (Alexander 1857: Vol. II 218) Irish painter and traveller Paul Kane (1810-1871), who detailed his time spent in the Northwest in Wanderings of an artist among the Indians of North America (1859), referred to the “Lower Canadian patois” spoken by some Métis: “These are the descendants of the white men in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s employment and the native Indian women. They all speak the Cree language and the Lower Canadian patois […]” (Kane 1859: 75) Considering that Kane spent most of his life in Upper Canada, having grown up in Toronto, it is noteworthy that he would describe the language spoken in Lower Canada as a patois; it is perhaps one of the earliest instances of what Squair (1918) considered as “a stupid prejudice against the people of Québec.”

English writer and traveller Kinahan Cornwallis (1839-1917), who recounted his trip to North America with the future king of England, Edward VII in his Royalty in the New World (1860), wrote dismissively of French Canadians throughout the work. In this first passage, Cornwallis blurred the line somewhat between French patois and French: “When you speak to a cabman he answers in a French patois, or with an accent which tells you that French is the mother tongue […]” (Cornwallis 1860: 4) According to Cornwallis, then, some French Canadians spoke patois, while others spoke something like French. When he arrived in Québec, Cornwallis found the French character of the city overwhelming: “I have alluded to the French features of Montréal; but Québec is even more French than the City of the Island. Thousands of the population speak a French patois, and only a few words of broken English.” (Cornwallis 1860: 11) Finally, while passing through Tadoussac, he reiterates that the French Canadians spoke a patois: “French, or rather a French patois, is the prevailing language of the villagers […]” (Cornwallis 1860: 75) In this text in particular, the author’s political biases is inextricably tied to his attitudes towards French Canadians; Canada was a British colony, and should reflect that in every way, especially in the language spoken.

In the same year, Jacques Florimond, vicomte de Basterot (b. 1836) was the first commentator from France to consider CanFr a patois. In his book De Québec à Lima, journal d’un voyage dans les deux Amériques (1860), Florimond expressed some shock at the shop signs in Montréal:

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Nous traversons le fleuve [Saint Lawrence] en bac à vapeur. En débarquant, j’ai le plaisir d’entendre le peuple parler français.

Le lendemain matin, je parcours la ville; hélas! Montréal n’a pas un air français. Les enseignes sont dans un patois franco-anglais. (Florimond 1860: 35)

Florimond’s comment on commercial signs, a mixture of French and English, is similar to Ampère’s complaint about the same (see 3.1.1.3).

In 1864, French musician and war correspondent Oscar Comettant (1819-1898), ridiculed the French Canadians and their language in his travel journal L’Amérique telle qu’elle est, specifically the “antique” quality that more and more commentators remarked upon during this period and the next. In this passage, Comettant mused on the French spoken in Montréal:

Enfin nous touchons à l’île de Montréal où se trouve bâtie la ville importante de ce nom. Ici la population est pour ainsi dire tout entière française, et ce n’est pas sans un plaisir mêlé de curiosité que j’ai entendu les hommes du peuple parler le patois normand du quinzième siècle. (Comettant 1864: 175)

Throughout his work, Comettant adopted a comical and oftentimes mocking tone. Later, he repeated the stereotype that French Canadians spoke a Norman patois, and mocked them for their supposed naiveté and ignorance:

En traversant je ne sais quel petit bourg, nous vîmes des paysannes canadiennes qui brodaient avec des perles différents objets en écorce d’arbre. Les habitants de ce bourg, descendants des compagnons de Cartier, ont conservé pur le type de nos paysans normands, et parlent le patois de cette ancienne province au quinzième siècle. Ne connaissant de la France que ce qui leur a été appris par tradition, ils commettent les anachronismes les plus singuliers et font parfois les questions les plus bizarres et les plus irréfléchies.

– Monsieur, me demande avec beaucoup d’intérêt une de ces jeunes brodeuses, est-ce toujours Louis XIV qui règne en France?

– Non, ma chère enfant, Louis XIV est mort.

– Comment! il est mort! Quel dommage, un si grand roi!

– Hélas! les grands rois meurent comme les petits, et ceux-ci comme tout le monde. (Comettant 1864: 179)

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While previous French commentators were critical of the language in Canada, this marks the first time that French Canadians themselves were portrayed as being ignorant, or stuck in the distant past.

English traveller Samuel Phillips Day (1833-1916) wrote disparagingly about both languages in his two-volume English America, or, Pictures of Canadian places and people (1864). Day noticed many of the “defects” with CanFr and CanEn, namely the prevalence of Americanisms. In this first passage, Day, like Cornwallis before him, was struck by the strongly French character of Québec:

Quebec, the present seat of Government, has all the appearance of a French town, and the traveller has no slight difficulty in disabusing himself of the idea. The quaint houses, long, narrow streets, the number of Catholic churches and conventual establishments with which it abounds, the array of ecclesiastics and nuns, in the costumes of their respective orders, the ringing of the convent bells all day long, the foreign patois one continually hears spoken – nay, even the very sign-boards over the various stores, seem to convey impressively that Quebec is not a Colonial city of the British crown. Everything is French. (Day 1864: Vol. I 14)

Although British visitors to the province had long since commented on the French, decidedly non-British, appearance of the people and city, commentators such as Day began to focus in on the “foreignness” of French Canadians; in this case, the prevalence of the Catholic religion, and the spoken and written French language. In a later passage, Day describes an encounter between Englishman George Edward Ewell123, who had been found stranded in a small boat on the St. Lawrence, and the French Canadian villagers who rescued him. According to Day, Ewell had some difficulty in expressing his gratitude: “At first the stranger had great difficulty in making known his wants, being unacquainted with the French, and especially with the patois spoken by the people by whom he was surrounded.” (Day 1864: Vol. I 248) It seems strange that Day insisted on the notion that the French Canadians spoke a patois, because Ewell couldn’t speak French at all, and would have been unable to understand them in either case. Finally, Day wrote about a horse race in Québec, noting the speech of the participants: “[…] the drivers meanwhile

123 In the text, Day writes that Ewell was the son of the Governor of Columbia. I have been unable to document the identity of the latter.

123 heaping imprecations upon each other in their favourite patois, more expressive than elegant.” (Day 1864: Vol. I 276)

French journalist and politician Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne (1843-1877) was happy to find himself among Frenchmen in Canada, though was alternately displeased and amused with the language he heard spoken:

A Montréal, je suis en pays français. Autant il est déplaisant de rencontrer des indigènes qui, par politesse ou ostentation de science, veulent me baragouiner ma langue, autant résonne harmonieusement à mon oreille ce jargon normand qui a gardé tout l’accent du terroir. (Duvergier de Hauranne 1866: Vol. I 149)

It is unclear from the context who offended Duvergier de Hauranne with their “jabbering”; it could be British Canadians residing in Montréal, or French Canadians of a certain, undetermined socioeconomic class, possibly in the marketplaces. His second comment about the Norman jargon is noteworthy, as Duvergier de Hauranne himself was from Normandy (Trouville-sur- Mer), which affords him some small modicum of credibility – but by no means authority or expertise – to comment on the matter. In other words, his commentary seems to be more personal experience than prejudice.

In 1866, Englishmen Walter Butler Cheadle (1836-1910) and William Fitzwilliam, the Viscount Milton (1839-1877) published an account of their travels in North America, The North-west passage by land. Cheadle and Milton described the language of their Métis guides: “Our conversation with the men was carried on in Canadian French, for their knowledge of English was very imperfect. Amongst themselves they used a mixed patois of French and Indian, for a long time perfectly incomprehensible to us.” (Butler and Cheadle 1866: 47) This comment, while not unique, is important, as it recalls Oliphant’s earlier distinction between patois and good French. In this case, Milton and Cheadle were able to speak with their guides in CanFr, but could not understand the men speaking amongst themselves.

The final text from this period that discussed the existence of a patois in Canada, or in this case, the non-existence, is Passé, Présent, et avenir probable (1867). Drawing on his personal

124 experiences growing up in Normandy, Blain de Saint-Aubin explained that there was no connection between CanFr and NorFr, or rather, patois124:

Plus de vingt auteurs ont affirmé, les uns après les autres, que les Canadiens parlent le patois Normand. Je connais très bien ce patois que l’on parle aussi dans les environs de Rennes et jusqu’au bord de la mer, c’est-à-dire jusqu’à St. Malo et St. Brienne, et je puis vous garantir qu’il est beaucoup plus patois c’est-à-dire plus incorrect que le langage des habitants canadiens les plus illettrés. (Blain de Saint- Aubin 1867: 17)

Similar to the question of the quality or purity of CanFr – was it good or bad French? – there were those who believed the language French Canadians spoke was a patois, and those who rejected that notion out of hand. I do not think it is a coincidence that those who believed in a French Canadian patois were also those who held Canadians in contempt: the British, very few of whom substantiated their claims with any sort of evidence. It is of particular importance that those who rejected the patois myth, namely Chauveau and Blain de Saint-Aubin, were well- informed on the development of language in both North America and France; we shall see in the following period that “defenders” of CanFr would increasingly be drawn towards linguistic or philological studies to justify their claims.

3.1.1.3 Anglicisms

In the previous period, we saw an early awareness of English’s influence on CanFr, beginning with Lambert (1810) and Bibaud (1817), which was almost universally seen as corrupting. It is during this period that Anglicisms receive more and more (negative) attention from foreigners and French Canadians alike, with the latter coming to realize just how entrenched they had become in CanFr. Cornish writer and journalist James Silk Buckingham (1786-1855), who passed through the Canadas in the early 1840s, was intrigued by the mix of English and French: “The modern shops, or stores as they are called here, where the American phraseology is strangely mingled with the French, are many of them125 [stores] as large and as handsome as in New York or Philadelphia […]” (Buckingham 1842: 108-09)

124 Although Blain de Saint-Aubin specifically referred to the Norman patois here, I believe that his statement would equally apply or encompass similar terms like the “jargon normand” that Duvergier de Hauranne used, as both terms were used in nearly identical ways. 125 This is the sentence as it was published. A more readable version might be: “Many of the stores, or shops…are as large and as handsome as in New York or Philadelphia…”

125

Several years later, an anonymous French Canadian wrote an editorial entitled “L’Anglomanie,” which appeared in the November 18th, 1848 of the satirical newspaper Le Fantasque126. The author deplored the numerous words and phrases employed by young Canadians, and resented their passion for English dress and manners. Here is one section of the article in question:

L’anglomanie fait fureur chez les beaux et les belles d’origine canadienne- française. Les premiers recherchent avec empressement la compagnie des Anglais et surtout des Anglaises qui s’égaient à leurs dépens; les secondes soupirent ardemment pour les Anglais. Les beaux parlent presque toujours la langue anglaise, singent aussi bien qu’ils peuvent le dandy de Londres, et emploient des tailleurs anglais; les belles emploient toujours des modistes anglaises, copient de leur mieux la lady, et sèment leurs paroles, qui s’échappent difficilement de leurs dents serrées, des exclamations anglaises: Dear me! Good gracious! O Lord! le tout accompagné des gestes et contorsions d’une belle des bords de la Tamise. (Anonymous 1848: 151)

Similar to how British Canadians imitated American or British speech and manners, as first mentioned by Talbot (1824) it is important to see that young French Canadians were doing much the same; the author evidently found it to be a highly alarming trend. French Canadians had already been complaining about the influence of English on the language, and “l’Anglomanie” certainly would only have made matters worse.

French philologist Jean-Jacques Ampère (1800-1864) was critical of CanFr, citing a number of issues with the language he encountered during a short stay, particularly the written form. In this first passage, Ampère expressed his difficulty in understanding the people of Québec:

A peine débarqué, une querelle survenue entre deux charretiers127 fait parvenir à mon oreille des expressions qui ne se trouvent pas dans le dictionnaire de l’Académie, mais qui sont aussi une sorte de français. Hélas! notre langue est en minorité sur les enseignes, et, quand elle s’y montre, elle est souvent altérée et corrompue par le voisinage de l’anglais. Je lis avec douleur: Manufactureur de tabac, sirop de toute description; le sentiment du genre se perd, parce qu’il n’existe pas en anglais; le signe du pluriel disparaît là où il est absent de la langue rivale. Signe affligeant d’une influence étrangère sur une nationalité qui résiste,

126 Le Fantasque was a satirical, liberally-minded newspaper founded by Swiss immigrant Napoléon Aubin in 1837, and was published irregularly until production ceased in 1849. 127 It is not clear from the context whether Ampère is referring literally to the conversation between two carters, or is using the idiomatic phrase “parler comme un charretier,” meaning to speak vulgarly. Given his disdain for everything he heard and saw, the second meaning is likely, though not certain.

126

conquête de la grammaire après celle des armes! Je me console en entendant parler français dans les rues. (Ampère 1856: Vol. I 106)

While Ampère didn’t go so far as to say that CanFr was a patois, as found comfort in hearing the language spoken, he evidently found its written form to have been corrupted through its contact with the English language. Taken in conjunction with the previous passage, some French Canadians were comfortable borrowing from English, as well as calquing phrases – a common one being “J’ai le plancher128” – and imitating English grammar.

In the introduction to his Recueil des expressions vicieuses et des Anglicismes (1860), Gingras pointed to the very real danger Anglicisms posed to CanFr:

Tel qu’il est, ce recueil est loin de la perfection que l’on serait en droit d’exiger, s’il était sorti de mains plus habiles; mais il n’en est pas moins un acheminement vers une œuvre plus complète en ce genre, et le compilateur croit que tout de même il atteindra le but qu’il se propose: attirer l’attention du public franco- canadien129 sur le danger que court l’idiome franc en Canada, en lui démontrant jusqu’à quel point il est déjà défiguré par les Anglicismes et les termes corrompus qui s’y sont introduits. (Gingras 1860: I)

After Maguire and Boucher-Belleville, Gingras was the third individual to publish a prescriptive work on CanFr, his goal specifically being a reduction of the Anglicisms. Virtually every prescriptive work or essay published after this one focused almost entirely on Anglicisms, best exemplified by Jules-Paul Tardivel’s L’Anglicisme, voilà l’ennemi! (1880).

In 1864, an anonymous contributor to the Journal de l’Instruction Publique revisited the subject of anglomanie, and strongly admonished those who used an English term when a French one was readily available:

Outre les deux genres d’affectation que l’auteur130 vient de mentionner, il en est un qui est particulier à notre pays, c’est celui que nous appellerons l’anglomanie, et qui n’est point même tout à fait inconnu en France, si nous en jugeons par les plaintes que font entendre à ce sujet quelques écrivains, plaintes que M.

128 This is a calque of the English phrase “I have the floor”, used by MPs when it is their turn to speak. 129 It is not clear why Gingras chose to employ the term “franco-canadien” here instead of the far more frequently used “canadien”, or “canadien français”, the former being used throughout the rest of text. 130 This review is of Countess Druhojowska’s (De la politesse et du bon ton, ou Devoirs d’une femme chrétienne dans le monde (2nd edition; Paris: Victor Sarlit, libraire-éditeur), published in 1860. The two affectations in question relate to properly addressing someone by his or her title, and using “recherchés” words only sparingly.

127

Viennet131 a résumées dans une spirituelle satire qui nous a rappelé une de celles de feu M. Bibaud. Ce défaut a été trop souvent critiqué dans nos journaux et nos revues pour que nous insistions. Disons seulement que l’emploi d’un mot anglais lorsqu’il existe un équivalent français est souvent preuve d’ignorance et presque toujours une preuve de mauvais goût. (Anonymous 1864: 99)

Blain de Saint-Aubin (1865) also agreed that French Canadians should avoid using English terms or phrasing as much as possible, but also warned against what he called anglophobie, i.e., the tendency towards hypercorrection, which led some to decry anything suspected of being English, even when the word or phrase in question was correct in French:

C’est avec raison que les professeurs mettent leurs élèves en garde contre les Anglicismes qui se faufilent trop souvent dans la langue canadienne-française. Sous ce rapport, nos journaux français ne sont point irréprochables, et nos orateurs, aux élections comme dans les instituts, au barreau comme au parlement, pourraient avec raison faire leur examen de conscience en vue de se réformer.

Des personnes, même fort instruites, ont un défaut qu’on pourrait appeler “l’anglophobie dans le langage,” et qui les porte à bannir de leurs discours et de leurs écrits une foule d’expressions et de tournures parfaitement françaises, pour la raison que ces tournures ou ces expressions appartiennent en même temps à l’anglais. Elles crieront: à l’Anglicisme! à l’anglomanie! […] (Blain de Saint- Aubin 1865: 161)

While travelling to the St. Anne Falls, American writer Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) made an honest comment regarding the quality of French, similar to the one Carruthers made a few years earlier:

How good French the inhabitants of this part of Canada speak, I am not competent to say; I only know that it is not made impure by being mixed with English132. I do not know why it should not be as good as is spoken in Normandy. Charlevoix, who was here a hundred years ago, observes, “The French language is nowhere spoken with greater purity, there being no accent perceptible”; and Potherie said “They had no dialect, which, indeed, is generally lost in a colony. (Thoreau 1866: 48)

Thoreau was certainly among the very few – foreigner or Canadian – to believe that Anglicisms did not harm or corrupt the language in an appreciable way; it is strange, however, that he

131 This would be Jean-Pons-Guillaume Viennet (1777-1868), French politician, playwright, poet, and member of the Académie française (elected in 1830). The work in question is his “Epître à Boileau sur les mots nouveaux” (1855), which he read before the Académie. The “Epître” is a criticism of the adoption of English loan-words in French, which by 1855 was evidently already quite common. 132 This somewhat convoluted sentence would mean, then, that CanFr is not impure due to Anglicisms.

128 referred to the speech of Normandy, and not French in general; not being a speaker of French, what difference would it have made to him? Also of note is that Thoreau was quite familiar with earlier accounts of the French language spoken in the Canadas; considering the evidence we have already seen of previous commentators referring to earlier travel journals or studies – like Fidler (1833), Jameson (1838), or Myers (1849) – we can infer that this was a common occurrence, and would account for the occasionally striking similarities between the metalinguistic commentary given by various authors, who were otherwise unrelated.

The final comment on Anglicisms from this period comes from Hubert LaRue, whose earlier passage about the responsibility of the educated classes towards the language I will now continue. LaRue wrote:

Lorsque je reproche aux membres des professions libérales de ne pas soigner leur langage, il ne faut pas croire que j’aie simplement en vue l’abus de termes anglais, l’emploi des Anglicismes. Non; on peut très-bien n’employer que des expressions parfaitement françaises, et, cependant, parler très-incorrectement encore. (LaRue 1867: 21)

As an example of another fault, LaRue suggested that stammering or stuttering was a common one, and one that should be corrected as soon as possible. Also, like the author of the article in Le Fantasque, LaRue chastises young women – the belles – for using English in the attempt to sound fashionable.

In summary, awareness of Anglicisms in Canadian speech and writing increased appreciably during this period, with both French Canadians and travellers commenting on the issue. While some like Thoreau saw English influence on the lexicon as neutral at worst, a view which was probably informed by his reading of earlier accounts of the language, most commentators – French Canadians in particular – were alarmed by the corruption of their language by foreign words. Along with this strong disdain for Anglicisms, as Blain de Saint-Aubin suggested, some French Canadians were hypersensitive, and often saw Anglicisms where none were to be found.

3.1.1.4 Canadianisms, Normanisms, and archaisms

Unlike in the previous period, in which there were only a handful of comments on the various “- isms” that served to differentiate CanFr from Standard French, we begin to see a greater awareness of the existence of Canadianisms, Normanisms, and archaisms during the mid-19th

129 century. This new-found awareness was doubtlessly due in part to the debate among Maguire, Demers, and Bibaud over the legitimacy of Canadianisms of lexicon and pronunciation in 1842, which brought the differences between both languages into stark contrast.

While Canadianisms weren’t considered as bad or serious as Anglicisms, they did not go unnoticed. Prior to this period, several writers had discussed uniquely Canadian words at length, such as Potier (1743) and Viger (1810), but it wasn’t until the middle third of the 19th century that a value was attached to them. Maguire and Demers, for their part, debated over the legitimacy of numerous words in 1842. In 1856, Ampère discussed the strong Norman influence on CanFr, which he didn’t necessarily see as problematic:

Ainsi qu’on vient de le voir, l’accent qui domine à Montréal est l’accent normand. Quelques locutions trahissent pareillement l’origine de cette population, qui, comme la population franco-canadienne en général, est surtout normande. Le bagage d’un voyageur s’appelle butin, ce qui se dit également en Normandie et ailleurs, et convient particulièrement aux descendants des anciens Scandinaves. J’ai demandé quel bateau à vapeur je devais prendre pour aller à Québec; on m’a répondu: Ne prenez pas celui-là, c’est le plus méchant. Nous disons encore un méchant bateau, mais non ce bateau est méchant. Nous disons un méchant vers, quand par hasard il s’en fait de tels […] Pour retrouver vivantes dans la langue des traditions du grand siècle, il faut aller au Canada. (Ampère 1856: Vol. I 108- 09)

Like his near contemporaries (Lebrun, Tocqueville), Ampère was nostalgic for the pre- Revolutionary language and customs, and was therefore not criticizing these supposed Normanisms, but rather commenting on the unique nature of French Canadians’ language.

The following year, Kohl, who had experienced considerable difficulty in understanding French Canadians, noted two phrases with which he was wholly unfamiliar:

Although I did not know before what a “temps boucaneux133,” and “ce que nous appellons la brâme134,” signified, for the words are not to be found in the Dictionary of the French Academy, I soon found it out, for, as I went on deck to

133 Although the term “boucaneux” was not in the DAF, “boucaner” was: Boucaner. v.a. Préparer, faire sécher de la viande ou du poisson à la manière des sauvages de l’Amérique, c’est-à-dire, en les exposant longtemps à la fumÉE. Boucaner de la viande. On dit dans un sens analogique, Boucaner des cuirs. (DAF 1835: Vol. I 209) Maguire had entries for both “boucane” and “boucaner” in his Manuel, defining the former as: “terme improper, qu’on emploie comme synonyme de fume.” (Maguire 1841: 140) 134 Presumably this would be “brume”, given that Kohl mentioned fog in the next sentence.

130

see what I could see, I saw nothing, or at least only a thick fog […] (Kohl 1861: 287)

Kohl’s reference to the DAF was a common one, as many commentators would refer to it to demonstrate that a given word was illegitimate; if a term appeared in the DAF, it was French. If not, it was something lesser, like a patois, or not French at all. Since Clapin’s Dictionnaire would not be published until 1894, the Littré was first published from 1863-1872, and Larousse’s Grand dictionnaire (1866-1876) was first and foremost an encyclopedia, the DAF was the only prestigious dictionary for French available at the time.

The final reference to Canadianisms, or rather Normanisms, comes from LaRue, who described a stereotypical French Canadian home, and the language spoken there:

Maintenant, causons avec ces braves gens, notons bien chaque mot qu’ils vont nous dire; et nous allons nous convaincre qu’ils parlent le plus pur français de la vieille Normandie, avec, par-ci par-là, des mots, des expressions étranges que nous nous rappellerons avoir vues quelque part, pourvu que nous ayons étudié notre langue aux sources mêmes de notre littérature; ce sont ces mots que certains esprits superficiels prennent pour du patois. (LaRue 1867: 14)

LaRue’s comment on the “superficial minds” is an important one, as it marks the first (along with Blain de Saint-Aubin) discussion of the “legitimate” origins of CanFr. Dozens of commentators had stated up until that point that CanFr was a patois, jargon, or corrupt French on account of numerous Canadianisms, and it is only in the latter third of the century that serious lexicographic studies on the origins of CanFr began, illustrated best by Dunn’s Glossaire (1880) and Clapin’s Dictionnaire (1894).

Like Canadianisms, archaisms were not judged nearly as harshly as Anglicisms were, but they were nonetheless a source of contention among some French Canadians; as Bouchard (2012) explained, the history of the French language in Canada during the second half of the 19th century was largely defined by the need to modernize the language. Simply put, archaisms, which had long since fallen out of use in France, had no place in a modern society, particularly one that was run by the British.

In 1846, Irish writer Charlotte H. Coursen (dates unknown) contrasted what she felt was the old- fashioned quality of the language spoken by French Canadians with the English of the British Canadians:

131

[…] an upright open and honest-spoken House of Assembly, the Representatives of the third “united” parliament of the Canadas, convened within the walls of St. Anne; qualifying themselves […] by the simple, yet effectual means of denouncing each other in ancient French, and modern English languages […] (Coursen 1846: 1)

This contrast between French and English, ancient and modern, conservative and progressive, was a common belief among British commentators. It is not difficult to see the political advantage of describing the opposition as backwards, or stuck in the past, while depicting one’s own people as progressive, industrious, and modern.

In his Mœurs et voyages (1855), French critic Philarète Chasles (1798-1873) supported the evidently popular belief that French Canadians spoke the language of the Sun King theory: “Sous la conduite d’un vieux gentilhomme fermier du Canada, Français jusque dans la moelle des os, et parlant encore la langue de Louis XIV, j’accomplis, selon mon dessein, une tournée rapide dans ces provinces intéressantes […]” (Chasles 1855: 142) Unlike Coursen, Chasles did not necessarily see the old-fashioned nature of the language as a negative trait, but rather an peculiar adornment.

In 1862, French writer Maurice Sand (1823-1889) gave a positive assessment of CanFr, emphasizing its “antique” flavour, thereby recalling de Tocqueville and Marmier’s comments on nostalgia for the Ancien Régime:

L’esprit canadien est resté français; seulement on est frappé de la forme du langage, qui semble arriérée d’une centaine d’années. Ceci n’a certes rien de désagréable, car si les gens du peuple ont l’accent de nos provinces, en revanche les gens du monde parlent un peu comme nos écrivains du XVIIIe siècle, et cela m’a fait une telle impression dès le premier jour, qu’en fermant les yeux je m’imaginais être transporté dans le passé et entendre causer les contemporains du marquis de Montcalm. (Sand 1862: 327)

Once again, we see a distinction being made between the speech of the habitants and the city- dwellers, though Sand evidently did not see CanFr as being inferior to his own variety; it was simply different, older.

In 1865, Irish war reporter and soldier William Howard Russell (1820-1907) commented on the antique nature of the language spoken by the habitants: “Not the least interesting to me of the people were the habitans in their long robes gathered in round the waist by scarlet or bright-

132 colored sashes, with long boots, and fur caps, and French faces, chatting in their Old-World French” (Russell 1865: 105) Once again, a link is trying to be established between material culture (their clothing) and their language, both being considered old-fashioned.

From what we have seen in this short section, Canadianisms, Normanisms, and archaisms were seen positively by some (Demers, Ampère, and Sand), as they lent a nostalgic flavour to the language, embellishing it, and did not detract from its so-called “purity”; whereas commentators like Maguire and Kohl were wary of those homegrown, or antique words and phrases. In the following period, we will see a very distinct divide between those who believed Canadianisms to be legitimate forms (the supporters of an endogenous linguistic norm), and those who believed that Canadian speech should be modeled on the French of the upper classes only (supporters of an exogenous linguistic norm).

3.1.1.5 Pronunciation

Although several writers discussed the numerous “faults” or “errors” that French Canadians made in their daily speech, the major issue during this period was French Canadian pronunciation. French Canadians and foreigners alike became more aware of differences between CanFr and so-called ParFr. American-born, Nova Scotia-raised clergyman and educator Thomas Maguire (1776-1854) published the first prescriptive work on CanFr, the Manuel des difficultés les plus communes de la langue française (1841). Maguire explained his motivations for writing the book in the preface:

Le besoin d’un Manuel Lexique des difficultés de la langue française, se fait vivement sentir dans nos écoles de grammaire; et l’on a à regretter que le commerce ne nous fournisse pas les ouvrages de ce genre, qui se multiplient, depuis quelques années sur l’ancien continent […] l’Auteur n’a gardé de se présenter sous d’autre titre, que celui d’humble compilateur; titre qui doit lui demeurer entier, malgré quelques articles de sa création, devenus indispensables pour signaler des erreurs de langage particulières au Canada (Maguire 1841: I)

Maguire’s aim was to provide alternatives to the numerous Anglicisms that had entered the language, as well as correct several matters regarding pronunciation; most notably, the pronunciation of the diphthong oi. The pronunciation as /we/ was common among the upper classes (le bel usage) prior to the French Revolution; but after the foundation of the First Republic, and the changing of the guard (le grand usage), /wa/ became the standard (in France in

133 short order. It is noteworthy that Maguire believed schools did too little to correct students’ poor speech habits, the result being an adult population who committed numerous “grammatical errors.”

Maguire’s beliefs about the pronunciation of oi sparked a brief war of words with fellow clergyman Jérôme Demers (1774-1853), who wrote a series of articles in 1842 attacking Maguire’s position. Their year-long quarrel was detailed in Narcisse Dionne’s Une dispute grammaticale en 1842 (1912), and received significant attention in Bouchard (2012). I have chosen to cite a short passage from each author that summarizes their argument, followed by further commentary from Michel Bibaud, who had his own opinion.

First, we have Maguire:

L’articulation vicieuse de la diphtongue oi, si fréquente chez nous, doit attirer l’attention sérieuse de l’instituteur; ou plutôt, devons-nous dire, sa conscience est grevée à cet égard, d’une immense responsabilité envers ses élèves et la société. […] Outre Gatel déjà cité, Noel et Chapsal dans leur dictionnaire, et Rolland135 dans son vocabulaire, désignent toujours la prononciation de la diphtongue oi par oa, ou oua. Suivant eux, voir, boire, croire, moi, toi, droit, etc., se prononcent, voar, boar, croar, moa, toa, droa.

Il faut donc éviter de donner le son de l’è ouvert à la diphtongue oi, et se garder de prononcer vo-ère, bo-ère, cro-ère, mo-è, to-è, dro-è, etc. (Maguire 1841: 99- 100)

For Maguire, teaching and using the “correct” pronunciation was not only aesthetically pleasing, but imperative for the maintenance of French Canadian society. It somewhat defies expectation that a Catholic priest active in Lower Canada for the entirety of his career would consider the language he worked in to be incorrect. However, we must consider that Maguire was raised in Nova Scotia – in an English-speaking context – a fact which may explain his strong opinions on “proper” French, i.e., the variety spoken in France. Moreover, according to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Maguire also spent some time in France in the year 1830, a trip which would have exposed him to a different variety of French than the one he was used to. For his part, Demers strongly disagreed with Maguire on many points, and provided evidence to support

135 This is most likely Jean-François Rolland’s Nouveau vocabulaire ou dictionnaire portatif de la langue française (1824).

134 his position. He began his argument by citing Catineau136, whose dictionary was first published in 1802:

Dans ce dictionnaire la diphtongue oi n’est représentée par oa que dans quelques monosyllabes, tels que pois (légume), bois, mois, (la douzième partie de l’année), etc., qui y sont figurés poa, boa, moa. Dans les autres mots, la diphtongue oi est figurée par oè; ainsi, selon ce lexicographe, on doit prononcer, moè, toè, soè, (moi, toi, soi); cro-ère, (croire), je croè, boè-re, (boire), tu boè; emloè-ié, (employer), j’emploè, etc. – L’auteur du Manuel conviendra aisément, sans doute, que c’est ainsi que les personnes instruites prononcent la diphtongue oi en Canada. (Demers in Dionne 1912: 107)

The educated people Demers refers to would of course be the clergy; a not so-subtle jab at Maguire. Demers then made an appeal to more French lexicographers, such as Charles-Pierre Girault-Duvivier137, Napoléon Landais138, and Pierre Boiste139, all of whom agreed with Catineau, and therefore, Demers himself. Unfortunately, Demers did not specify which editions of the aforementioned dictionaries he used. From those authorities, Demers then concluded: “Dans tous les autres mots, la prononciation de oi, est figurée par oè. Forts de cette autorité, les instituteurs canadiens peuvent donc en toute sûreté de conscience continuer à apprendre à leurs élèves à prononcer vo-ère, bo-ère, cro-ère, mo-è, to-è, dro-è, etc.” (Demers in Dionne 1912: 107)

In the Encyclopédie canadienne140, Michel Bibaud commented on Maguire and Demers’ debate, stating that neither was entirely correct regarding the pronunciation of oi:

L’auteur du Manuel et le correspondant de la Gazette diffèrent sur bien des choses, et particulièrement sur la prononciation de la diphtongue oi: nous pensons que l’un et l’autre vont trop loin, ou au-delà de la vérité, le premier, en prétendant qu’il faut toujours donner à cette diphtongue le son d’oa ou d’oua; le second, en soutenant que les Canadiens, en lui donnant celui d’oè ou d’ouè, (excepté dans un

136 Pierre-Marie-Sébastien Catineau-Laroche, who wrote the Nouveau dictionnaire de poche de la langue française, avec la prononciation. (1802) 137 Girault-Duvivier wrote the popular Grammaire des grammaires, ou Analyse raisonnée des meilleurs traités de la langue françoise (1812), which was already in its 7th edition in 1830. 138 Landais’ was responsible for a number of dictionaries and grammars, namely Dictionnaire général et grammatical des dictionnaires français (1834), Grammaire générale des Grammaires Françaises (1835), and Grammaire générale, ou Résumé de toutes les grammaires françaises (1838). 139 Pierre-Claude-Victor Boiste (1765-1824), famous for the Dictionnaire universel de la langue française (1800). 140 L’encylopédie canadienne was a monthly periodical founded by Bibaud in 1842, with similar goals as his earlier publication La bibliothèque canadienne. L’encyclopédie did not find much success, and was discontinued the following year.

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petit nombre de mots), la prononcent exactement et toujours comme les Parisiens. (Bibaud 1842a: 102)

Bibaud proceeded to summarize their argument and sources, and provided some anecdotal evidence about Frenchmen who allegedly spoke like members of the educated class in French Canada. Bibaud then described some French Canadians who, having spent some time in Paris, come back speaking differently:

Nous avons vu plusieurs jeunes Canadiens revenir de Paris, avec la manière de prononcer la diphtongue oi et la voyelle a, dans certains mots, différente de celle qu’on leur avait connue avant leur séjour dans cette capitale de la France. Nous nous permettons de citer, comme fournissant l’exemple remarquable d’une prononciation tout-à-fait parisienne acquise par un Canadien, l’estimable M.G.B. Donegani141, décédé à Paris, il y a un plus d’un an; pas la moindre différence perceptible entre sa manière de prononcer et celle de M.H. Bossange142, libraire, et de plusieurs autres Parisiens instruits, que nous avons eu le plaisir de connaître et d’entendre ici, il y a plus ou moins longtems. (Bibaud 1842a: 104)

In a second article published in 1842 entitled “Prononciation de la langue française”, Bibaud made a clear distinction between common Canadian pronunciation and “good pronunciation.” Bibaud began by discussing differences in the third person form of the imperfect subjunctive, and then proceeded to the pronunciation of the pronoun ils:

Nous avons lu dans une ancienne grammaire de RESTAUD143 [sic], qu’il, ils, doivent se prononcer i: c’est la prononciation qu’adopte le Dr. Meilleur144, et c’est celle de la majorité des Canadiens, du moins dans la conversation et l’usage familier; mais ce n’est pas, suivant nous, la bonne prononciation française. Une preuve que la grammaire dont nous venons de parler n’est pas une bonne autorité, c’est qu’elle veut qu’on dise ste femme, ste fille, etc., au lieu de cette femme, etc. C’est bien là une prononciation populaire en France comme ici, mais ce n’est pas généralement celle de la bonne société. (Bibaud 1842b: 135)

It is worth noting that Bibaud considers the popular speech of Canada and France to be rough equivalents, while “good” French was spoken only by the educated classes. In addition, this

141 Guillaume-Benjamin Donegani, the younger brother of John Anthony Donegani (1798-1868), was Montréal’s first Italian physician. 142 This would be Hector Bossange, a Parisian bookseller who lived in Montréal from 1815-1819. Bossange’s father published several dictionaries, including Girault-Duvivier’s. Bibaud’s reference to these two individuals, part of the intellectual élite of Montréal, is intentional. 143 Pierre Restaut wrote the popular and influential Abrégé des principes de la grammaire française (1730), which would be published continuously until 1817. 144 Jean-Baptiste Meilleur’s A treatise on the pronunciation of the French language will be discussed in section 3.1.2.1. Bibaud and Meilleur had collaborated in the past on La bibliothèque canadienne.

136 three-way debate both exemplifies and foreshadows the discussion between the ancients and the moderns on the legitimacy of le grand usage and le bel usage, as described by Gendron (2007).

Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779-1852) published several editions of his collected poems throughout his lifetime. The posthumous edition The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore145 contains commentary by the author on some of his poems, notably on the famous “Canadian boat-song.” Moore writes: “Our voyageurs had good voices, and sung perfectly in time together. The original words of the air, to which I adapted these stanzas, appeared to be a long, incoherent story, of which I could understand but little, from the barbarous pronunciation of the Canadians.” (Moore 1854: xxi) Curiously, the “Canadian boat-song”, which was inspired by “Dans mon chemin j’ai rencontré”, (see Sulte 1915, Needler 1950) was composed in English. Given that previous British commentators well-versed in “school French” had significant difficulty understanding their French Canadian interlocutors, I find it unlikely that Moore’s difficulty lie in the “barbarous pronunciation” of the voyageurs, but rather in his own lack of ability in French.

In 1855, French Canadian newspaper editor Jean-Baptiste Boucher-Belleville146 (1800-1874) wrote the second normative work published in Canada, Dictionnaire des barbarismes et des solécismes. The introduction recalls Chauveau’s statement regarding outsiders’ perceptions of the language, and the belief that CanFr was fine the way it was, a point of view Boucher- Belleville evidently did not share:

En donnant au public ce petit Dictionnaire des Barbarismes et des Solécismes les plus ordinaires de ce pays, je ne me dissimule pas que cet ouvrage, d’un genre nouveau, sera accueilli par un grand nombre avec défaveur, les uns parce qu’ils croiront qu’il est propre à montrer aux étrangers jusqu’à quel point la langue de Fénélon et de Lamartine s’est déjà corrompue en Canada, les autres parce qu’ils trouveront qu’on parle et qu’on écrit assez bien comme cela. (Boucher-Belleville 1855: III)

This final statement foreshadowed the writings of Jules-Paul Tardivel (1881), Oscar Dunn (1876, 1880), and Sylva Clapin (1894), who would pave the way for a Canadian norm, though not without a long struggle.

145 An early edition of Moore’s completed works was published in 1827, though it did not contain this passage. 146 The book was in fact published anonymously, but showed up under his name on the Internet Archive. A search on the Dictionary of Canadian Biography verified Boucher-Belleville as the author.

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English doctor and travel writer John Shaw (dates unknown) was perhaps the first Anglophone writer who possessed actual expertise in French, as he highlighted some subtle features of the language; the numerous examples he provided of “typical” Canadian usage was rare, and therefore of some importance. In this first passage, which I have reproduced in its entirety for the wealth of information (i.e., broad stereotypes) it contains, Shaw explained that his French served him very poorly in Québec:

I came into contact with a French boy, about twelve years of age, and, wishing to ascertain the degree of intelligence and education of the youth, I put the following questions. “Est-ce que vous avez entendu parler de Monsieur Louis-Philippe, Roi des Français?” To my perfect astonishment, he answered, “No [sic], Monsieur!!” I then catechised him a second time. “Vous avez lu dans l’histoire quelque chose du grand Napoléon?” He answered, “No [sic], Monsieur!” This was a young gentleman who had been at the parish school, and who boasted of having carried away academic honours.

I had heard that the French of this part were very ignorant, and I am afraid that this boy was but a too faithful sample of the state of education. I observed during the short tête-à-tête that I had with him, that he pronounced the adjective François “Francah;” nous sallon [sic] voyer, “nous sallon [sic] vayer;” mois, “mey;” and du lait, “du lette.” He also made use of the expression, “le steamer,” instead of “le bateau à vapeur.” The traveller here will be much amused and probably vexed, to find that his knowledge of French at his first interview with the natives serves him but to little purpose; and it is only by listening very attentively, that he will be able to recognise anything resembling his own knowledge of the language – excepting in general characteristics, such as the nasal sound accompanied with the roulement of the letter r. A good instance of this kind occurred to me. I was approached by a French Canadian, who very civilly touched his hat, requesting from me some information; not understanding him, I addressed him as follows: “Est-ce que vous parlez Français?” He said, “Oui, Monsieur!” I then said, “Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?” He then answered me in a long rigmarole of which I could make nothing. I then said, “J’ai appris mon François147 à Paris, et je suis bien fâche [sic] que je ne puis [sic] pas vous comprendre.” We parted from each other without understanding the least of the subject. I, for my part, could not comprehend the sense or even many of the sounds of his language. (Shaw 1856: 77-79)

In this long passage, Shaw revisits some of the oldest commentary on CanFr, namely the pronunciation of the final consonant and the usage of English words in everyday conversation. In addition, some of the other examples he provided would indicated that he has a good “ear” for

147 It is unclear why Shaw chose to employ this spelling.

138 language: /meI/ for /mwa/, /frãsa/ for /frãsε/, aren’t attested in any other contemporary accounts. In a later passage, Shaw underlines the difference between the speech of the habitants and the upper class, and between the habitants and their French equivalents:

I had great difficulty in understanding the peasantry, from being unaccustomed to their style and manner of speaking; but on conversing with those a little higher in the scale of education, I had no difficulty in comprehending the greater part of their conversation; and at the same time I was enabled to observe their provincialisms. I invariably observed the following deviations from modern French, viz. for froid, “frett;” après, “aprah;” s’il vous plait, “s’il vous plah;” mauvais, “mauvah.” Although this may appear very horrid to those accustomed to Parisian French only, still I was informed by one of the old French noblesse, who resides near to Quebec, that the peasantry of Canada speak a much better language than that of the old mother country. (Shaw 1856: 88-89)

From this passage, it appears that the homegrown Canadian belief – that the habitants spoke a better or purer language than farmers in France – has spread to some travellers. Note also Shaw’s contrast of “modern French” and opinions of the “old French noblesse”, which further highlights this ongoing debate.

The next two comments about French Canadian pronunciation come from Kohl, who made some misinformed or exaggerated assertions. Kohl’s first observation concerns the pronunciation of oi and a, which he attributed to Norman influence:

The French of these good people would have been very agreeable if they would not have called voir, savoir, and croire – voar, savoar, and croare, etc. A broad o is constantly substituted for a – Canada is Conodo, chats are chots, and les basses classes, les bosses closes. This not very pleasing change proceeds, I understand, from Normandy, whence most of the Canadians are descended; and other peculiarities of the Canadian dialect are traced to that province and to Brittany and La Vendée, the difference being that here that dialect is spoken by all classes, and there only by the most uncultivated. (Kohl 1861: 99-100)

It is somewhat surprising that Kohl agreed with Demers and his sources regarding the pronunciation of the diphthong oi, not with Maguire, as Demers leaned more towards le bel usage in his letters. Later, unexpected differences in pronunciation caused Kohl some consternation, and annoyed his interlocutor:

When we parted for the night I had almost a quarrel with my good Canadian priest because I could not understand his last remark. He said, “Lo nuict a bien noaere” – which phrase, though he repeated it several times, I could by no means

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make out. At last he naturally got impatient, and could not see why his pronunciation made the darkness of his remark equal to that of the night; to which, as the reader will perceive, he meant to point my attention. (Kohl 1861: 204-05)

The final comment on pronunciation comes from LaRue, who further commented on these two sounds – oi and a – again citing the supposed Norman influence on the language, and cautioned against hypercorrection:

Quant aux vices de prononciation, nous avons certainement peu de chose à corriger. Si nous donnions à l’a qui termine un grand nombre de nos mots français, une longueur moins démesurée, si nous prononcions, par exemple, Canada, au lieu de Canadâ, nous aurions fait déjà un immense progrès. Chose singulière! nous faisons souvent bref l’a qui doit être long, et long, l’a qui doit être bref. Ainsi, nous disons bazâr; on doit dire bâzar. Nous prononçons maçon, les Français prononcent mâçon.

Il en est de même de la particule oi, que nous prononçons très-fermée, à la mode normande. Ainsi, nous prononçons soer, voer, noer, au lieu de soar, voar, noar. Ici, cependant, il faut éviter l’excès dans lequel tombent certaines personnes qui affectent le beau langage, et prononcent ces mots à l’anglaise: voâr, soâr, noâr. (LaRue 1867: 21-22)

LaRue’s last claim regarding is astonishing: that a small segment of the population would pronounce French – their native language – with an English or British accent. I have found no other evidence of this phenomenon – although the author of the article in Le Fantasque (1848) did complain about Anglophilia – but given how accurate and detailed the rest of LaRue’s observations are, it would not be prudent to dismiss this claim.

While comparatively few writers commented on differences in pronunciation between CanFr and Standard French, the differences that were described – the issue of oi, the /α/ in place of /a/ in some places, as well as the specific words Shaw and LaRue mentioned – demonstrate that there was a definite break between France and French-speaking Canada. These changes were almost entirely perceived as being negative, a “deviation” from the French norm, or what some commentators referred to as “modern French”, the French language as it was spoken and written in France since the Revolution of 1789.

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3.1.2 Utility and legitimacy

As in the previous chapter, British and American visitors to the Canadas continued to express frustration at being unable to converse with French Canadians, who were often accused of speaking no English, despite much evidence to the contrary. Secondly, the use of both languages for official purposes was questioned throughout this period; the French language was often described as being a burden on the colony, and an impediment to progress. The commentary was the most vicious in the years after the Rebellion of 1837-38, as many British and British Canadians questioned the loyalty of French Canadians.

3.1.2.1 French Canadians don’t speak English

Shortly after the formation of the United Province of Canada, Buckingham accused French Canadians of stymying efforts at reconciliation between the two peoples, as they allegedly refused to learn English. Buckingham attributed this unwillingness largely to their status as a conquered people, who didn’t want to help their oppressors:

The French, as the conquered people, might naturally be supposed unwilling to press themselves on the society of their new masters; and being little inclined to learn any language but their own, the overture toward social intercourse would never be likely to come from them. (Buckingham 1842: 242)

While strolling through the streets of Québec, Buckingham noted that few of the inhabitants were familiar with English: “In entering the shops, or walking the streets, French is almost the only language heard; and by far the greater number of inhabitants below the middle class neither understand nor desire to learn English.” (Buckingham 1842: 243) It is noteworthy that Buckingham singled out working class French Canadians, a rather broad group which included anyone from factory workers to grocers or even artisans, for not speaking English, with the implication being that French Canadians of the middle and upper classes were more likely to speak both languages. Finally, Buckingham observed that the habitants only spoke one language: “Like the peasants of the country generally, they only spoke French […]” (Buckingham 1842: 277) Buckingham’s claims about the use of English across classes is important, as it helps to understand French Canadians’ attitudes towards English better.

Marmier noted that French was the most common language he heard spoken in Montréal: “Autour de moi je n’entends parler que français. Le domestique de l’hôtel où je loge, la pauvre

141 femme qui vend des fruits au coin de la rue, le cocher de fiacre qui m’invite […]” (Marmier 1851: Vol. I 93) A decade later, a Mrs. Edward Copleston (dates unknown), a recent immigrant to Canada from Great Britain, found the opposite: “The prevalence of the French language, the severity of the climate, and the like, are objections greatly exaggerated.” (Copleston 1861: 14) In reading through all of the travel journals published during the 19th century, one thing that struck me is the conflicting reports about the ambiguous linguistic, cultural, and ethnic nature of Montréal and Québec: was it English or French? Either the inhabitants spoke French all the time with everyone they encountered, or they were very English cities, where one could hear English spoken nearly everywhere. I believe the answer lies in socioeconomic class: with whom was the author consorting during his or her visit? Given contemporary testimony, it would appear that the more time spent among the élite of either city, the more the English character dominates, whereas French was then believed to be more associated with the working classes and the habitants.

Thoreau also commented on the ubiquity of French during his travels, which gave him some difficulty in getting from one place to another. In the following passage, Thoreau emphasized the “foreign” aspect of French while passing through Beauport:

When we knocked, they shouted some French word for come in, perhaps entrez, and we asked for a lodging in English; but we found, unexpectedly, that they spoke French only […] and we soon found out that the inhabitants were exclusively French Canadians, and nobody spoke English at all, any more than in France; that, in fact, we were in a foreign country, where the inhabitants uttered not one familiar sound to us. (Thoreau 1866: 50)

Thoreau’s lack of competence in French notwithstanding, his comment on the “foreign country” was a common one, and belied certain prejudices about Canadians: many British travellers to Lower Canada considered the French Canadians to be foreigners, due to their dress, religion, customs, and of course, the language they spoke, despite the fact that they had been living there since the early 17th century.

The final comment on the communication barrier that existed between the British and the French Canadians comes from Henry Beaumont Small (1831-1919), an English-born Canadian civil servant and naturalist, who wrote The Canadian Handbook (1867). In the following passage, Beaumont sought to alleviate travellers’ fears that they would not be able to communicate with Canadians, few of whom were believed to speak English:

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English and American tourists have been too apt to think that they could not go through the nooks and corners of Lower Canada without a knowledge of the French language; and that has to some extent acted as a drawback to the beautiful scenery there met with, for the strangeness of a tongue we cannot use causes more perplexity and discomfort than persons readily acknowledge. But in the Lower Province English and French cultures amalgamate, and the English language predominates; all know it, except a few of the peasantry. (Small 1867: 186)

Where did these tourists’ beliefs come from? From travel journals and travel guides like the ones listed above, of course. The fact that Small needed to include this short passage indicates that Lower Canada had developed a reputation for being closed off to English-speaking travellers, yet there is ample evidence to the contrary.

In conclusion, it can be said that visitors’ conflicting accounts of the languages spoken in Canada, and the difficulty of getting by with little or no French, comes down to three things: firstly, the issue of socioeconomic class, where the English language is more common among certain classes than others; note that there is no agreement thus far on which classes speak English148; secondly, visitors experienced and heard what they expected, as detailed in various travel journals with which they were evidently familiar; thirdly, the physical locations the authors visited was also important, as English was much more likely to be encountered in the cities of Montréal and Québec than in the towns and villages in between.

3.1.2.2 The bilingual problem

With the adoption of Article 41 from the Act of Union (1840), French had no official status in the province until 1848. The banning of the use of French for official purposes doubtlessly stems from prejudices towards French Canadians in the aftermath of the year-long Rebellion just a few years earlier, though as we have seen in the last chapter (2.1.2.2), certain elements of British Canadian society were opposed to French in Canada from the very beginning. The first to comment on the problem with French was British naval officer and writer Frederick Marryat (1792-1848), whose three-volume A Diary in America with remarks on its institutions (1839) contained scathing criticisms of French Canadians. Marryat believed, like “Anglicanus” and Gray before him, that the British government had made a grave error in not suppressing the

148 Although all commentators – whether French Canadian or British – seem to agree that the habitants knew very little English.

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French element in Canada when it had the chance. In its desire to be accommodating to the conquered people, Marryat believed, the Crown had created numerous problems for itself:

When the Canadian provinces were reduced by the British arms, the inhabitants, being entirely French, were permitted to retain their own laws, their own language in Courts and public offices, and all their vested rights which had been granted to them by the French government. It was a generous, but, as it has been proved, an unwise policy. The form of government, as an English colony, was proposed, and acceded to by the French population, who, gratified by the liberality of their new rulers, cheerfully took the oath of allegiance. (Marryat 1839: Vol. III 80)

In a later passage, Marryat remarked that the French character of the residents of Lower Canada was so deeply ingrained, that even extreme measures would be unable to Anglicize the populace:

How, then, are we to make the Lower Canadas English? We may buy up the seigneuries; we may insist upon the English language being used in the Assembly and courts of law, in public documents, &c.; we may alter the laws to correspond with those of the mother-country; but will that make the province English? We may even insist that none but English-born subjects, or Canadian-born English, shall be elected to the House of Assembly, or hold any public office; but will that make the province English? Certainly not. (Marryat 1839: Vol. III 178-79)

The banning of the French language for all official purposes in Canada seemed to be what Marryat was hoping for, but such an unpopular act could not have lasted long149. French Canadian grammarian Jean-Baptiste Meilleur (1796-1878) commented on the proscription of French in the introduction to his A Treatise on the pronunciation of the French language (1842), stating that English could never take the place of French:

For, in spite of the efforts of some fanatical politicians to proscribe the French, and to prevent its use in this country, its true knowledge will always be eagerly sought for, by all philologists, as a fertile source of useful and agreeable learning. The English may forcibly become the language of business and officiality [sic]; but the French shall still continue to be, as ever, the language of science and polite literature. (Meilleur 1842: vii)

Having realized that simply banning French would not serve to Anglicize the province, some politicians attempted to employ other means to promote English; rather than eliminate French,

149 Marryat also had strong negative opinions about the Americans, North American culture, and democracy in general.

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English would be promoted as a better, more logical alternative for politics and law. Lyell explained this strategy, as told to him by a British Canadian acquaintance:

I was informed by a physician at Montreal that the English language has made great progress within his recollection; and all agree that it would soon become still more general if the seat of government were transferred to that city, – a measure since realized, but which was then only beginning to be discussed (1842), and was exciting no small effervescence of party feeling. I was assured by many that it was the only step towards Anglicizing Lower Canada that would be popular with the French party. (Lyell 1845: Vol. II 116)

In 1855, Weld discussed the inherent problem of allowing both languages to be spoken in Parliament:

Bearing in mind the diversity of political opinions and parties in Canada, and the great difficulty in harmonising conflicting interests, it was a mistake to have permitted the French language to be retained in Parliament and legislative affairs. At present few persons in Upper Canada are conversant with French, and consequently Members of Parliament hear long speeches which they do not comprehend. (Weld 1855: 143)

The following year, the anonymous author of The Canadian Tourist (1856)150, compared the bilingual court proceedings to the Tower of Babel, echoing previous statements (MacGregor and Picken 1832) to this effect:

As some one or more of the courts, civil or criminal, are almost always in session, a visit will amuse the stranger from the curious mixture of French and English in which the proceedings are carried on, for though all the Judges and nearly all the lawyers speak both languages, yet each addresses the Court for the most part in his own, so that to the visitor ignorant of French it is a scene of Babel-like confusion. (Anonymous 1856: 63)

Isabella Bishop also thought little of having both languages in use for the same purpose, employing the term “indiscriminately” to describe the usage of both languages: “The Speaker of the Legislative Assembly is a Frenchman, and French and English are used indiscriminately in debate. Parliamentary notices and papers are also printed in both languages.” (Bishop 1856: 281) The term “indiscriminately” suggests that neither language had precedence over the other; in other words, they were largely interchangeable, and used as the speakers saw fit. In the following

150 It bears mentioning that this guidebook was first published in Toronto, and then later in Montréal (1866).

145 passage, Shaw explained how the courts in Montréal tried to solve the problem of comprehension among the lawyers, judges, and witnesses:

In the Courts of Montreal, I have seen the jury made up of six English and six French, in order that court matters might be fully and perfectly comprehended by both parties. The French may have possessed some knowledge of the English, and the English of the French; still an interpreter is always present to translate sentence after sentence, the instant it is delivered to the witnesses; and this is done in both languages to prevent any mistakes occurring. I have seen cases when the counsel was only capable of speaking one language; but I should conceive it necessary in all cases that the judges are not only capable of understanding and translating, but also of conversing fluently in both. (Shaw 1856: 83)

The year 1856 was evidently an important year for opponents of a bilingual colony, as we see a number of negative comments on the use of French for official purposes published over the course of that year. The harshest criticism comes from Kingston, who proposed some truly drastic measures. Kingston began by expressing his displeasure at the use of French in the House of Assembly:

So pertinacious, indeed, are some of the [French] party in keeping up what they consider their nationality, that in the House of Assembly members who can speak English perfectly will not only refuse to use any language but French, but insist on having what English members say translated to them. (Kingston 1856: Vol. II 192)

Despite this affront to his sensibilities, Kingston predicted that French Canadians would eventually be outnumbered and outclassed in every way, so they would do well in accepting amalgamation: “Their only probable salvation from this fate is amalgamation with the superior race. Let their laws be assimilated, let their language be blended, or rather let their execrable patois French be sunk in that of the English language […]” (Kingston 1856: Vol. II 192) This last part is the most offensive comment I have found on CanFr, and it clearly establishes a connection between British prejudices and language beliefs about CanFr; those with an agenda to erase the French element from Canada attacked the language viciously, and reduced it to a patois.

Finally in 1859, we have the first response to the offensive notion of forcing French Canadians to abandon their language in favour of English. French Canadian journalist and politician Joseph- Charles Taché (1820-1894) addressed this issue in Notice Historiographique, which

146 commemorated the 200 year anniversary of Bishop François de Laval’s arrival in Canada in 1659. For Taché, giving up the French language was tantamount to giving up their very identity:

Qu’il soit bien entendu, que je ne veux pas proscrire absolument la langue anglaise; je veux bien que ceux qui en ont besoin l’apprennent; – mais que pour cela elle prenne le pas sur la langue française chez les canadiens-français: – je n’ai pas d’expression assez forte pour exécrer une pareille doctrine. Renoncer à notre langue! mais c’est renoncer à l’une des plus belles portions de l’héritage que nous ont laissé nos pères? [sic] Renoncer à notre langue! c’est renoncer à notre nationalité; l’une ne peut subsister sans l’autre. Renoncer à notre langue! c’est cesser d’être canadiens-français! (Taché 1859: 21)

The relationship between language and nationality was clear: being French Canadian meant speaking the French language, being a Catholic151, and supporting French Canadian institutions.

In 1864, Day found that conducting sessions of Parliament in both languages was a detriment to all, the British Canadians most of all:

The speeches [in the Lower House] were delivered in French and English; an awkward arrangement, as many of the members are acquainted but with one language. Some of the English members possess remarkable natural talent; but the deficiencies in their education are easily perceptible. (Day 1864: Vol. I 45)

In the same year, English politician Francis Duncan (1836-1888) noted how the languages were used almost interchangeably; he did not find their use “indiscriminate”, however:

The majority of the inhabitants [in Montréal] are French Canadians, and of the balance not a few are Irish, so the Roman Catholic religion is the general creed among the people. At night, walking in the streets, it is difficult to fancy oneself in an English town, so much more French is overheard than English. The streets have both the French and English names printed up; the law courts conduct their business in both languages; and the very House of Parliament in this most indulgent colony, carry on their debates in a double tongue. (Duncan 1864: 168)

Godfrey O’Brien (dates unknown), the author of The tourist’s guide to Québec (1864), also noted in passing the “indifferent” usage of both languages: “French and English languages are here spoken indifferently by the greater portion of the people.” (O’Brien 1864: 9)

151 Jules-Paul Tardivel’s article “La langue française au Canada” (1881) makes it very clear that French Canada is Catholic, and French-speaking; you cannot have one without the other.

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The final two comments come from English soldier John Skinner (1834-1894), and Blain de Saint-Aubin, who each commented on a different aspect of the utility and legitimacy of French in Canada. Skinner blamed a particular French Canadian MLA for needlessly complicating a meeting of the Legislative Council: “I have quitted the Legislative Council, where an honourable member was deliberately replying in French to what another honourable member had deliberately stated in English […]” (Skinner 1866: Vol. I 125-26) Perhaps this is what previous authors meant by indiscriminate; the use of French or English was entirely up to the speaker. In his article “Passé, Présent et Avenir probable de la langue française au Canada,” (1867) Blain de Saint-Aubin clarified that not all British-Canadians wanted to suppress French Canadians; only a very small minority:

La seconde [chose importante], qu’une certaine classe d’Anglo-Canadiens a conservé jusqu’à nos jours un espoir secret de voir disparaître, dans un avenir plus ou moins éloigné, la langue française du Canada. J’ai dit “une certaine classe,” et je ne vous développerai pas ici les motifs qui l’animent, j’ajouterai seulement que cette idée chimérique n’existe chez aucun Anglais instruit, bien élevé et tolérant, et, grâce à Dieu, cette catégorie est nombreuse et très nombreuse dans notre pays. (Blain de Saint-Aubin 1867: 18-19)

In conclusion, discourse during this second period was marked by certain British and British Canadians’ desire to amalgamate the two peoples, the ultimate goal being the suppression or elimination of French from Canada altogether. Many believed that having the French language in use was unnecessary, and often led to confusion in a variety of social contexts.

3.2 Impressions of Canadian English

There were comparatively few comments on the emergent CanEn during the first period, as there simply weren’t enough English-speaking Canadians in either province. Most of the commentary focused on the numerous dialects of English spoken in Upper Canada, as well as the dangers – both real and imagined – that American textbooks and teachers would have on young Canadian minds. From 1839 onwards, we begin to see more references to CanEn which, much like CanFr, was universally reviled and mocked by British commentators. The major difference between commentaries on both languages from now until the end of the 19th century is that since British Canadians constituted a political, economic, and numerical majority, the latter due mostly to several successive waves of immigration from the British Isles, there are few observations on the

148 utility of CanEn. However, British Canadians were on occasion accused of not wanting (even refusing) to speak French

Of the 73 texts included for this period, 12 contained references to CanEn; while only a small increase from the last period, the commentary in these texts is revealing of the evolving attitudes towards CanEn. Table 3.5 shows the nationality of these commentators. Significantly, we see the first British and French Canadian commentators; this indicates that discussion on CanEn was no longer a strictly foreign matter. There is a 47-year gap (or perhaps delay) between the first comment on CanFr by a British Canadian (“Anglo-Canadiensis”, 1806) and the first comment on CanEn by a French Canadian (Pierre Chauveau, 1853).

Table 3.5 Texts with references to CanEn, by nationality: 1839-1867.

Nationality # of texts % of the whole

English 6 50%

Irish 2 16.7%

Scottish 2 16.7%

British Canadian 1 8.3%

French Canadian 1 8.3%

Total 12 100%

Not surprisingly, it is still the British who contributed the most to the discussion on CanEn during this period, as emigration from Great Britain was still in full swing during the first part of this period. In addition, some of the British immigrants who had settled in Canada (like Carruthers 1861) began to write down their impressions of the Canadas, which would either entice more immigrants to settle there, or discourage them altogether.

Concerning the genre of these texts, we see references to CanEn appearing outside of travel journals for the first time, though the majority of the comments on CanEn still come from travel journals.

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Table 3.6 Texts with references to CanEn, by genre: 1839-1867.

Genre # of texts % of whole

Travel Literature 10 83.3%

Literature 1 8.3%

Speeches and essays 1 8.3%

Total 12 100%

3.2.1 Aesthetics and grammar

British immigrants arrived in Canada throughout this period, which helped give Upper Canada a numerical advantage over Lower Canada in relatively short order. Despite the constant fluctuation in population, there were several distinct groups that formed the core of British- Canadian society: the descendants of the American Loyalists, and the original English, Scottish, and Irish immigrants, all of whom left their mark (some more than others, of course) on the language. Like in the previous period, the most obvious feature that visitors commented on the most was the strong American influence on CanEn: pronunciation (described as the Yankee drawl or twang), vocabulary (“guess” and “calculate” being two common targets of derision), and syntax. Much like CanFr was described as being corrupted by English, CanEn was seen as having been tainted by Americanisms.

3.2.1.1 Quality or purity

The first indication that the language spoken in the Canadas was not the King’s English comes from Irish traveller Charlotte H. Coursen’s travel journal It blows, it snows: a Winter’s rambles through Canada (1846). Coursen adopted a mocking tone throughout much of the work, yet there are some interesting bits of linguistic commentary hidden amidst the ridicule. In this passage, she described a short stay with a Canadian family; the wife was originally from New England, the husband evidently of French Canadian descent:

Owing entirely to the deliberations of breathless attention, in connexion with guarded anxiety, by which I maintained my position throughout the recital of my learned informant, who communicated to me the circumstances of this event, in a

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mixture of Canadian French, and Yankee English dialects, I was enabled to make out much more of the real spirit of the transaction, than I judged it prudent to indulge expectation in, at the commencement of his narrative. (Coursen 1846: 76)

This is the first (and only) use of the term “Yankee English” to describe the language spoken in the Canadas; the term implying, of course, that it was quite different (and not as good as) from the King’s English.

The term “Canadian English” was coined in 1857 by Reverend Archibald Constable Geikie (1821-1898), in an article appropriately entitled “Canadian English,” first published in the Canadian Journal of Science, Literature and History. The article, which Geikie read before the Canadian Institute, was one long complaint and warning about the supposed corruption of the English language in Canada. Geikie began by stating that English in North America was not headed in a good direction:

I know nothing of the tendencies in Australia, New Zealand, or at the Cape152; but certainly, the English we often hear spoken, and see written, in the United States and Canada, is by no means an improvement on the original. That the American retains some obsolete words, or uses current words in obsolete ways, cannot fairly be objected to, though the very same reasons justify the language of modern Quakerism. But this process will account for a small fraction of the peculiarities of his language. He is daily inventing words which are neither English in character, nor needed to supply any deficiency in the language; and even where peculiar circumstances may make such a coinage, or such perversion of words from their primary significance pardonable, the circumstances are continually disregarded, and they are applied in cases where no such need exists, to the exclusion of the proper phrase, and to the injury of the language. (Sutherland 1973: 4)

In many ways, Geikie’s complaints about the English language mirror those about CanFr: the coining of new words, the use of obsolete words and phrases, and the term perversion, a near equivalent to corruption. Geikie’s reference to Quakerism in this text is an important one, linking religious to linguistic conservatism; not coincidentally, we have seen similar remarks about the “backwardness” and “antiquity” of French Canadians, who were strongly associated with the Catholic Church, and their language. Geikie continued, emphasizing that the English language in Canada was no different, due largely to its proximity with the United States:

152 Geikie’s comparison of the English language spoken in the various British colonies is an interesting one, as he seemed to suggest that many were well aware of differences between BritEn and the English spoken in North America.

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Canada inevitably partakes of the same influences. Her language is largely affected by such lawless and vulgar innovations. New words are coined for ourselves by a process similar to that which calls them into being in the neighbouring States; still more, they are imported by travellers, daily circulated by American newspapers, and eagerly incorporated into the language of our Provincial press. The result is that, with that alacrity at sinking which belong to human nature, we [British Canadians] are in a fair way of appropriating what is worthless in the word coinage of our neighbours, in addition to all which our peculiar position may generate among ourselves. (Sutherland 1973: 4-5)

Geikie accurately stated that American newspapers had a great effect on the spread of Americanisms, and foreshadowed French Canadians’ complaints about Anglicisms being introduced by poor journalists; in fact, many of the French prescriptive works were aimed specifically at correcting the Anglicisms used in the papers.

Geikie proceeded to give a long list of unacceptable Americanisms, which I shall discuss in section 3.2.1.2, and employed a familiar pejorative term to describe the potential fate of CanEn:

These and a thousand other examples which might be produced, fully justify the use of the term “Canadian English,” as expressive of a corrupt dialect growing up amongst our population, and gradually finding access to our periodical literature, until it threatens to produce a language as unlike our noble mother tongue as the negro patua [sic], or the Chinese pidgeon [sic] English. That the English language is still open to additions no one can doubt, or that it assimilates to itself, where synonymes [sic] are wanting. Hence, whenever a single word supplies the place of what could only be formerly expressed by a sentence, – unless the word be singularily [sic] uneuphoneous, – the language gains by its adoption. (Geikie 1857: 14)

Geikie admitted there is room for innovation and adaptation; just not the kind originating in North America. However, it is not readily apparent who would have the authority to allow such changes; Johnson’s Dictionary was the only major British English dictionary available prior to the OED, which wouldn’t begin publication until 1884, though work had begun on the dictionary in 1857. The only other highly influential English dictionary was Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language, which had been recently revised in 1847. Geikie concluded by suggesting three methods of curbing this “growing evil”:

The first is that, educated men in private stations should carefully guard against the errors indicated, and others germane to them, and use their influence to check them when introduced. The second is, that our common school teachers should not only do likewise, but should correct the children under their care, whenever they utter slang or corrupt English, not only in the school, but in the play-ground,

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and on the streets; and the third is that, our newspaper and other writers should abstain from the attempt to add new force to the English tongue by improving the language of Shakespeare, Bacon, Dryden and Addison. (Geikie 1857: 16)

Geikie’s advice reads like any number of French Canadian grammarians, clergymen, and educators, all of whom recommend a similar course of action. Unlike in Lower Canada, there was no public reaction whatsoever to Geikie’s article for the next thirty years. Certainly, others commented on pronunciation and vocabulary, but none adopted such a harsh tone.

3.2.1.2 Americanisms

It has proven somewhat difficult to determine whether a particular author used the term “Yankee” to describe Americans travelling in Canada, British Canadians of American descent living in Canada, or both. Fortunately, some commentators clarified that they were referring to the latter group. In 1844, Scottish immigrant James Bryce Brown (dates unknown) made two interesting observations on the emerging Canadian dialect, and expressed alarm at the strong American influence in the schools. In the first passage, Brown recounted a discussion with an American schoolteacher working in Upper Canada:

The result [of speaking to the American teacher about his books] proved what, indeed, I had feared it would – they were all pure American publications in print and authorship; most probably the same kind of works which had been used by the youth himself at the Government schools of the neighbouring Republic, in the State of New York: – American spelling-books, American grammars, American dictionaries, American histories…While this catalogue of the course of instruction for some portion of the youth of our British provinces was being gone over, I could not help, as one naturally might, being led into a train of unpleasant feelings and curious speculation […] (Brown 1844: 78)

Brown continued by advising against the rash coining of new words, predating Geikie’s similar admonishment by nearly fifteen years:

[…] and that in the mass of their literature there is observable an imperfect and a vitiated taste, corrupting, with rashly coined words, the vigour and beauty of the language. The influence to which the schools of our colony have been exposed from all this, and in the absence of other books and other teachers than Canada has had all too long, may very easily be conceived. (Brown 1844: 79)

Two years later, Taylor cited what was apparently a “stock” Yankee phrase that was in commonly used by British Canadians and Americans alike: “In Canada, we seldom hear a direct answer given. When in conversation, if a question is asked, ‘I guess’ (a Yankee phrase) is

153 generally introduced in their replies.” (Taylor 1846: 49) Shortly thereafter, Taylor pointed out that the new generation of British Canadians had assimilated other cultures’ customs, and shared many traits with Americans:

Many English people reside in Upper Canada; but some of those who came young, and have been a few years amalgamated with the native, have so assimilated their customs, manners, and dialect to that of the country, that it is difficult to distinguish them, – only that they become rather more Yankeefied extreme. (Taylor 1846: 51)

British Canadian reverend William Stewart Darling (1818-1886), who served as rector of Toronto’s Church of the Holy Trinity, contradicted Taylor’s claim that British Canadians were Americanized:

British in their feelings to the very core, and accustomed in many cases to all the comforts and refinements of home, they have nevertheless cheerfully conformed themselves to the circumstances of the country, with the hope of eventually moulding them to their wishes, and of substituting for the rude independence and “Yankified” [sic] bearing of many of the people, a tone of British feelings and British manners […] The traveller along most of the leading thoroughfares of the country now meets with much fewer of those disagreeable Americanisms which were so frequently encountered when the circumstances above narrated took place, and which so identified the colonists with their neighbours “across the lines.” (Darling 1849: 28-29)

Much like the uncertainty about the British/French nature of Montréal and Québec, visitors to Upper Canada seemed conflicted about the true nature of British Canadians: were they “Yankees”, or were they British? Like in Lower Canada, I believe it is a question of socioeconomic class, as well as location: Darling spent his entire time in Upper Canada in the East End of Toronto among middle to upper class citizens, whereas Brown and Taylor travelled among the smaller cities and towns, and came into contact with members of the working classes, farmers, and settlers, many of whom had come to Upper Canada from the United States (Moodie, for her part, encountered many of these), or at the very least, were descended from the American Loyalists.

In 1856, Bishop made reference to “I guess,” as well as to a few other stock phrases while staying in Hamilton: “People hurry about as if their lives depended on their speed. ‘I guess,’ and ‘I calculate’ are frequently heard, together with ‘Well posted up,’ and ‘A long chalk;’ and locomotives and steamers whistle all day long. Hamilton is a very Americanized place.” (Bishop

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1856: 191) Later in Montréal, she noted the use of both languages in the streets, and in particular the Americanized words employed by the English-speaking inhabitants: “You hear ‘Place aux dames’ on one side of the streets, and ‘gl’lang’ on the other; and the United States have contributed their hotel system and their slang.” (Bishop 1856: 252)

Returning to “Canadian English”, Geikie took note of numerous Americanisms in his article; none of which he approved of. Geikie himself provided an example of an “impossible” to understand conversation, and then provides a “translation.” Note that the following is purely theoretical, and is used to support Geikie’s point:

Let us take a brief example. A Canadian who has enjoyed the advantages of the American vocabulary will thus describe a very simple transaction: – “I traded my last Yorker for a plug of honey dew, and got plaguy chiseled by a loafer whose boss had dickered his lot and betterments for notions to his store;” some of the words introduced here are genuine Americanisms, such as betterments, i.e. improvements on new lands; lot, or division of land; town lots, sites within the area designed for a village or town; boss (Dutch) the euphemism for the unpalatable word master; and store, the invariably [sic] term for a shop. Others again, such as Yorker: a shilling york currency, or sixpence sterling, are no less genuinely Canadian […] (Geikie 1857: 14)

In addition to the ones in this passage, Geikie listed several dozen more, all of which “proved” his point that the English language spoken in Canada was no longer British English, but something else entirely. In conclusion to this section, it is evident that AmEn had a great influence on the language spoken by residents in Upper Canada, an influence that came in a number of guises: written in schoolbooks and newspapers, and spoken by American schoolteachers and settlers. Much like the threat of Anglicisms for CanFr, Americanisms posed a similar threat to the purity of English, and would continue to become corrupt, unless someone – perhaps writers or lexicographers, as Geikie never explicitly stated – guided the language.

3.2.1.3 Pronunciation

English traveller James Taylor (dates unknown) was the first to note differences in pronunciation between the British and what he termed “Canadians”, a term which suggests that they were different from the British in some way:

Canadians have a peculiar dialect. Their vocabulary is quite of the new school, and rather different to define. Their words also take a direction through a different channel from that of the old country. Their nostrils are put in full operation to give

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vent to their utterance, which flows with great rapidity, and receives additional charm from the majestic manner in which they deliver their sentiments. Indeed, they discharge their words with the rattling speed and perspicuity of an alarum clock. (Taylor 1846: 49)

This passage marks the first reference to the nasal quality – the famous “twang” – of CanEn, a quality presumably inherited from the American Loyalists. Also of note is British Canadians’ rapid speech, a trait that was shared by the Americans. Taylor also found the speech of British Canadian women to be aesthetically pleasing: “The dialect of females in general, without reference to rank or station, is quite of the musical order; and when their conversation is agreeable, their voice and utterance is melody; and is calculated to produce on the mind both astonishment and delight.” (Taylor 1846: 50) It is remarkable that both French and British Canadian women were held in higher regard than the men for the quality of their language; foreign commentators as early as Kalm (1753-1760) remarked that French Canadian women were well-educated, and both spoke and wrote very well, whereas Weld (1799) was convinced that the women were much more educated than the men. As for British Canadians, with the exception of Moodie’s “Yankee” neighbour, every woman mentioned in the texts was considered to be well-educated and highly literate, and evidently quite concerned with the language they spoke. Nearly sixty years later, we see the opposite: British Canadian women were reputed to have shrill, high-pitched voices; see Jephson (1897) and Helliwell’s comments (1902) in 4.2.1.3)

In 1852, English writer Susanna Moodie (1803-1885) wrote an account of her experiences as a settler in Upper Canada, near Peterborough in the aptly titled Roughing it in the Bush. Moodie was frequently annoyed by her Yankee neighbours, and mocked their language. In this short passage, Moodie recounts what her husband’s friend, a Mr. Tom Wilson, had to say about a lecture he attended153:

“I thought that it was better to secure the substance than endeavour to catch the shadow – so I bought the book, and spared myself the pain of listening to the oratory of the writer. Mrs. Moodie! He had a shocking delivery, a drawling, vulgar voice; and he spoke with such a nasal twang that I could not bear to look at him, or listen to him. He made such grammatical blunders, that my sides ached with laughing at him. Oh, I wish you could have seen the wretch! But here is the

153 The lecture, published under the title The advantages of emigration to Canada (1831), took place before the Moodie’s left for Canada, and was on the subject of emigration to Canada. The lecturer/writer in question was William Cattermole, an emigration agent who had lived in Upper Canada for some time.

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document, written in the same style in which it was spoken. Read it; you have a rich treat in store.” (Moodie 1852: 47)

While previous commentators had written dismissively of the English language spoken in North America, this particular passage is remarkable for its relentless, mean-spirited mockery of a British Canadian. Taken together with the harsh criticisms contained in Geikie’s paper just five years later, we can see more clearly see the “typical” British commentator’s attitude towards the colonists and their language at this stage, and understand why the emergence of “Canadian Dainty” was inevitable. Nearly a decade later, Mrs. Copleston also alluded to the “Canadian twang”, when describing a teamster’s cry to his horses: “They understood the smack of the whip, and the teamsters’ ‘Gee-a-lang’ which the Canadian utters with so shrill a nasal twang, that any decently-fed horses would run from sheer fright at the sound.” (Copleston 1861: 39) It is noteworthy that the twang was present both among middle class (such as Cattermole) and working class British Canadians (Mrs. Copleston’s driver), which would seem to suggest that it was a common feature of CanEn; though perhaps not of the upper class, who likely would have tried to avoid such an American-sounding phrase. The final comment on pronunciation during this period comes from the Curzon brothers, who also noted the prevalence of the twang:

As everyone knows, the tone of voice is very different between Americans and Englishmen, but it is also different between Canadians and Englishmen, the Canadians to a slight degree participating in the universal twang prevalent in the Northern States. From one’s mode of speech one is soon discovered to be lately from England, whether travelling north or south of the St. Lawrence, and the occasional variations in the wording of a phrase often makes known to another person the country of one’s birth. (Curzon 1862: 112-13)

In short, the major change or deviation in pronunciation has to do with the nasal tone – the twang – that is likely the result of American influence, whether by the immigration of American Loyalists at the end of the 18th century, a home-grown version, so to speak, close proximity and constant contact with Americans, or by imitation, as suggested by authors like Bishop.

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3.3 Conclusion

To conclude this chapter, there are a number of important trends that bear reviewing. Firstly, the fact that the British government strongly encouraged English-speaking immigration154 throughout the 19th century – with the biggest swells occurring after the War of 1812 and during the 1840s – had a profound impact on Canadian demographics: where French Canadians were clearly in the majority in the early 19th century, English-speaking Canadians rapidly overtook the former in numbers by the 1850s. This radical demographic shift had two major consequences for the development of French and English in Canada: 1) speakers of CanFr, particularly in urban areas, would be increasingly exposed to English language and culture in everyday life; and 2) the emerging “Canadianisms” that appeared in the first period would now be detectable among the English-speaking residents of the Canadas, as by 1867, several generations of Anglophones would have been born and raised in the provinces.

It is also important to mention how much more political – and therefore more vicious – the commentary in this period was: the Rebellions of 1837-38 embittered many towards French Canadians, and it is unsurprising to find numerous instances of calls for the elimination of French in the Province of Canada. Whether planned or not, the fact that CanFr was almost exclusively described as a patois and not “real” French certainly would have helped proponents of an English-only colony: during the Revolution, France had enacted a similar policy regarding regional languages, and by the latter half of the 19th century, these had seen severe losses, whereas French had become more universally spoken, due mainly to the wide-reaching influence of public education.

154 However, there were certainly a number of Germans, Dutch, and Gaelic-speaking Irish and Scots among the early immigrants to Upper Canada.

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Chapter Four Countering language beliefs and stereotypes

The final period begins after the Constitution Act of 1867, which created the Dominion of Canada, and ends in 1902, a date which doesn’t correspond with any major political events, but with three important linguistic and cultural milestones: 1) the publication of the last original travel journal155; 2) the sudden and dramatic professionalization of language discourse, or the point at which language becomes of scholarly or scientific interest, as exemplified by the foundation of the Société du Parler Français au Canada at the end of 1902; and 3) the publication of two major normative works by Sylva Clapin: the Dictionnaire canadien-français (1894), and the New Dictionary of Americanisms (1902). Since this dissertation is primarily concerned with outsiders’ views on CanEn and CanFr – and Canadians’ reactions to these – the year 1902 is a fitting end date, as language discourse afterwards becomes almost exclusively a Canadian affair.

Upon analyzing the texts, I have found five trends that characterize the commentary during this period. First, Francophone writers (both French and French Canadian) became far more outspoken in their opinions about CanFr, several of whom (Sulte, Gélinas, Dunn, for example) wrote several articles, and book-length studies on the subject. Second, French Canadians began to stress the important relationship between language, the Catholic faith, and French Canadian nationality, something that we caught a glimpse of in the last period (see Taché 1859); the absence of one of these elements would inevitably lead to the destruction of the whole. Third, French Canadians (and some French) began to comment on CanEn. Fourth, we also begin to see more instances of linguistic and cultural insecurity vis-à-vis Great Britain among a certain class of British-Canadians, i.e. the middle and upper classes. Fifth and finally, the decrease in the number of travel journals and pamphlets published during this period coincides with a dramatic increase in the number of more scholarly-minded studies, further suggesting a shift from the amateur towards the professional.

155 According to Waterston’s bibliography, no new travel journals were published after 1900; there were however many reprints and recently uncovered manuscripts published for the first time.

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The number of texts containing references to CanFr or CanEn during this period (165)156 is greater than that of the previous two periods combined. Concerning nationality, there is much greater diversity, as well a marked increase in the number of Francophone authors, with British authors making up a smaller proportion of the commentators.

Table 4.1 Texts with references to CanFr and CanEn, by nationality: 1868-1902.

Nationality # of texts % of whole

French Canadian 58 35.2%

French 44 26.7%

British 26 15.8%

English (17) (10.3%)

Scottish (5) (3%)

Irish (3) (1.8%)

Welsh (1) (0.6%)

British Canadian 17 10.3%

American 13 7.9%

Belgian 6 3.6%

Unknown157 2 1.2%

Acadian 1 0.6%

Total 165 100%

156 There are two texts co-written by authors of differing nationalities: Dawson and Gannett’s North America (1897), and Williams and LeMay’s article “The present-day French Canadian” (1901). 157 This includes the anonymous contributor to the newspaper True Witness (1895) and George Lemay (1901).

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There are a significant number of commentators who wrote several texts – mainly articles, essays, and travel journals – during this period. The bibliography offers a complete list.

In terms of the genres of texts represented, there is a much wider variety during this final period; travel literature is still the most common source of commentary (63 travel journals), though there are far more scholarly works published altogether: the sum of all the monographs, scholarly and popular articles, essays, and prescriptive/normative works is 84, with the rest of the texts (a mere 17) being either newspaper articles or literature.

Table 4.2 References to texts on CanFr and CanEn, by genre: 1868-1902.

Genre # of texts % of whole

Travel literature 63 38.2%

Journal articles 32 19.4%

Speeches and essays 22 13.3%

Monographs 19 11.5%

Newspaper articles 16 9.7%

Pres./Norm. works 11 6.7%

Literature 2 1.2%

Total 165 100%

4.1 Impressions of Canadian French

Prior to 1867, the majority of the commentary on CanFr came from abroad, especially during the period 1691-1838, when input from Canadians was effectively nil. Towards the middle of the century, there was a definite increase in the number of French Canadians who commented on their language, but nothing to compare to the explosion of interest in the last thirty years of the 19th century. French Canadians wrote extensively (and frequently) on CanFr in a variety of media: newspapers, scholarly and popular journal, normative and prescriptive works, and various

161 book-length academic studies. The goal of many of these works was to dispel the various myths and stereotypes that foreigners had about French Canadian language and culture, which by this point had become firmly entrenched in the public’s collective consciousness.

In addition to these works, we also see the publication of a large number of prescriptive and normative works during this period, including those of Dunn (1880), Buies (1888), Clapin (1894), and Rinfret (1896), among others. Unlike the numerous essays, articles, and monographs, these were written with the express purpose of identifying the problem areas of CanFr. It is in these works in particular that we see most clearly the division between supporters of an endogenous and an exogenous linguistic norm, a debate which had begun as early as 1817, but which only attracted significant attention during this period.

Finally, a small (though not insignificant) number of these works were criticisms of writers like Tardivel (1880) and Manseau (1881), whom were accused of “betraying” French Canadians to their Anglophone neighbours by pointing out the numerous grammatical faults that the former committed. These will be discussed in section 5.3.2, as they are indicative of French Canadians changing or modifying the discourse on their language based on the beliefs or opinions of British Canadians.

Despite the efforts of French Canadians like Benjamin Sulte, Oscar Dunn, and Napoléon Legendre, who wrote numerous articles and essays defending CanFr in the 1870s-1880s, foreigners (the British primarily) continued to believe that CanFr was not “real French,” but a patois of Norman origin, a belief that dates back to the early 19th century; see Lebrun 1833. The few linguistic or philological studies that were published during this period focused mainly on the history of the French language in Canada, particularly in comparison with the development of French in France, as well as on etymology. The findings from these studies would be used by supporters of an endogenous linguistic norm to validate or legitimize CanFr, which had been described as being corrupt or degenerate for many generations.

As previously mentioned, the number of texts published during this period eclipses those during the first and second periods combined: 165 to 123. Of the 165 texts written from 1868-1902, 158 contain some reference to CanFr. Given this very high proportion (95.6%), the figures in the following table very closely resemble those in Table 4.1.

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Table 4.3 Texts with references to CanFr, by nationality: 1868-1902.

Nationality # of texts % of the whole

French Canadian 56 35.4%

French 44 27.8%

British 22 13.9%

English (13) (8.2%)

Scottish (5) (3.2%)

Irish (3) (1.9%)

Welsh (1) (0.6%)

American 13 8.2%

British Canadian 12 7.6%

Belgian 5 3.2%

Unknown 2 1.3%

Acadian 1 0.6%

Total 158 100%

We continue to see the major nationalities – British, French, and French Canadian – contribute the most amount of metalinguistic commentary, though it is important to consider the works of less prolific contributors like the British Canadians and the Belgians, as their works contained some very informative commentary.

Regarding the genre of these same texts on CanFr, the division is nearly identical to table 4.2, with travel literature making up a large portion – but not the majority (only 39.2%) – of the total.

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All but one of the prescriptive or normative works published during this period were on CanFr, and most of the other scholarly works were focused on CanFr as well.

Table 4.4 Texts with references to CanFr, by genre: 1868-1902.

Genre # of texts % of whole

Travel literature 62 39.2%

Journal articles 30 19%

Essays and speeches 22 13.9%

Monographs 17 10.8%

Newspaper articles 15 9.5%

Pres. and norm. works 10 6.3%

Literature 2 1.3%

Total 158 100%

In the interest of keeping this chapter to a manageable size, I have chosen to include the most representative texts for each point of view, and refer to others who shared the same belief; this chapter would otherwise be in excess of 200 pages long. Due to the existence of three distinct points of view, the following subsections (specifically 4.1.1.1) have been organized to reflect this; rather than proceeding in a strictly chronological order, I will group the types of arguments thematically, to allow for a clearer and more cohesive read.

4.1.1 Aesthetics and grammar

By the end of the 19th century, CanFr had become almost universally perceived by outsiders as corrupt or antiquated French, a jargon, or a patois; regardless of the term used, it was evidently common knowledge to outsiders that French Canadians did not speak the language that was emerging and strongly associated with upper class Parisians. Despite little linguistic evidence for it, aside from strong “impressions” and the presence of certain words, the belief that French

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Canadians spoke a Norman French patois continued to gain prominence following the commentary by Lebrun (1833), Ampère (1856), and Duvergier de Hauranne (1866), among others. This belief had quickly spread among the British and Americans, who further propagated the myth. Some French Canadians were displeased with this notion, and sought to disprove it158.

The final third of the century saw the publication of more prescriptive works, which were conceived to correct French Canadians’ errors, specifically Anglicisms, Canadianisms, Normanisms, and archaisms (both in terms of lexicon and pronunciation). I will begin with a passage from American-born journalist Jules-Paul Tardivel’s (1851-1905) essay “La langue française au Canada.” (1881) Tardivel laid out the three prominent views on the quality and legitimacy of CanFr:

Il y a trois courants d’opinions bien distincts parmi nous au sujet de la langue française. Les uns s’imaginent que nous parlons mieux le français que les Français eux-mêmes, et que loin d’avoir quelque chose à apprendre de nos cousins d’outre-mer, nous devrions charitablement leur communiquer une partie de notre immense savoir.

D’autres affirment que nous parlons un véritable jargon, à peu près inintelligible pour un Français, et qu’il nous faut une réforme radicale.

La troisième catégorie, de beaucoup plus nombreuse, comprend ceux qui, sans prétendre parler le français aussi bien qu’on le parle en France, sont contents de ce qu’ils appellent la langue canadienne. (Tardivel 1881: 264)

Thus far, we have seen examples of all three of these opinions, though the first two were more common (or their proponents more outspoken, perhaps) than the latter. Few have expressed the first opinion, though we shall see several references to this in this chapter, however, it is almost exclusively held up as what people should not believe about CanFr. The second opinion is the one most often held by foreigners – the British, primarily – as well as some of the more pessimistic French Canadians, such as Buies (1888), Manseau (1881), and Gingras (1860, 1867, 1880). Finally, the third opinion was presumably quite common, though it only gained support in the press and in academic studies in the final decades of the 19th century. The following section on quality or purity will follow Tardivel’s order, beginning with the belief that CanFr was

158 Not Sylva Clapin (1894), however, who reminisced fondly of the Norman French vocabulary he heard during his youth.

165 superior to ParFr. Since they are discussed at length in the following section, there will not be a separate section for either “patois, jargon, etc.” or “Canadianisms.”

4.1.1.1 Quality or purity

In the final period, there is a small minority of commentators – both French and French Canadians – who held the view that it was in fact ParFr that had become corrupt over time, whereas CanFr had remained pure, and was therefore more legitimate. The first reference to this comes from Blain de Saint-Aubin’s article “Quelques mots sur la littérature canadienne- française” (1871), where he explained to Lady Monck159 that French Canadians spoke just as well as the French, and warned that that one shouldn’t strive to imitate Parisian speech habits:

En 1862, j’eus l’honneur d’être demandé par Lady Monck pour donner des leçons de français à ses enfants. Je me rappellerai toujours la première conversation que j’eus avec cette dame.

– Monsieur, me dit-elle, vous êtes Français?

– Oui, madame.

– Vous parlez, je suppose, le français de Paris, (Parisian French); je tiens à vous faire cette question, car on me dit que les Canadiens-Français parlent un patois abominable.

– Madame, lui répondis-je, je ne parle pas le français de Paris, et je serais très désolé si je ne pouvais mieux parler ma langue qu’un vrai parisien.

– Vous m’étonnez.

– Madame, le français de Paris est, sous le rapport de l’accent et du choix des mots, plus défectueux que la langue parlée dans presque toutes les autres parties de la France: en d’autres termes, le français de Paris est à la langue française, ce que l’anglais des Cockneys de Londres est au pur anglais. Vous-même vous parlez très bien le français de la bonne société, dans toutes les parties de la France, mais je vous assure que vous ne parlez aucunement le français de Paris, ce dont je vous féliciterais, si vous vouliez bien me le permettre. Quant au langage des Canadiens Français, on vous a certainement mal renseignée. Tout Canadien Français instruit, parle aussi bien sa langue qu’un homme de la même instruction en France. Dans la classe ouvrière et dans celle des agriculteurs en Canada, on parle, en général,

159 Lady Elizabeth Monck, the wife of Charles Stanley Monck, the last Governor General of the Province of Canada (1861-67), and the first Governor General of Canada (1867-68). She is not to be confused with Lady Frances Elizabeth Owen Monck, her sister-in-law. The latter Monck’s travel journal My Canadian Leaves (1873) will be discussed in section 4.1.1.3, and 4.2.1.3.

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beaucoup mieux français que dans les classes correspondantes en France, et la raison en est toute simple: c’est que l’instruction primaire est bien plus répandue et beaucoup mieux organisée en Canada qu’en France. Nous avons ici un système d’instruction élémentaire moitié Anglais et moitié Américain, système qu’on a récemment cherché à appliquer en France, mais qui n’y fonctionne pas encore aussi bien que chez nous. (Blain de Saint-Aubin 1871: 107)

That Blain de Saint-Aubin, a native of Rennes who began working and living in Canada in 1859, would strongly recommend against speaking like Parisians would seem counterintuitive, or unusual at the very least, as he was the first French commentator that I have encountered who poked holes in the evidently common myth that ParFr was the most legitimate form of French. While the comparison to Cockney speech may not be the most accurate, as Cockney was (and is) associated primarily with a specific area of London, the message is clear: an urban dialect common to the lower and working classes. While earlier observers compared French and Canadian speech, Blain de Saint-Aubin was the first to make a distinction between ParFr and the French spoken by the upper classes, a distinction that few British and American commentators understood. Including this passage, I have found 12 examples of this belief. However, it does not appear that these other commentators were inspired by this article specifically, but rather on James Roy’s influential article, “The French language in Canada” (1877), which was cited twice by Sulte (1877 and 1882) and Réveillaud (1884), who were in turn referred to by later authors.

In his oft-cited article “The French language in Canada,” (1877), British Canadian reverend and lawyer James Roy (1834-1922) employed a philological approach to illustrate that CanFr had remained pure since the 17th century, while the language spoken in Paris had allegedly degenerated:

We have already seen [in the lyrics of an old song Les Veux160] that the peculiarity of pronunciation indicated by the rhyming of boire and faire marked the speech even of the highest classes of Paris in the 17th century. That a new pronunciation had, at the end of the 17th century, already supplanted that of Louis XIV may be seen from the following sentence taken from the “Caractères” of La Bruyère, first published in 1688: - “L’air de cour est contagieux: il se prend à V—comme l’accent normand à Rouen ou à Falaise.” It is not the French of Canada, then, that has changed, or become degenerate. It is the French of Paris which, moulded by the growing influence of the lower orders, has abandoned its old pronunciation for

160 In the article, Roy attributes this song, which is part of the collection Vaux-de-Vire (from the river Val-de-Vire, to Norman musician and poet Olivier Basselin (c. 1400- c. 1450).

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one farther removed than that of Canada from its source in the Merovingian Latin and the Latin of Caesar’s Roman soldiery. […] Philologically viewed, then, the French of Canada is purer than that of Paris. That the Canadian French is not a corruption of the French of Paris may be seen from separate expressions, as well as from pronunciation. (Roy 1877: 259)

That such a well-researched article appeared in the Canadian Illustrated News161 is somewhat surprising – one would expect to find it in an academic journal, perhaps – but the wide readership of the newspaper probably led to Roy’s theory gaining widespread support among supporters of an endogenous linguistic norm. French Canadian defenders of the language like Sulte (1882) would use Roy’s article as “proof” that CanFr was indeed legitimate, if not better and purer than the French spoken in France.

In all of his works, including the Glossaire Franco-canadien (1880)162, French Canadian journalist and writer Oscar Dunn (1845-1885) dismissed the myth of a French Canadian patois, and repeated the claim that CanFr was superior to the French spoken in France for several reasons: “Plusieurs [French and British]163 écrivains ont parlé du patois canadien. Or, il n’y a pas de patois chez nous; nous parlons le français, et nous le parlons mieux, aux intonations près, que Paris, qui a son argot, mieux que la province, qui a ses patois.” (Dunn 1880: xiv) As we have seen as far back as Coke (1833), the strategy of pointing to the existence of patois or regional languages in France was an old one, but still in usage. In 1882, French Canadian civil engineer and writer Ernest Marceau (1852-1919) specified one of the major problems with Parisian speech in his article “Notre prononciation” (1882), their pronunciation of the letter r:

Cependant, il faut le dire, quelques-uns de ceux qui nous reviennent de Paris, et s’imaginent parler le vrai français, se trompent étrangement. Ils ont entendu grasseyer sur les boulevards et dans les hôtels. C’était joli! à leur tour ils s’exercent à grasseyer. Or le grasseyement, comme le nasillement, est un défaut

161 The Canadian Illustrated News (1869-1883) was a weekly illustrated magazine published in Montréal, founded by George Desbarats (1838-1893), who became the first official printer of Canada; Desbarats also founded L’Opinion Publique (1870-1883). The magazine has the distinction of being the first to produce photographs at a successful rate. 162 Such as his essay Pourquoi nous sommes Français (1870), the newspaper article “Notre Patois” (1874 in L’Opinion Publique), and the expanded version which appeared in his collection Dix ans de journnalisme: mélanges entitled “A propos du ‘patois canadien’” (1876). 163 It is not obvious to whom Dunn was referring here, though Kowalski’s work (1872) was rather unpopular after its publication, and Dunn had criticized the newspaper Le Courier des Etats-Unis for insinuating that French Canadians spoke a Norman patois.

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que les gens instruits s’efforcent de corriger quand ils en sont affligés! (Marceau 1882: 247)

The term Marceau employed to describe their pronunciation of the letter r – grasseyer164 – refers to a throaty, guttural sound, which was evidently most common among Parisians. The tendency of some French Canadians to imitate French speech habits strongly mirrored what members some middle and upper class British Canadians were doing in mimicking British speech patterns.

In his eight-volume work Histoire des Canadiens français (1882), French Canadian writer, historian, and journalist Benjamin Sulte (1841-1923) alluded to the illustrious 17th century origins of CanFr, inspired in part by Roy, and stated plainly that it had never degenerated:

Au temps de l’établissement du Canada, la langue parisienne était moins correcte que celle de la région d’où sont sortis les premiers Canadiens. Les œuvres classiques de l’âge le plus brillant de la littérature française font voir que la prononciation actuelle des Canadiens-Français est la même que celle de l’époque de Henri IV, Richelieu, Louis XIII, Mazarin et Louis XIV – soit de 1575 à 1700, et même après cette date – la période par excellence des lettres, des salons et surtout du théâtre français. C’est au théâtre et chez les poètes que se conserve le mieux une langue: les rimes de Chapelain, Boileau, Molière, Racine, Scarron, Scudéri, La Fontaine, Racan, Malherbe, Corneille, Perrault, Quinault, justifient la prononciation “barbare” des Canadiens. (Sulte 1882: Vol. VII 151)165

This appeal to the authority of French literary figures from the 17th century to justify certain traits of CanFr – such as pronunciation and vocabulary – was not uncommon, and somewhat justified by Roy’s article (1877). When reading Sulte’s work, admirable and passionate protector of the language he was, it is important to note that he did not always support his ideas with proof; the first sentence, for example, in which he claims that the French spoken in Paris was less correct than the home provinces of the original Canadian settlers, is given without any evidence supporting it. In any case, the important thing is not whether what he believed was accurate, but that he wrote it down at all, as we are still dealing with folk beliefs about CanFr in this case.

164 Other texts make reference to grasseyement and parler gras, such as Dunn (1874, 1876), Lagacé (1875) – though he was referring to CanFr – and Réveillaud (1884). 165 Sulte makes similar statements in nearly all of his other essays and articles; for example, Le Canada en Europe (1872), the article “Notre Langue” (1877 in La Revue de Montréal, a scholarly and religious publication founded and edited by Thomas-Aimé Chandonnet from 1877-1881), and Situation de la langue française au Canada (1885), the last of which was popular enough outside of Canada, that it was specifically mentioned by French writer Georges Demanche (1890).

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Sulte then proposed a theory that would explain the degeneration of ParFr, drawing upon Blain de Saint-Aubin and Roy’s earlier articles:

A la fin du dix-septième siècle, les sons du vieux langage étaient devenus comme étrangers à Paris et à Versailles, mais Rouen et Falaise, pays d’origine des Canadiens, les avaient conservés. Ce n’est pas le français du Canada qui a changé ou dégénéré, mais plutôt celui de Paris qui, pressé par l’influence croissante de l’accent des basses classes, ou des salons étrangers, a mis graduellement de côté la vieille et bonne prononciation pour en adopter une toute de convention, qui est encore plus éloignée de celle du Canada que des sources du latin du moyen-âge. (Sulte 1882: Vol. VII 151)

In what appears to be a recurring theme, as discussed by Gendron (2007), the lower classes received the blame for corrupting the French spoken in Paris, whereas in Canada, the habitants were known – and praised – for keeping CanFr “pure” and intact. In the final volume of Histoire, Sulte angrily listed what he believed to be the numerous defects with ParFr, which he believed had degenerated or deviated from “good” French:

Lorsqu’un Anglais a dit que les Canadiens n’ont pas l’accent parisien, il croit avoir fait une découverte et nous donner une leçon! L’accent parisien! mais c’est tant mieux si nous ne l’avons pas! La grande capitale fait à juste titre l’admiration du monde; il s’en faut toutefois que le peuple y parle bon français: l’argot, le chantonnement, les phrases brisées, les mots de pure convention y pullulent. L’horreur de l’accent a fait naître à Paris un accent impossible. Les Canadiens n’imitent pas ces fantaisies. (Sulte 1882: Vol. VIII 144)

This passage is reminiscent of Blain de Saint-Aubin’s conversation with Lady Monck; according to Sulte, speaking like Parisians would be a step in the wrong direction. It is noteworthy, however, that Sulte pointed to British beliefs about the French language, a fact that illustrates a clear awareness of foreigners’ attitudes towards CanFr.

In 1884, French politician and historian Eugène Réveillaud (1851-1935) agreed with Sulte regarding the faults of Parisian pronunciation, and expressed admiration for the quality of CanFr: “Et combien leur accent n’est-il pas surtout plus correct, plus agréable à l’oreille, plus français, que le grasseyement pectoral populaire des ouvriers des faubourgs et de la banlieue de Paris!” (Réveillaud 1884: 324) While only touched upon in earlier texts, Réveillaud clarified the issue of who (allegedly) spoke French poorly: it was the working class Parisians who were responsible for the corruption of French; similar comments were made (and would be for years to come)

170 about urban French Canadians, who adopted Anglicisms “de toute description” in their speech (Ampère 1856, for example).

This predilection for peppering one’s speech with English words was far from a Canadian phenomenon, however; French-born French Canadian lawyer Paul de Cazes (1841-1913) admonished the French for employing English words in the effort to appear fashionable:

À Paris même, où l’on a la prétention, bien naturelle d’ailleurs, de parler le français, combien dans le grand monde qu’on appelle le high life n’emploie-t-on pas de mots du plus pur anglais prononcés le plus souvent, il est vrai, de façon à les rendre tout à fait méconnaissables? (Cazes 1887: 121)

Paul de Cazes was evidently referring to the wave of anglophilia that was sweeping across France – in Paris, mostly – from the mid-19th century onwards (see 3.1.1.3); for French Canadians who have been told their entire lives to avoid Anglicisms at all costs, it must have seemed outrageous – disheartening, even – for their French cousins to have adopted so many English words, when there was clearly no practical reason for doing so.

French writer and traveller Louis-Henri-Georges Demanche (b. 1855) noted in his entertaining and highly informative travel journal Au Canada et chez les Peaux-Rouges (1890) that although the habitants employed archaisms and made what he considered grammatical errors, the very same could be said of their counterparts in France:

Si l’habitant canadien se sert parfois d’expressions surannées ou de mauvais français, que ne dira-t-on pas alors des paysans français, car il faut comparer les classes entre elles, et ne pas conclure, en entendant parler les gens du peuple, que c’est là le langage de la société? Dans tous les pays du globe, le langage du peuple est défectueux, et ce n’est pas uniquement sur ce langage qu’un voyageur doit baser ses observations.

Si un étranger parcourait nos campagnes et jugeait la langue française sur le langage des paysans, à quelles conclusions surprenantes n’arriverait-il pas? Laissant de côté les anciennes provinces où un patois est, trop souvent encore, la langue la plus usitée, que de défaillances de langue ne trouve-t-on pas dans des régions qui ont, bien à tort, il est vrai, la réputation d’être celles où la langue française se parle le mieux! Dans le Blésois, le Vendômois, par exemple, c’est-à- dire en plein cœur de la France et de la vieille monarchie française, que de fois n’ai-je pas entendu prononcer par des paysans des phrases dans le genre de celles- ci: Queque tu ieu (leur) za dit? – J’étions bein allé à la rivière mener les vaches

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buve, »166 et autres barbarismes à faire dresser les cheveux sur la tête d’un linguiste. (Demanche 1890: 15-16)

Aside from the occasional reference to stereotypical Norman words, this marks the first time that a commentator gave examples of other French dialects (Blésois and Vendômois). Although Demanche said nothing new about the relative speech abilities of equivalent socioeconomic classes in Canada and France, the last sentence of the first paragraph is of particular importance: any attempt to make generalizations about the language of farmers and apply those generalizations to the whole of society is a pointless activity, and ultimately dishonest.

In addition to a supposed superiority in terms of pronunciation and pedigree, some commentators were also impressed by how homogeneous CanFr was, especially in comparison to the French language spoken in France. As we shall see, however, some early linguistic studies call into question this claim. In a short article entitled “Le patois canadien” (1874) that appeared in the Journal de l’Instruction Publique, the anonymous author proudly proclaimed the uniformity of French in Canada: “Ce que nous avons, d’ailleurs, c’est que d’un bout à l’autre du pays notre langage est le même. Le paysan de la Gaspésie parle exactement comme celui du district de Beauharnois, et leur langage et loin d’être un patois.” (Anonymous 1874: 8) This is in obvious contrast to the linguistically diverse population of France, where numerous regional languages were – and still are – spoken, not to mention the various French dialects167.

In one of his earlier articles, “Notre patois” (1874), Dunn admitted that CanFr was tainted somewhat by Anglicisms, but stated that it was the same language (i.e. homogeneous) throughout the province:

Tous les Canadiens-Français parlent la même langue française, un peu gâtée par certains mots anglais écorchés ou traduits à moitié, mais sans mélange d’aucun des nombreux patois qui existent en France. Leur accent est à peu près le même d’un bout à l’autre du pays; les habitants d’en bas de Québec seuls se font remarquer par la prononciation de l’r, qui tient le milieu entre le parler gras et le grasseyement. (Dunn 1874: 25)

166 This is a typographical error, as there was no open quotation mark in this passage. 167 See Bernard Cerquiglini’s Les langues de France (1999, revised edition 2003), in which he identifies numerous regional languages – and their dialects – native to France, including Occitan, Picard, Catalan, Francoprovençal, Corsican, etc.

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According to Dunn’s last sentence, Parisians were not the only ones known for their guttural r. Despite this minor difference in pronunciation, French Canadians were reputed to speak a uniform variety of French, a claim which spoke to the quality of education throughout the country, and across class lines; this belief in a perfectly homogeneous language, however, was not entirely supported by the linguistic evidence, as we shall later see. In the article “Notre langue” (1877), Sulte lent support to Dunn’s claim: “Nous avons pour points d’appui l’uniformité et la pureté du langage populaire. L’habitant parle comme l’artisan, avec cette différence, qu’il s’est tenu à l’écart des Anglicismes.” (Sulte 1877: 658) This is further evidence of a distinction between rural and urban speech: the latter were in constant contact with the English language, and were therefore more susceptible to employing Anglicisms, whereas the former used hardly any at all, according to Sulte. In his travel journal Cinq mois chez les Français d’Amérique (1879), French colonial administrator Henri de Lamothe (1843-1926) remarked on the uniformity of the language across class lines, which was not the case in France: “Ce qui paraît surtout bizarre au Français arrivant d’Europe, c’est l’uniformité même de ce mode de prononciation, aussi bien chez les classes les plus instruites que chez les cultivateurs et les ouvriers.” (Lamothe 1879: 29)

In the article “La langue française au Canada” French Canadian journalist Aimé168 Gélinas (dates unknown) claimed that, unlike in France, any habitant could make himself understood throughout the province of Québec: “Ici, il n’y a pas un de nos habitants qui ne puisse suivre et comprendre le discours ou le sermon le plus académique.” (Gélinas 1880a: 121) Despite the mention of a sermon, Gélinas did not explicitly mention that many French Canadians received their education from the Catholic priests, a background which might have explained the supposed homogeneity of CanFr.. In his Histoire, Sulte continued to praise the uniformity of CanFr: “L’accent canadien est pur, franc sans rudesse, et uniforme d’une extrémité à l’autre du pays.” (Sulte 1882: Vol. III 114) French traveller Frédéric Gerbié (dates unknown), who spent four years in Canada, expressed his admiration for this quality: “Partout nous avons retrouvé la langue française parlée avec la [sic] même accent et la même pureté aussi bien par l’homme des villes et les gens de professions que par le plus humble pionnier perdu au fond des bois.” (Gerbié 1884: 133)

168 In the four articles attributed to Gélinas, we only have the initial “A.” See the appendices for a discussion on this author’s possible identity.

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Given the specificity of these passages – French Canadians from all walks of life spoke essentially the same language – it is difficult to accept earlier testimony that claimed French Canadians were unintelligible, speaking a language “no Parisian could understand.” How can this rather large discrepancy in the data be solved? Given the number of foreign commentators who were either unfamiliar with the French language as it was spoken in Canada, or were unable to speak French altogether, yet wrote critically of CanFr, I would posit that what we are seeing here is tremendous difference between folk beliefs (stereotypes in this case, really) and linguistic (or at least informed) evidence. Whereas Anglophone commentators were content (perhaps intentionally) to share their uninformed opinions about French Canadians and their language, French visitors were able to refute these claims, as they could actually speak the language. As we have seen, however, this is not to say that they weren’t critical of the language; rather, they were simply in a better position to evaluate CanFr than most.

In his essay Situation de la langue française au Canada (1885), Sulte continued to reaffirm the uniformity of the French language not only in Canada, but throughout the continent:

Mais, dira-t-on, prétendez-vous que le Canada présente la merveille de l’uniformité du langage et de l’accent? Sans doute! Rien de plus facile que de le constater. De Gaspé à Prescott, il ne varie pas, et, ce qui est au moins aussi singulier, c’est que, à l’ouest de la province d’Ontario, dans le comté d’Essex, par exemple, où nos gens sont si nombreux, le langage est le même que sur les rives du Saint-Laurent et de l’Ottawa. Il est le même dans les Etats-Unis, partout où nous nous sommes répandus. (Sulte 1885: 5)

At least one other commentator was familiar with Sulte’s work, Demanche, citing it in his travel journal, and summarizing: “Le Canada présente la merveille de l’uniformité du langage.” (Demanche 1890: 14)

While many believed in the uniform French accent in Canada (we’ll see testimony from the detractors shortly), this was not always seen as a positive trait, nor was it entirely supported by the evidence. De Cazes, for example, writes: “[…] Ce qui nous distingue surtout, une uniformité monotone dans le rythme qu’on ne remarque dans aucun autre pays parlant le français.” (De Cazes 1887: 125) De Cazes found that French Canadians had a monotone accent, which was not seen as a positive trait; this observation is in direct contradiction to Lagacé’s assessment of the majors problems with French Canadian pronunciation; see 4.1.1.3.

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To counteract all of these positive comments, there were still many commentators – foreigners, mostly – who found the French language as spoken in Canada to be degenerate, corrupt, and simply not French. Not surprisingly, those who made such comments provided little (if any) evidence to back up their claims, which seem to be fully entrenched in old stereotypes and hearsay. The first comment to this effect comes from English dramatist and writer George Rose (1817-1882), who wrote many works under the pseudonym “Arthur Sketchley,” including his travel account of his time in North America, The Great Country, or Impressions of America (1868). While travelling to Cornwall by train, Rose commented on the language spoken by some French Canadian passengers: “My fellow-passengers were Canadians, judging from the language they spoke, which was unintelligible French.” (Rose 1868: 294-95) Irish academic John White (1839-1912), a fellow at Queen’s College, Oxford, demonstrated an awareness of others’ opinions on the language, though he didn’t share them:

Travellers have sometimes characterized the Lower Canadian language as a jargon not to be made out by a knowledge of Parisian French; but, though there have, no doubt, sprung up various patois in so immense an extent of country, the Canadian speech is rather remarkable for its purity than for its corruption. (White 1870: 70)

Several pages later, White revisited this notion, noting that there was an abundance of misinformation circulating about French Canadians:

The difference of opinion as to the purity of Lower Canadian French may, perhaps, be in some measure caused by the peculiar structure169 of Lower Canadian society. Many similarly contradictory statements about the French colonists of Canada are to be heard, and to be found in books. (White 1870: 72)

Having reviewed all of the travel journals from British travellers, it is clear that White critically read what others had written on French Canadians, and did not repeat verbatim their opinions on the language. This isn’t to say that White thought highly of CanFr (as we shall see in the next section), but rather that he was one of the very few Anglophones to makes such an astute observation.

169 It is likely that White was referring to the remnants of the Seigneuries, the influence of the Catholic faith, and the maintenance of French law.

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In the anonymously written170 article “Les Canadiens-Français” (1871), the author revisited the belief that city dwelling French Canadians – not the habitants – spoke poorly:

Les Canadiens-Français des villes ne parlent pas, comme on pourrait le croire, un français bien élégant. J’ai entendu des Parisiens affirmer qu’ils avaient souvent de la difficulté à comprendre ce que des Canadiens-Français instruits voulaient dire (ceci est un peu fort) vu surtout le grand nombre de mots anglais qu’ils mêlent au français. Ils parlent plus vite que les Français; leurs avocats plaident avec une emphase et une véhémence extraordinaires qui nous paraît, à nous, Anglais, passablement extravagante et, disons le mot, tant soit peu absurde. (Anonymous 1871: 479)

While the author presented no revelatory information in this short passage, the first sentence reveals a pre-existing prejudice about the language spoken in the cities. This statement is not without irony, however, as the author appeals to Parisian – presumably of the upper class – expertise on the matter, which, as he have just seen, was no guarantee of “good” French.

In his travel journal Wickets in the West (1873), English cricketer Robert Allan Fitzgerald (1834- 1881) dismissed CanFr entirely: “They [Fitzgerald’s travel companions] were not very clear as to their destination, and their drive, a French Kanuck, whose lingo171 was scarcely recognizable as a European tongue, appeared to know less.” (Fitzgerald 1873: 32) To my knowledge, Fitzgerald is among the first foreigners to employ the term “Kanuck” for designating French Canadians, a term which was clearly used in the pejorative sense in this passage.

In 1875, a French Canadian writing under the name A. Lépine172 wrote a semi-serious article entitled “On demande une académie173 en Bas-Canada”, where he ridiculed the speech of various professionals, recalling LaRue’s more elegant essay that appeared several years earlier:

Je va t être ou je suis pour t être ne devrait être employé que par les représentants parlementaires; citizenne et quanifié et voité, aux émigrés des Etats-Unis. Les

170 Although the article was written in French, the author identified as English. 171 There is an entry for “lingo” in the first edition (1828) of Webster’s dictionary, though it is quite spare: “Language; speech. (Vulgar.) According to the OED, a lingo is: “A contemptuous designation for: Foreign speech or language; language which is strange or unintelligible to the person who so designates it; language particular to some special subject, or employed (whether properly or affectedly) by some particular class of persons.” http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/108677?rskey=tNfYOm&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid Last accessed March 19th, 2013. 172 This may be another pseudonym used by Henri-Raymond Casgrain (1831-1904), who occasionally wrote articles for L’Opinion publique under the name Placide Lépine. 173 That is, a Canadian version of the Académie Française.

176

conseillers pourraient user avec sobriété et tempérance de la phrase sacramentelle: la motion dont à laquelle je propose. Les commis voyageurs ne seraient pas exposés à aller en prison pour avoir dit avec bonne foi la femme que je parle, presquement, un vitreaux, un gros-t habitant. J’ai désoublié pourrait se tolérer chez les instituteurs, et du morphile, chez les bourgeois. (Lépine 1875: 543)

While it is clear that Lépine wrote this article in a mocking tone, his ability to pick out words and phrases specific to professions provides a valuable insight into contemporary complaints about the language of lawyers and journalists, for example, two professions which received the brunt of the blame for the prevalence of Anglicisms. See Gélinas (1879) below.

In his article “Notre langue” (1877), Sulte provided a possible explanation for Canadians “inelegant” speech:

Il s’en suit que tel Canadien qui écrit avec correction et élégance parle parfois d’une manière pitoyable, non pas qu’il fasse usage d’un patois, mais parce qu’il n’est pas habitué à s’entretenir avec des personnes dont la conversation polie, facile, savante, inviterait son esprit à exprimer tout haut ce qu’il sait si bien mettre sur le papier. (Sulte 1877: 657-58)

According to Sulte, the supposed low quality of CanFr was due to the lack of a cultured population; again, we see a strong link between language and Culture. Shortly afterwards, Sulte lamented the decline in CanFr’s quality during the 19th century: “Jusqu’au commencement de ce siècle, me dit-on, les Canadiens se piquaient de bien parler. En ce cas, nous avons retrogradé.” (Sulte 1887: 658) Sulte could have been referring to any number of problems here, though given what he wrote in previous works, he was most likely alluding to the pervasive influence of the English language.

In the article “A propos de l’Anglicisme” (1879), Gélinas blamed the poor state of the language on journalists, one of the most common targets: “Nous reconnaissons humblement que nous péchons contre les règles de style. C’est le sort commun d’un bon nombre de journalistes canadiens de pécher ainsi.” (Gélinas 1879: 2) As a brief aside, it is somewhat fitting that many of the French Canadians railing against the sins committed against the French language by journalists were journalists themselves: Dunn, Legendre, Gélinas, Sulte, Buies, etc. Who better to recognize problems with the written language than professional writers? This idea is reiterated in Tardivel’s article (1881), where he blamed professionals of all sorts for the numerous problems with CanFr: “Quatre-vingt-dix-neuf cent de nos hommes de profession, de nos députés,

177 de nos journalistes, de nos auteurs mêmes, commettent à chaque instant des fautes, et des fautes grossières.” (Tardivel 1881: 265)

Shifting away from attacks on journalists, Scottish traveller C.B. Berry (dates unknown) reminded readers of his travel journal The Other Side, how it struck us (1880) that French Canadians spoke a patois, not French: “The French element [in Montréal] manifests itself both upon the shop sign-boards, and in the broken patois which often greets the enquiring stranger […]” (Berry 1880: 263) It is somewhat jarring that Berry would point out the Frenchness of the people, yet stressed that they did not, in fact, speak “real” French. In 1881, English writer Mary Anne Duffus Hardy (1825-1891), wrote that French Canadians did not speak French like she had expected: “[...] if you venture to inquire your way you will be answered in a kind of French that is not spoken in the France of to-day. They cling to the ancient French of their forefathers, with no innovations or modern improvements.” (Hardy 1881: 21) As we saw in the previous chapter, British commentators continued to described French Canadians and their language as antiquated, outdated, even backwards, whereas British Canadians and CanEn were modern and progressive.

The following year, English traveler T.S. Hudson (dates unknown) employed a number of stereotypes and pejorative terms to describe the language he encountered in both Montréal and Québec, ranging from Norman patois, to mongrel, all the way to garbage (though he only repeated the latter):

Landing at the Lower Town [of Québec] we found ourselves in old French looking streets and might have been in Dieppe or Rouen; while the cries of “Voiture Monsieur” and “Vant a carriage?” showed us that were in a mongrel country as to the language. The population is nine-tenths French-Canadian, the language used in the law-courts and written and printed being the French of to- day, but the spoken ‘garbage’ (as our intelligent and useful cab driver174 called it) is boasted of as not being a patois, but the polite French of the age of the colonization of Canada. There is a colour of probability about this, but doubtless the “polite” language has become somewhat corrupted. It struck us as if a colony of English descent were to be speaking in the “vulgar tongue” of the day when the Bible was translated into the Authorized Version. (Hudson 1882: 256)

The descriptors “garbage” and “mongrel” notwithstanding, it is noteworthy that Hudson made a distinction between the official French – the written variety, also used in the courts – and the

174 Unfortunately, Hudson did not specify whether his cabdriver was British or French Canadian.

178 version most commonly spoken. In other words, Hudson was describing the differences between the standard form of the language, and the colloquial form, both of which were strongly characterized by archaisms. Secondly, Hudson’s reference to the King James’ Bible is an interesting one, not only because this is the first (and only) time it was alluded to, but it also speaks to the notion of the degeneration of colonists’ language, and that the standard language of the colony must be the one of the home country, i.e., an exogenous linguistic norm.

In 1887, English psychic and thought-reader Stuart Cumberland (1857-1922) wrote The Queen’s Highway, in which he viciously mocked the French Canadians and their language. In this first passage, Cumberland haphazardly rattled off a number of old stereotypes, and mixed in some bizarre imagery for good measure:

As it is, very few people [in Québec City] speak English, and in the years to come, one, I expect, in order to make oneself understood, will have to make a study of the language of the ancient régime [sic], for a knowledge of modern French will not be of much avail. A Kanuck in moments of studied calmness will not be readily understood by the super-chic Parisian of to-day; but should he be at all excited, he would practically be as unintelligible to him as the heathen Chinee [sic] or the blubber-eating Kamtschadal175 [sic]. (Cumberland 1887: 372)

Cumberland evidently must not have been very familiar with the French language, as French travellers – Parisians, even – to Canada since the early 19th century had remarked that CanFr was perfectly intelligible, despite the presence of the various -isms. In a later passage, Cumberland relayed what appears to be more second or third-hand information:

He jabbers on politics, religion, science, literature, the fine arts, trade, finance, and on every conceivable subject, whenever he can get a listener; and I am assured by those who understand him that he jabbers uncommonly well. Only the difficulty is that not one traveller out of a thousand will understand a single word of what he says; and instead of looking upon him as a heaven-born orator, he will invariably vote him [the French Canadian] a complete nuisance. (Cumberland 1887: 373)

Reading between the lines, it is clear that Cumberland was not one of those who could understand the French Canadians, but relied instead upon others’ opinions, or rather, prejudices.

175 Cumberland is likely referring to the Kamchadals, the indigenous people of the Kamchatka Peninsula, then part of the Russian Empire.

179

In his travel journal A Fight with distances (1888), English astronomer and translator John James Aubertin (1818-1900) employed the term Babel176 to describe the language he heard in Québec:

The province of Québec is mainly French – the numbers given are 1,200,000 against 300,000 in a population of a million and a half – but not one word, or perhaps just one, could I understand among the many that crowded round me and my portmanteau to engage me for the hotel. Though rather irritating, the glorious babel was, nevertheless, grotesquely entertaining, and it was not till I came to talk at the post-office and other recognized centres that I was able really to understand why the people are called French. However, there is, of course, a good deal of English, good, bad, and indifferent, spoken all around. (Aubertin 1888: 18)

Aubertin reinforced what Hudson (1882) wrote several years earlier; namely, that there was a major difference between colloquial speech (the Babel) and French used for official purposes (standard French), the latter of which was nearly identical to European French.

The final comment I have chosen to include for this point of view comes from French Canadian journalist Arthur Buies (1840-1901), who published the grammatical inventory Anglicismes et Canadianismes (1888), based in part on his earlier language chronicle “Barbarismes canadiens,” which was published in Le Pays (1865-66). While his contemporaries were devoted to identifying and eliminating Anglicisms from the language, Buies attacked anything that wasn’t Standard French, i.e. anything that did not appear in the French dictionaries (the DAF in particular), including Canadianisms. In this passage, Buies ridiculed the language of the majority of French Canadians, making no distinction between rural and urban populations: “Inutiles efforts! Les Canadiens sont incorrigibles. Ils ont une horreur pour ainsi dire instinctive du bon langage ordinaire: il leur faut ou parler horriblement mal ou bien poser pour ‘parler dans les tâârmes’, ce qui fait qu’ils sont ou inintelligibles ou ridicules.” (Buies 1888: 17) Buies’ attitudes towards CanFr can be explained in part by the fact that he spent several years studying and working in France, and immediately upon his return began writing the language chronicle “Barbarismes canadiens,” which formed the basis of this book length work. Plainly stated, Buies believed that it was in every French Canadian’s nature to speak poorly, but this could be remedied through a good (read, strict) education.

176 That is to say, the Tower of Babel. Or perhaps Aubertin meant “babble”, as in make unintelligible noises like a baby.

180

I will conclude this section with a brief discussion of the third group that Tardivel described: those who considered CanFr a legitimate variety of French. It appears from early testimony that this was largely a popular view for much of the 19th century, but it didn’t gain much acceptance by the middle and upper classes until the last few decades. Returning briefly to Lépine’s article, among the very specific attacks on the speech of professionals, there is seriousness in his proposal for an Académie canadienne:

Pourquoi n’aurait-on pas une Académie en Bas-Canada, à Québec ou à Montréal ? Nous sommes trop loin de l’Académie française. Le mot le moins français, le terme le plus barbare, la locution la plus vicieuse et la plus boiteuse a le temps de s’implanter et de tout gangrener avant que nos cousins, les académiciens français, en aient eu connaissance. (Lépine 1875: 543)

Although Lépine was arguing for the establishment of an Académie Canadienne to protect the language against corruption from within as well as from without, it is apparent that there was a growing sentiment that CanFr was not the same as Standard French, nor should it aspire to be. Several years later, in his article “La Province de Québec et la langue française” (1884)177, French Canadian lawyer and journalist Napoléon Legendre (1841-1907) examined the linguistic and cultural ties between France and Québec, and explored the legitimacy of CanFr:

Mais il y a encore une espérance que nous n’abandonnons pas et que nous devons, par tous nos efforts tâcher de réaliser, c’est d’être reconnus officiellement sous le rapport du langage, par le pays d’où nos ancêtres sont venus, c’est d’être admis à concourir, comme nos frères d’outre-mer, à l’augmentation de l’héritage paternel. Car, cette langue si belle, qui cours de l’Europe, non contents de la conserver dans toute sa pureté et son intégrité, nous l’avons enrichie d’une foule de mots et de locutions empruntées à des circonstances nouvelles et qui ne pouvaient se produire que difficilement ailleurs qu’ici. Placés dans une situation spéciale, dans un milieu différent de l’ancien monde, tant au point de vue du mode de vivre que sous le rapport de la nature matérielle, nous avons dû nécessairement exprimer des états nouveaux et des idées nouvelles par des mots nouveaux. Ces mots, nous les avons créés et nous nous en servons tous les jours. Avions-nous le droit de les créer? Avons-nous le droit de nous en servir? Et pourquoi non? (Legendre 1994: 13-14)

Legendre’s argument for a Canadian norm rested upon, by this point, decades of debates on the validity or acceptability of Canadianisms. Instead of seeing these (necessary) linguistic

177 For both of Legendre’s articles, I consulted the 1994 collection La langue française au Canada, which contains a number of his various essays and articles on CanFr.

181 innovations as evidence of corruption, they had slowly come to be seen as an advantage, or a badge of honour. Later in the essay, Legendre explained that with the reestablishment of ties between Québec and France, CanFr’s rightful place in the Francophone world ought to be acknowledged:

Lorsque nous étions moins connus en France, et que le Canada passait pour un pays sauvage, je comprends qu’il eût été difficile de demander cette reconnaissance de nos droits. Mais aujourd’hui que des rapports fréquents nous ont fait mieux connaître, que les ouvrages de nos écrivains sont lus et appréciés par le public français, et que deux des nôtres178 ont été couronnés par l’Académie de France, la plus haute autorité de l’univers, nous demandons, non pas qu’on nous fasse une place nouvelle dans le domaine de la langue, mais qu’on nous rende celle que nous occupions autrefois et que, en réalité, nous n’avons jamais abdiquée. (Legendre 1994: 33)

According to Legendre, then, a century of British dominance could not strip away the true nature of CanFr: a living linguistic and cultural legacy that was just as legitimate and worthy of study as any other variety of French.

In the first of a two-part article “L’enseignement du français” (1886), Sulte added to Legendre’s argument, envisioning a future where a Canadian linguistic norm is a reality, though much work would need to be done first:

Quelle langue parlons-nous? De ce côté, il y a décadence, parce que trop d’acteurs de second ordre sont en scène. Nous ne savons plus causer, que dis-je! nous n’avons que des termes impropres, des expressions vicieuses à mettre en jeu. L’art de soigner le langage est perdu parmi nous. Il renaîtra, cependant, grâce à une critique sage et adroite; il reprendra son empire à mesure que l’idée nationale, tant affaiblie, ravivra [sic] ses forces. Dans vingt ans, espérons-le, nous serons le peuple du monde parlant le mieux le français.

Par conséquent, préparons l’avenir. Tout d’abord composons des vocabulaires. Ces œuvres modestes mais utiles, se développent d’elles-mêmes, jusqu’à produire un jour un Bescherelle ou un Littré canadien, et alors nous aurons notre dictionnaire national. (Sulte 1886: 767)

The reference to Louis-Nicholas Bescherelle’s Dictionnaire national (1851) and Emile Littré’s Dictionnaire de la langue française (1863-1872, 1873-1877), a French etymological dictionary

178 Louis Fréchette won the Prix Montyon in 1880 for Les fleurs boréales, and I cannot find the reference for the other one.

182 is important, as both included terms that were in common use, but not in the most recent (1878) edition of the DAF. In other words, these dictionaries represented more what the people spoke, and a similar dictionary would be necessary in Canada, to account for the very same issue. Legendre and Sulte’s hopes for CanFr were partially fulfilled in 1894, with the publication of the first CanFr dictionary, Sylva Clapin’s Dictionnaire canadien-français, one of the main purposes of which was to propose a standard for the French language in Canada. The dictionary owed much to earlier (and contemporary) supporters of a Canadian norm, such as Dunn, Tardivel, Legendre, and Sulte, among others.

In the preface, Clapin discussed the origins of the dictionary, beginning with the differences in environment and lifestyle that Legendre had mentioned, which spurred linguistic innovation at an early stage:

On oublie trop, d’ailleurs, en ces sortes de dissertations, une chose capitale: c’est que le Canada n’est pas la France, et que, quand bien même celle-ci eût continué à posséder son ancienne colonie, une foule d’expressions locales auraient quand même surgi parmi nous, servant ainsi comme de prolongement à la langue-mère venue d’Europe. Qu’on le veuille ou non, la langue d’un peuple est une résultante générale de faune, de flore, de climat différents; insensiblement les hommes se façonnent là-dessus, en reçoivent le contre-coup jusque dans leur structure intime, jusque dans leurs fibres les plus secrètes. (Clapin 1894: x-xi)

Due to these differences, French Canadians had to coin new words, and borrow from other languages to describe their world. Clapin then proposed that French Canadians had the right to preserve the old and adapt the language as they saw fit, provided these adaptations follow the génie of the language:

De tout cela découle le droit strict que nous avons, nous aussi Canadiens, habitant un pays bien différent de la France, non-seulement de conserver précieusement les vieux mots qui s’adaptent à notre tempérament, mais même d’en créer des nouveaux, c’est-à-dire de greffer sur le vieux tronc de la langue française les jeunes pousses que nous avons en quelque sorte fait surgir de notre sol. Inutile, pour cela, d’attendre le mot d’ordre de la mère patrie. Une seule restriction s’impose: c’est que ces néologismes soient autant que possible dans le génie de la langue française; en d’autres termes qu’ils soient formés de telle sorte qu’ils auraient pu tout aussi bien avoir été mis en usage en France. (Clapin 1894: xi)

By definition, this would exclude any Anglicisms, but native Canadian words and archaisms follow the génie, and are therefore perfectly acceptable. Coupled with an increasing sense of national pride (see section 4.1.2.2), there was a noticeable push for linguistic purification at the

183 end of the 19th century, and CanFr gained a major supporter with the foundation of the Société du parler français au Canada in 1902.

To conclude this section, the three different opinions on CanFr have been clearly established: the first group believes in the absolute purity and legitimacy of the French spoken in Canada, citing its illustrious 17th century origins. The second group, which had up to this point been the most vocal, found the language to be nearly incomprehensible, a pale imitation of the “real French.” Finally, the third group recognized (and promoted) the legitimacy of CanFr, while also acknowledging its many faults, and strove to better the language, with the ultimate goal of establishing a Canadian, not French, norm.

4.1.1.2 Anglicisms

The post-Confederation period is marked by a strong desire to eliminate any and all Anglicisms from speech and writing. The reasons for this are manifold: firstly, defenders of the language had always prided themselves on the purity of French, and the very presence of Anglicisms negated that purity; secondly, Anglicisms led to confusion; and thirdly, some French Canadians worried that CanFr would eventually cease to be French, but become a patois or jargon if Anglicisms were left unchecked.

The anonymous author of the article “Mots et tournures à éviter” (1872) expressed the necessity of fixing the problem with Anglicisms: “L’usage constant des deux langues, française et anglaise, donne lieu, chez nous, à des inexactitudes et même à des fautes assez fréquentes.” (Anonymous 1872: 144) Dunn (1874) agreed with this statement, and proclaimed the real threat to CanFr to be Anglicisms:

Que notre confrère américain179 veuille nous en croire, notre ennemi n’est pas le patois, c’est l’anglais qui, maître du commerce et de l’industrie, met le désarroi dans la langue de l’ouvrier et du négociant; son influence sur la langue politique ne laisse pas non plus d’être redoutable. (Dunn 1874: 25)

While foreigners would continue to believe in the myth of the Canadian patois, Dunn explained, Anglicisms were ubiquitous, and far more dangerous than archaisms.

179 Dunn is here referring to an infamous article that appeared in Le courier des États-Unis, which claimed that French Canadians speak a Norman patois.

184

In his fascinating study Paysan de Saint-Irénée (1875), Charles-Henri-Philippe Gauldrée-Boileau (b. 1823), who served as the French consul in New York, Québec, and Lima, remarked that the residents of Saint-Irénée spoke French, but it was somewhat marred or coloured by other undesirable elements:

Tous les habitants de Saint-Irénée parlent français, et le parlent plus purement qu’on ne le fait généralement dans les campagnes de France. Il y a cependant dans leur langage, comparé à celui de l’ancienne mère patrie, des particularités qu’il peut être intéressant d’indiquer; elles tiennent à l’emploi des mots vieillis et de tournures de phrases qui ont cessé d’être usitées chez nous, à une prononciation un peu différente de la nôtre, enfin à l’introduction d’expressions anglaises, que l’usage a francisées. (Gauldrée-Boileau 1875: 103)

Gauldrée-Boileau evidently didn’t see these traits as harmful per se, and later compared urban and rural speech:

Le français des campagnes est peut-être plus pur que celui des villes, de Montréal surtout, où les envahissements de la langue anglaise sont incessants. Il serait à désirer, dans l’intérêt de la langue et de la littérature française, qu’une forte réaction s’organisât contre eux. Ce ne sont pas les écrivains et les orateurs de talent qui manquent à la population française du Bas-Canada; la plupart écrivent et parlent le français, non-seulement avec pureté, mais avec élégance. Ce serait une tâche digne d’eux que d’essayer de lutter contre les empiétements de l’anglais. (Gauldrée-Boileau 1875: 104)

In his article “De retour à Québec” (1878), French Canadian musician and composer Ernest Gagnon (1834-1915) saw Anglicisms and archaisms as a way to trace the external history of the language:

Pour un étranger, le plus ou moins de pureté avec lequel nous parlons la langue française, la proportion de mots anglais ou de tournures anglaises qui s’y mêlent, indiquent le nombre d’années qui nous séparent de la ‘conquête,’ la facilité, la multiplicité, la nature même de nos rapports avec nos voisins anglologues180 des Etats-Unis et des provinces-sœurs du Canada. (Gagnon 1878: 353)

According to Gagnon, then, if the number of Anglicisms in CanFr were to increase with time, the result could only be a complete replacement of the French language; hence the not uncommon fears of CanFr becoming a patois.

180 I have been unable to find this term in any French dictionary published during the 19th century; anglologue would ostensibly be a precursor to Anglophone.

185

In his article “Le Canada français et sa littérature” (1879), French journalist Raoul Frary (b. 1842) appreciated the difficulty of preserving French, and admired the improvements he had witnessed:

L’usage quotidien de l’anglais est une menace permanente pour la pureté du vocabulaire. Il est bien difficile de proscrire d’une façon absolue des mots étrangers qui se sont introduits dans la conversation et qui de là se glissent dans le style écrit. Nous devons cependant rendre aux écrivains canadiens cette justice, qu’ils se défendent avec énergie contre cette invasion. Les ouvrages écrits il y a trente ou quarante ans, autant que nous avons pu en juger, présentent plus d’Anglicismes que les livres et les articles d’une date plus récente. (Frary 1879: Vol. II, 106)

In his Petit vocabulaire à l’usage des Canadiens-français (1880), French Canadian priest and educator Napoléon Caron attempted to explain the origins of Anglicisms, stating the necessity of employing them in the early 19th century:

Nous sommes entrés dans le mouvement du commerce, des sciences, des arts, de l’industrie, et il s’est trouvé que la langue de nos aieux ne répondait plus aux besoins nouveaux. Dès lors, chaque année, nous avons laissé les mots anglais entrer par centaines dans notre langue. (Caron 1880: i)

So while Caron believed that it was necessary at one point to employ or borrow some of English terms, French Canadians had gone too far, in his estimation. As a result, there were then too many Anglicisms, which could lead to a worst-case scenario for the language:

En écoutant cet informe mélange de français et d’anglais que parlent aujourd’hui nos ouvriers, nos travailleurs de toute sorte, nous nous demandons avec anxiété quelle langue la grande majorité du peuple canadien parlera dans dix ans. Si ce n’est qu’un patois, tiendrons-nous tant à le conserver? Ne préférons-nous pas parler un bon langage anglais? (Caron 1880: i-ii)

This fear would appear to be the motivation for the publication of literally dozens of grammars, dictionaries, glossaries, newspaper articles, etc.

Anglicisms however weren’t the only threat to the sanctity of CanFr; they were just the most dangerous. In the introduction to Dunn’s Glossaire, French Canadian journalist and poet Louis Fréchette 1839-1908) wrote that all “barbarisms” (see the definition in the Introduction) ought to be abandoned: “Les icitte, les bin, les itout, les pantoute […] devraient être proscrits de nos maisons d’éducation, au même titre que les Anglicismes.” (Dunn 1880: x) The dangers of

186

Anglicisms were fully illustrated in Tardivel’s L’Anglicisme, voilà l’ennemi (1880), as he shared Caron’s fears for the future: “Il est possible, si nous n’y prenons garde, qu’avec le temps la langue de la province de Québec devienne un patois qui n’aurait de français que le nom, un jargon qu’il vaudrait mieux abandonner dans l’impossibilité où l’on serait de le réformer.” (Tardivel 1880: 5) As we have seen in section 4.1.1.1, Tardivel was mostly concerned with the language of politicians, journalists, and lawyers, who had the most influence on the language.

In his article “Petite causerie” (1881), Gagnon compared the difficulty of eliminating English words with English phrasing from the language: “Depuis quelques années, nous nous efforçons d’en faire disparaître les mots Anglais, ce qui est facile, et les tournures anglaises, ce qui est, au contraire, très-difficile.” (Gagnon 1881: 41) In his poorly received181 Dictionnaire des locutions vicieuses du Canada (1881), French Canadian writer and founder of the Numismatic Society of Montréal Joseph Amable Manseau (1837-1887) wrote that French Canadians constantly struggled with Anglicisms and other grammatical blunders (like solecisms), which could lead to embarrassment for all parties involved: “En effet, quand on prête une oreille attentive au langage du peuple (notre patient), on est tout étonné d’entendre, à tout instant, des expressions qui, tout à la fois, font rire et pleurer.” (Manseau 1881: iii)

The belief that speaking both French and English was “harmful” was not unknown in the 19th century (see Doucet’s essay Dual Language in section 4.1.2.2 for a detailed description); Gerbié, for example, believed that speaking both languages encouraged the use of Anglicisms: “De cette facilité à parler également bien l’anglais et le français, il en résulte parfois certains Anglicismes;” and was thankful that French Canadians had been more vigilant in recent years: “[auxquels] la presse et les maisons d’éducation font une guerre sans merci, soucieuses qu’elles sont de conserver la pureté et la beauté de notre langue.” (Gerbié 1884: 130-31) In La France transatlantique (1885), Clapin also praised the French Canadian press for their commitment to eliminating Anglicisms: “Nombre de directeurs font maintenant une guerre à mort aux Anglicismes, et s’attachent avec un soin minutieux à relever les plus légères incorrections qui auraient pu se glisser dans leurs colonnes.” (Clapin 1885: 193)

181 A review of this work was published in L’Opinion Publique by “Hix”, who wrote that Manseau had done French Canadians a great disservice in publishing his book, as it would encourage the British (Canadians) to laugh at them on account of their language.

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Legendre was naturally in favour of eliminating all Anglicisms from the language: “Personne plus que moi ne désire que nous corrigions nos fautes de langage, que nous fassions disparaître de notre conversation comme de nos écrits les Anglicismes qui s’y sont glissés de temps à autre.” (Legendre 1994: 32) However, he cautioned against eliminating Canadianisms altogether:

[…] mais pourquoi, je le demande, serions-nous obligés de rejeter des termes qui, loin d’être patois – comme on a bien voulu le dire – sont, au contraire, régulièrement formés, à ce point que nous pouvons presque toujours en rendre compte à la satisfaction des linguistes les plus difficiles. (Legendre 1994: 32)

In other words, Anglicisms – which did not follow le génie de la langue – had no place in CanFr, while Canadianisms – which did, according to Clapin, Rivard, Dunn, among many others – helped define CanFr, and had a permanent place in it.

Returning to Buies (1888), he acknowledged the unenviable task that Canadians had before them, i.e. the elimination of Anglicisms and “barbarisms” from the language:

Il faut avoir le tempérament d’un apôtre, le zèle et l’amour du prochain d’un missionnaire, et jusqu’aux enthousiasmes téméraires d’un réformateur pour entreprendre de remonter un courant aussi irrésistible que celui qui nous entraîne vers l’anglo-gallo-Canadianisme, c’est-à-dire, une composition parlée que n’auraient jamais comprise nos pères, et que certainement ne comprendront mieux nos fils. (Buies 1888: 8)

French educator and historian Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937), the founder of the modern Olympic Games, wrote Universités transatlantiques (1890), a work that was not well-received by French Canadians due to some controversial passages. In this passage, de Coubertin ridiculed their alleged frequent use of Anglicisms: “Ces mots anglais: run, place, cars, Dominion, States, esquire, qui n’ont pas d’équivalents en français et que les Canadiens y transplantent bon gré mal gré, produisent l’effet le plus saugrenu.” (De Coubertin 1890: 156) Within the year, a response to his work came in the form of the essay Justice aux Canadiens français! (1890), written by French nobleman Charles de Bouthillier-Chavigny (dates unknown). De Bouthillier-Chavigny refuted the alleged widespread usage of Anglicisms: “L’usage de ces Anglicismes tend à disparaître, d’ailleurs, grâce à la guerre acharnée que lui font des écrivains de talent, tous Canadiens, ne vous en déplaise.” (De Bouthillier-Chavigny 1890: 88)

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In the same year, French Canadian writer Jean-Baptiste-Alphonse Lusignan (1843-1893), who served as editor-in-chief for Le Pays (1865-1868), published Fautes à corriger, in which he highlighted the role of the press in perpetuating Anglicisms:

La presse est la grande éducatrice; on lit le journal quand on laisse le livre de côté ; c’est dans la gazette que l’on puise inconsciemment son instruction. Or la presse enseigne mal parce qu’elle a été mal enseignée et rarement reprise; elle perpétue dans l’oreille du lecteur et par suite sous sa plume les Anglicismes les plus baroques, les barbarismes les plus audacieux, toutes les fautes, tous les crimes de langue. C’est elle la coupable, c’est elle la mère de ce langage bâtard que les étrangers signalent, sans nous le reprocher toutefois, et c’est à elle que je m’adresse, que je dis ses vérités. (Lusignan 1890: vii)

The only way to fix or ameliorate the press would be to teach good French from an early age at school, which would in turn improve the quality of the newspapers, thereby preventing the adoption of Anglicisms in the future. Edmond de Nevers went one step further, stating that the widespread use and acceptance of Anglicisms was harmful for French Canadian nationality: “Pour assurer à notre nationalité, une vie que rien ne pourra plus menacer, il nous faut tout d’abord: régénérer notre belle langue que l’Anglicisme est en train d’étouffer.” (De Nevers 1893: xliv-lv)

In The Great Dominion (1895), British Canadian educator George Robert Parkin (1846-1922), who served as the head of Upper Canada College (1895-1902), demonstrated awareness of his neighbours’ preoccupations with the English threat to their language:

When I landed in Québec I found that the French papers, both of the ancient capital and of Montréal, were vigorously discussing how far importations of English words were affecting the purity of the French tongue as spoken throughout the province. There seemed to be a consensus of opinion that nothing but a vigorous resistance would give security to the French language. (Parkin 1895: 140-41)

Parkin was among the few outsiders to mention French Canadians’ push to eliminate Anglicisms from their language. While he declined to take a position on the matter, he stated that: “No one can doubt for a moment that the man on the American continent who does not know the English language is handicapped in the race for success of any kind.” (Parkin 1895: 141) In other words, regardless of what French Canadians did with their own language, it would be in their best interest to speak English.

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In the introduction of his Dictionnaire de nos fautes contre la langue française (1896), French Canadian writer Raoul Rinfret (1856-1926) wrote that all French Canadians needed to learn English, but that they ought not to neglect their mother tongue: “Nous sommes obligés d’apprendre l’anglais. Apprenons-le bien. Mais quand nous parlons le français, évitons d’y mêler des mots à moitié anglais. Je signale avec soin les Anglicismes, cette plaie de notre langue.” (Rinfret 1896: iv) French traveller and author Marie-Thérèse Blanc (1840-1907), writing under the pseudonym Thérèse Bentzon, observed that even those French Canadians who don’t speak English employed Anglicisms:

Cette préoccupation de l’étude de la langue [dans les séminaires] primant toutes les autres s’explique lorsqu’on a constaté la confusion que le proche voisinage de l’anglais et du français produit souvent. Beaucoup de gens du monde disent par exemple, même sans savoir l’anglais, se donne du trouble pour de la peine, marier quelqu’un pour épouser, adresser une assemblée, n’être pas opposé, pour s’adresser à une assemblée, ne pas rencontrer d’opposition. (Bentzon 1898: 342)

In conclusion, it suffices to say that the threat posed to CanFr by Anglicisms – and to a lesser extent by Canadianisms, “barbarisms”, and archaisms – was fully understood and appreciated by defenders of the language, who took numerous steps to protect it. Anglicisms became a matter of national interest, for if they continued to infiltrate the language, it was widely believed, French would eventually disappear from Canada, having blended – or to use a contemporary term, amalgamated – with the British Canadians.

4.1.1.3 Pronunciation

As we have seen in the last two chapters, many commentators – French Canadians and foreigners alike – were quick to point out the numerous “defects” of French Canadian pronunciation. French Canadian priest and educator Pierre Lagacé (1830-1884), who served as the Principal at the École normale at Laval from 1871 until his death, wrote the invaluable Cours de lecture à haute voix (1875), which tidily summed up (nearly) all of the observations about CanFr pronunciation in two short passages. In the first passage, Lagacé stressed that French Canadian pronunciation needed to be remedied:

Ce sont là [le ton chantant, l’articulation molle, les sons faux, la prononciation défectueuse et l’expression nulle] des défauts graves et qui donnent à notre lecture canadienne, disons-le franchement, un assez pauvre caractère. Ne serait-il pas

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temps que toutes les personnes chargées d’instruire la jeunesse se missent sérieusement à l’œuvre pour tâcher de les faire disparaître? (Lagacé 1875: 6-7)

According to Lagacé, French Canadians’ individual efforts to ameliorate their pronunciation and enunciation were insufficient, as he believed that there was only one correct pronunciation of French: the one associated with the Parisian élite. Lagacé then listed the four major pronunciation issues in Canada, which I shall cite here in full:

1. Nous n’articulons pas assez en lisant ou en parlant. Ce défaut est surtout sensible lorsque nous laissons tomber la dernière syllabe du mot, ou le dernier mot de la phrase, qui sont, pour ainsi dire, comme l’âme du discours.

2. Nous donnons mal plusieurs sons de la langue; par exemple, les voyelles nasales in, an, un, on, la diphtongue oi et l’e ouvert grave.

3. Nous faisons graves la plupart des a aigus, et trop graves ceux qui doivent l’être.

4. Nous trainons sur les mots. Nous ne parlons pas notre lecture: nous la chantons.

Ajoutez à cela le grasseyement, qui est assez commun dans certaines localités, et vous aurez une idée de nos principaux vices de prononciation. (Lagacé 1875: 7)

With few exceptions, all of the comments regarding Canadian pronunciation fell under one of these four categories; therefore the only other references I will include in this section are those that describe different phenomena.

It is worth mentioning that the same issue of reading texts aloud was just starting to receive attention in France, largely due to the efforts of French dramatist, poet, and critic Ernest Legouvé (1807-1903), who wrote a series of three books on the matter: L’Art de la lecture (1877), La lecture en action (1881), and La lecture en famille (1882). Inspired largely through his work in the theatre, and later from his teaching career at the Collège de France (1848-1866), Legouvé concluded that learning how to read would have a direct, positive effect on one’s ability to speak his or her own language properly (i.e., elocution).

In the article “Le patois canadien” (1874), the anonymous author blamed the English language for a number of problems with Canadian pronunciation:

Nous pouvons prononcer certains mots d’une manière vicieuse, à cause de l’usage habituel que nous faisons de la langue anglaise; ainsi, nous prononçons les lettres d, l, et t, devant l’i et l’a, de la même manière que ces lettres se prononcent en

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anglais dans les mots expedient, individual, familiar, dilute, teetotal, tube. Nous prononçons aussi l’a anglais dans ball: nâger, nâtion; et le diphtongue oir comme s’il y avait ouer. (Anonymous 1874: 8)

In some of these words, the sound described is obvious; for example, individual and tube both contain a post-alveolar fricative, /dʒ/ in the former, and /tʃ/ in the latter, though */tʃito:ɾəl/ is a highly unlikely rendering of teetotal. In his article “Notre patois” (1874), Dunn also commented on this phenomenon, and noted the pronunciation of the letter r:

Les habitants en bas de Québec seuls se font remarquer par la prononciation de l’r, qui tient le milieu entre le parler gras et le grasseyement […] Nous prononçons mirouer, nation, comme au treizième siècle en France, et nous mettons presqu’un z au d et au t suivi de l’i: dzire, partzi. La classe instruite, surtout depuis quelques années, se défait de cet accent, et, aux intonations près, parle très bien. (Dunn 1874: 25)

It is noteworthy that Dunn described educated French Canadians’ awareness of this particular pronunciation, and their efforts to self-correct. Dunn later revisited the issue in his Glossaire, categorically stating that all French speakers had an accent, regardless of origin:

Nous avons tous de l’accent. Nous disons: “C’est une abomination; Voilà un beau mirouer.” Et nous prononçons le d et le t avec un son sifflant. Mais l’influence active de nos maisons d’éducation a déjà commencé à effacer cet accent et finira pour nous en débarrasser complètement. (Dunn 1880: xxii)

In the eighth volume of Histoire, Sulte acknowledged that Canadians had a distinct accent. The defects in pronunciation notwithstanding, Sulte believed that foreigners who were quick to make judgments about CanFr ought to keep their ill-informed opinions to themselves:

Nous avons notre accent. Est-il parfait? Non, assurément, mais il est clair et net. Reprochons-lui son manque d’expression, une allure molle, presque dolente. Les mots subissent trop une note uniforme dans notre bouche. Pourquoi ne dirions- nous pas: “notre accent”, puisque des étrangers ne savent ni le français moderne ni surtout le français de Montaigne et de Rabelais parlent du “patois canadien? (Sulte 1882: Vol. VIII, 144)

Sulte was understandably annoyed by outsiders’ prejudices against Canadians and their language, because so many of their comments were demonstrably based on conjecture and hearsay, not facts.

Lagacé had mentioned poor articulation as one of the major problems with French Canadian pronunciation, for which Sulte gave an example, and offered a frank reason for it: “A chaque

192 phrase, l’interlocuteur disait ‘hein?’ et l’autre répétait ce qu’il venait de dire. Pourquoi? Parce que l’articulation était défectueuse.” (Sulte 1887: 31) Sulte then went on to state that French Canadian immigrants to the United States spoke better than their Québécois counterparts: “ce n’est plus comme dans le Canada, où chaque enfant est libre d’aboyer ou de marmotter ou de geindre, sans que nous comprenions s’il dit oui ou non.” (Sulte 1887: 31) Sulte attributed this problem to French Canadians’ lack of respect for their language, which one must learn early in life.

The final observation comes from Adjutor Rivard, one of the founders of the Société du parler français au Canada, who wrote a series of articles entitled “De la pronunciation dans la lecture à haute voix.” (1900) The articles are very much in line with what Lagacé had written a quarter century earlier, with the addition of one interesting observation: “l’addition d’un a au commencement des mots. Ainsi, nous entendons souvent dire: adon pour don, aconnaître pour connaître, etc.” (Rivard 1900a: 287) This phenomenon was also described in several of the prescriptive works – Manseau (1881), for example, listed plenty for the letter a – though it was treated as more of a morphological issue than a phonological one.

To conclude this section, it can be said that this was a period of acknowledging differences in pronunciation, and the efforts made to fix those differences, or at least reduce their prominence. Lagacé provided an excellent, concise summary of the major defects of French Canadian pronunciation, all of which we have already seen in the previous two chapters, or were first discussed in this one. In section 5.2.1.2, we see similar comments regarding the pronunciation of CanEn, though definitely not to the extent of what we see for CanFr.

4.1.2 Utility and legitimacy

In addition to the numerous comments on the quality, sound, and character of the language, commentators during this period wrote a great deal about the utility of CanFr – namely, its suitability for official purposes (still), and the belief that French Canadians didn’t speak English, in spite of much evidence to the contrary – as well as its legitimacy; French Canadians like Dunn, Sulte, Legendre, Clapin, and Rivard, among others, strongly believed that CanFr was just as legitimate as Standard French, and had an equally illustrious heritage. I will begin this section with a discussion of the utility of the language, and then conclude this part of the chapter with notes on its legitimacy.

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4.1.2.1 French Canadians don’t speak English

Out of all the comments written about CanFr during this period, these are the ones that surprised me most; I expected that British travellers would recognize that many urban French Canadians must speak both languages in order to survive, a necessity that was made out to be a significant advantage by several commentators. In 1873, English painter William Henry Charlton (1846- 1918) made a distinction between rural and urban French Canadians regarding the use of English:

Three-fourths of the people of Quebec speak French as their native tongue, though many of them can also express themselves well in English, but in the surrounding villages, I believe, very little English is even understood.* (Note – The business of the Courts of Law in Montréal and Québec is conducted both in French and English, which has an odd effect.) (Charlton 1873: 15)

Charlton’s comments were in line with what earlier commentators had said, and there seems little reason to doubt that the habitants spoke less English than urban French Canadians. A number of other travellers made similar observations, emphasizing the ignorance of English outside the major cities.

In 1882, British Canadian minister and educator George Monro Grant (1835-1902) found that neither the British nor the French residents of Montréal could speak the other’s language: “Here are thousands of French who cannot speak one word of English, and thousands of English who cannot speak one word of French.” (Grant 1882: 106) This claim is corroborated several years later by English painter and illustrator Edward Roper (1854-1891), who claimed in his travel journal By Track and Trail (1891) that there was little interaction between the two groups on account of the language barrier: “Many thousands of people in Montréal do not speak one word of English. There are more there who do not speak one word of French. The two races go side by side without much intercourse.” (Roper 1891: 26) It is noteworthy that Roper did not specify the two groups, but referred to them as isolated or disjointed parts of a whole, which would suggest that it was a common across class and ethnic lines.

In contradiction to the claims that French Canadians did not speak English, I have found several comments from French and French Canadian sources that stated quite clearly that French Canadians were well-versed in both languages. In his essay “La Province de Québec et la langue française” (1884), Legendre writes that French Canadians didn’t have much choice in the matter:

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Mêlés constamment à un peuple qui parlait une langue étrangère, nos pères étaient obligés de se servir de cette langue non seulement dans la plupart de leurs rapports journaliers, mais encore pour faire valoir ou défendre leurs droits devant les tribunaux, et surtout devant le pouvoir législatif, ou bien encore pour pouvoir comprendre des édits et ordonnances qu’on ne se donnait pas toujours la peine de leur traduire. (Legendre 1994: 8)

This raises a question that is not sufficiently answered in the texts I have studied: how could French Canadians be bilingual by necessity, and said to be totally ignorant of the English language? It is tempting to chalk the ambiguity up to long-standing stereotypes or even anti- French sentiment on the part of the British and America travellers, though that cannot be the whole of it. I would propose a location (urban vs. rural) and class-based (upper, middle, lower) explanation, which follows from the comments we have seen thus far. In 1886, French writer Jacques Feyrol (dates unknown) lent support to the urban/rural split: “Un grand nombre de Canadiens, surtout dans les [villes], - dans les villages on ne parle que le français – connaissent aussi l’anglais.” (Feyrol 1886: 104)

Demanche (1890) proposed that knowing both languages was actually a tremendous boon for French Canadians, as it supposedly increased their intelligence: “En outre, excepté dans quelques comtés de la province de Québec, où le français est exclusivement employé, tous les Canadiens- Français parlent la langue anglaise, ce qui relève singulièrement leur niveau intellectuel.” (Demanche 1890: 16) While there were no contemporary studies that supported this claim – many (British and Americans, for the most part) in fact believed that bilingualism was deleterious for intellectual development, an erroneous belief that has not entirely died out182 – the benefits of speaking both languages is obvious: French Canadians knew more about their neighbours and employers than the latter did about them, simply because they spoke both languages.

I will conclude this section with a passage from British Canadian minister and journalist William Withrow, who noted in his book Our own country (1889) that there was a fundamental difference between French and British Canadians regarding the importance of their respective language:

182 Tabouret-Keller has written numerous articles and books on the matter of bilingualism; “La question du bilinguisme” (1991) discusses the various arguments (ideological, political, symbolic) for and against bilingualism, all of which we see in one form or another in Canada.

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In places where the English have established themselves, some of the habitants understand the English language, but none of them adopt it as their own. The mingling of races has a contrary effect, and the English tongue often yields to the French. There are many Englishmen in Québec whose children do not understand a word of their father’s native tongue; but there are no Frenchmen whose children are ignorant of the language of France. (Withrow 1889: 148)

I mention this in passing, not only because I will discuss language maintenance and heritage in the following section, but also because it demonstrates quite clearly the different attitudes British and French Canadians had towards their languages; French Canadians considered the transmission and maintenance of French as essential to their existence, whereas British settlers in Québec – particularly in rural areas – seemed somewhat less attached; O’Brien (1864), for example, described a French-speaking Canadian of Scottish descent, or British Canadians who spoke little English.

As in the previous two periods, we see a number of contradictory claims regarding French Canadians’ ability or desire to speak English. It is evident that are two essential divisions: urban vs. rural, and upper vs. lower classes. Urban French Canadians were more likely to speak English on account of their proximity with British Canadians, whereas rural Canadians – the habitants – had much less contact with English. The question of upper and lower classes is less clear; while upper class French Canadians would have learned English in school, and had more interactions with the British Canadian élite of Montréal and Québec, for example, the lower class often worked for English-speaking employers, and therefore needed to have at least a working knowledge of the language to perform their daily tasks.

4.1.2.2 The bilingual problem

Although I had expected some more commentary about the “ridiculous” or “indiscriminate” use of both languages for official purposes after the Confederation, they were few in number; most of which will be discussed in section 4.2.2.1. Rather than rehash the belief that using two languages for official purposes is bad, I have chosen to cite two passages from Acadian priest Stanislas-Joseph Doucet’s (1847-1925) lecture, Dual language in Canada (1896), which neatly summarized contemporary discussion of bilingualism in Canada. Doucet begins by paraphrasing the common (read, British Canadian) argument against the use of two languages for official purposes:

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At first sight, the existence of two languages in the same country seems to be a source of embarrassment and confusion, an obstacle in the path of progress, something incompatible with national greatness and unity. On adjusting our mental spectacles, we learn to take a more correct view of things, so that what without sufficient consideration appears to be an unmixed evil may be accompanied by such redeeming features as to turn it into a positive good. (Doucet 1896: 3)183

To counter the common complaints that having two languages was detrimental to national progress, Doucet pointed to the fact that Canada was in fact a unified country, in spite – or perhaps because of – the continued use of English and French. If the use of two languages were truly an obstacle, Doucet claimed, the government would have found a way to eliminate French altogether.

In the second passage, Doucet outlined the four major arguments employed by opponents of bilingualism:

1. It is a source of enmity and strife between the integrant parts of a nation and is therefore incompatible with national unity and progress; 2. It necessitates anincreased outlay for conveying parliamentary and legal proceedings and enactments to the knowledge of the people; 3. It divides the forces and resources necessary to the diffusion of education and to the creation of a national literature; 4. It is a drawback on the commercial relations and general business intelligence of the country. (Doucet 1896: 4)

These arguments have all been seen before numerous times, and been used by foreigners and locals alike – though mostly British Canadians of a certain political persuasion – to describe the French Canadian problem. Yet, Doucet argued, none of these arguments held up to closer scrutiny: French Canadians were considered highly loyal to the Crown, quality public education was universally available throughout the provinces, dozens of British and French Canadian writers had been producing important works for decades, and business was thriving. The only conclusion that can be drawn, then, is that the numerous comments made about the “problem” with having French spoken alongside English were more about cultural or racial prejudice, rather than legitimate concerns.

183 Despite most of his other work being written in French, this speech was done in English for the students of the UNB, Fredericton, an Anglophone university.

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Running parallel to the belief that bilingualism was a problem for Canada was the increasing emphasis on the link between language and nationality, particularly during the post- Confederation period. This final section deals with an important topic that had been debated among French Canadians for the better part of the century, particularly among politicians, journalists, and the clergy, who saw the French language as being the key to French Canadian identity. Without the French language, the British Canadian majority would quickly absorb the French Canadian minority. Dunn was the first to discuss this issue in his essay Pourquoi nous sommes Français (1870). In this passage, Dunn explained that French Canadians had also been captivated by the beauty of the French language:

Tel a été le cas pour nous. La langue française est un héritage sacré que nous nous sommes transmis de génération en génération intact et sans souillure, et lorsque nous discourons sur le bon vieux temps, lorsque nous nous entretenons de la France, c’est dans sa propre langue que nous le faisons. (Dunn 1870: 22)

To give up this sacred inheritance would be tantamount to giving up their identity, a fate that many French Canadians (like Tardivel and Bourassa, for example) strongly warned against. Dunn praised the efforts of those who fought to maintain the use of French in government: “Nous savons ensuite que nos hommes d’état ont eu de tout temps le courage de revendiquer dans nos assemblées législatives les droits de la langue française. En la faisant reconnaître dans les actes officiels, ils lui ont donné l’existence publique.” (Dunn 1870: 24) Seen from this angle, earlier complaints about the “indiscriminate” use of French or the refusal of some parliamentarians to speak English make somewhat more sense; in other words, it’s not that French Canadians spoke a strange mixture of French and English in Parliament, but rather that they consciously chose to respond in French in order to demonstrate its validity and legitimacy. Finally, Dunn stresses again the importance of the French legacy: “Nous sommes tous attachés à l’idiome que la France nous a légué, et cet attachement est inhérent à notre nationalité, car rien ne reflète mieux le caractère français que la langue française elle-même.” (Dunn 1870: 27)

Kowalski expresses his admiration for French Canadians’ strong patriotism and attachment to their French roots, traits which would be unlikely to diminish in the near future:

Tout dénote chez les Canadiens-Français un grand patriotisme et un attachement inébranlable à leur nationalité. Quoi qu’ait fait l’Angleterre pour détruire les principes de résistance de ce peuple, elle n’a obtenu que les succès éphémères de la force. Il est aussi difficile, dit Joseph de Maistre, de priver un peuple de sa

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langue et de sa religion, que d’ôter une étoile au firmament. Il n’est pas de lois que les Parlements anglais n’aient décrétées, pour arriver à l’anglification184 de cette nation. (Kowalski 1872: 188)

The fact that even foreigners like Kowalski understood the lengths to which certain British Canadians went to Anglicize the country illustrates how serious their attempts really were; from the establishment of Upper and Lower Canada in 1791 up until the Confederation in 1867, the French language was constantly under threat by a certain segment of the population.

The next reference to the link between language and nation comes from Thomas-Aimé Chandonnet’s critique of Tardivel’s Anglicisme, voilà l’ennemi! (1880), a work which he praised for the important service it had rendered to the French language:

Dans notre petit monde littéraire, la critique devient une œuvre méritoire et patriotique: méritoire, parce qu’elle expose à bien des colères et à de violentes représailles; patriotique, parce qu’elle sauve notre langue, qui est une portion, une des plus nobles portions de notre patrimoine et l’un des principaux éléments de notre vie. (Chandonnet 1880: 145)

The following year, Tardivel himself underlined the importance of maintaining the trinity of religion, nationality, and language intact:

Mais pour que le peuple canadien-français puisse remplir cette glorieuse mission [spreading the wisdom and ideals of a French, Catholic culture throughout the world], il doit rester ce que la Providence a voulu qu’il fût: catholique et français. Il doit garder sa foi et sa langue dans toute leur pureté. S’il gardait sa langue et perdait sa foi, il deviendrait ce qu’est devenu le peuple français: un peuple déchu de son ancienne grandeur, un peuple sans influence et sans prestige. Si, d’un autre, il conservait sa foi, tout en renonçant à sa langue, il se confondrait avec les peuples qui l’entourent et serait bientôt absorbé par eux. (Tardivel 1881: 261)

Tardivel was among the first French Canadians to reject certain aspects of French influence on Canada, as he found the abandonment of the Catholic religion by the French was incompatible with French Canadian society.

184 This term was used almost exclusively by Anglophone authors – often being a synonym of amalgamation – but several Francophone authors also employed variations thereof, including M.D. (1829), Dunn (1870), Lefaivre (1877), and de Molinari (1886). The term “anglifier” or “anglicization” does not appear in the DAF, either the 1835 or 1878 editions.

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In an article entitled “L’accent français” (1882), which appeared under the initials “A.M.” in Nouvelles soirées canadiennes185, the author strongly advocates the exclusive use of the French whenever possible, as speaking English would only serve to harm the French Canadian cause, i.e., the maintenance and perpetuation of the language and culture:

Tenons-nous donc, Canadiens-Français, fidèlement attachés à l’usage de notre langue nationale. N’employons une autre langue que par nécessité. Veillons à ce que nos enfants l’apprennent et la parlent; que nos enseignes, nos dépêches, nos factures, soient données en français; s’il faut une enseigne ou des indications en anglais, que tout soit répété en bon français. En un mot, faisons-nous un point d’honneur de parler la langue de nos pères, et soyons convaincus que sa culture contribuera puissamment à réaliser pleinement cette formule que nous aimons à redire: NOS INSTITUTIONS. NOTRE LANGUE. NOS LOIS186. (A.M. 1882: 391)

Those who commented on Anglicisms largely accepted the necessity of learning English, though they admonished that it must be learnt properly, so as to not interfere with their mother tongue. While this author’s views existed on the far end of the spectrum (from no English to English only), his advice is sound: if French Canadians couldn’t or didn’t use French in their daily life, they would be submitting to the English.

Sulte was well aware that outsiders understood the connection between language and nationality, and frequently cited – and criticized – references to patois, jargon, and CanFr, in addition to other disparaging comments about French Canadians. Sulte argued that if a group believed its language defective or in decline, they would feel less attached to it:

Or, que voient-ils [enemies of French Canadians] dans notre nationalité? Une seule chose: la langue. C’est la langue qu’ils veulent détruire. Au fond de leur pensée, il n’y a que cela, ils savent que sur presque tous les terrains nous sommes ou leurs égaux ou leurs supérieurs. Si nous délaissions la langue française, ils nous trouveraient charmants et tout à fait semblables à eux. Ceci doit nous avertir de la nécessité de ne pas négliger l’enseignement du français. La langue disparue, adieu la nationalité! (Sulte 1886: 762)

185 Nouvelles soirées canadiennes (1882-1888) was a continuation/descendant of Les soirées canadiennes (1861- 1865), the purpose of which was to popularize French Canadian (folk) literature. Nouvelles soirées was dedicated to “fortifier nos institutions et notre langue” by publishing new literary works; its readership was primarily Catholic. 186 This motto was very similar to Le Canadien’s, “Nos institutions, notre langue, nos droits.”

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While Sulte could be accused of hyperbole at times, there is ample evidence for what he described in this passage. French geographer and president of the Alliance Française Pierre Foncin (1841-1916) agreed with Sulte and the others, noting that the maintenance of the French language had ensured their nationality: “L’usage obstiné de la langue française a été le préservatif tout-puissant de la nationalité canadienne; il sera pour l’avenir sa meilleure sauvegarde.” (Foncin 1890: 143) In the same year, Lusignan averred the same, stressing the importance of the link between language and nationality: “Nombre d’entre nous se sont épris de bien parler et de mieux écrire. Ils ont découvert cette nouvelle forme de patriotisme français.” (Lusignan 1890: vi) In other words, speaking and writing well is a political act; an excellent example of this would be Québec Premier (1960-66) Jean Lesage’s famous slogan, “Bien parler, c’est se respecter,” which was ubiquitous in classrooms throughout his premiership.

The sole English-language comment on this notion is an article entitled “The French language” (1895), which appeared in the February 6th edition of The True Witness187. The anonymous author188 recalled Meilleur’s statement over half a century earlier about the different functions English and French served:

In this country the English language gives expression to the solid body of the nationhood. In every part of the world it is understood; it is the language of commerce, of progress, of invention. But the French represents the spirit of the nationhood; it is the language of arts, sciences, philosophy, literature, religion; it is above all the diplomatic language of the universe. Take away the French language and you destroy the spirit that animates that being called a nation, a people.

Moreover, the French language is the medium whereby thousands of the most useful, the sweetest, the loftiest, the most inspiring ideas that the world has ever known, are embalmed for the use and admiration of untold generations. Let the French-Canadian child forget or learn indifferently his mother tongue and he will grow up without a perfect knowledge of English and without any knowledge of the perfections and beauties of the French. He will soon affect to despise his mother tongue, and, after the example of a number who went to the United States

187 The True Witness and Catholic Chronicle (1850-1910) was a religious newspaper aimed at English-speaking Catholics, founded by George Edward Clerk (1815-1875). 188 At the beginning of the article, the author referred to an article published by Tardivel in his newspaper La Vérité (1881-1923), in which he insisted that French Canadians ought to know their mother tongue, and then English. The author mentioned that he had advocated a similar idea in 1886, though I have not been able to identify either the author or the text in question.

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(and who are now glad to get back) he will find himself in turn condemned by his own people and laughed at by the English-speaking race. (Anonymous 1895: 8)

In summary, the French language in Canada only existed at the end of the 19th century due to the hard work and dedication many French Canadian politicians, lawyers, journalists, grammarians, writers, and other defenders of the language, who did so to protect the linguistic inheritance. However, existence was just the bare minimum; French Canadians had a patriotic duty to speak and write the language well, an attitude towards the language which accounts for the surge of interest in prescriptive works, and the various dictionaries that were published at the end of the 19th century. While opinions were divided on whether to imitate Standard French, or refine CanFr for many years after the period, the debates that occurred in the various newspapers, in popular and scholarly journals, in academic and popular studies, speeches and conferences, etc. are a testament to the complex nature of attitudes towards CanFr, attitudes which largely still define discourse on the language to this day.

4.2 Impressions of Canadian English

We saw a small increase in the number of comments on CanEn from the first period to the second, but it is during the third period where we see both a rise in the volume of commentary, and in the richness of the content; commentators gave more nuanced observations about the language, and we begin to see a clearer image of the language by this point. Through analysis of the texts, I have been able to identify three major trends that characterize the discourse on CanEn in this period: 1) nationalities other than the British commented on CanEn, notably Belgians, French Canadians, and British Canadians themselves; 2) British Canadians were criticized for their unwillingness to speak or learn French; and 3) differences in pronunciation with BritEn became much more pronounced, or at least, were alluded to more frequently. It could be said that the third period for CanEn strongly resembles the second period for CanFr, indicating that there is a delay of some thirty years between the two languages.

Of the 165 texts that fall within this time period, 37 made some reference to CanEn. As in the previous two chapters, Ireland, England, and Scotland are listed separately. The most surprising aspect about the figures below is the number of Canadians – both British and French – who commented on the language. As we shall see in later sections, their observations were often

202 negative, and condemned numerous aspects of CanEn, as well as those segments of the (British Canadian) population who believed themselves above learning or speaking French.

Table 4.5 Texts with references to CanEn, by nationality: 1868-1902.

Nationality # of texts % of whole

British Canadian 9 24.3%

English 8 21.6%

French Canadian 6 16.2%

Belgian 5 13.5%

French 5 13.5%

Irish 2 5.4%

Scottish 1 2.7%

American 1 2.7%

Total 37 100%

The most significant change during this period regarding the nationalities of the commentators on CanEn is the increase in variety; whereas British commentators were the vast majority in the previous two periods, we see for the first time commentators from a variety of countries, including the United States, France, and even Belgium.

Table 4.6 illustrates the number of texts by genre; it is during this period where we can see the most diversity of texts containing references to CanEn, including monographs, newspaper articles, essays and speeches, scholarly and popular articles, and even one prescriptive/normative work (Clapin’s New Dictionary of Americanism, 1902). Travel literature still makes up, however, the bulk of these texts (56.8%).

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Table 4.6 Texts with references to CanEn, by genre: 1868-1902.

Genre # of texts % of whole

Travel literature 21 56.8%

Journal articles 5 13.5%

Monographs 4 10.8%

Essays and speeches 3 8.1%

Newspaper articles 3 8.1%

Pres. and norm. works 1 2.7%

Total 37 100%

Due to the increasing diversity of the commentary on CanEn, this section will be divided into two parts, as there are a number of observations that fall under Utility and Legitimacy.

4.2.1 Aesthetics and grammar

After 1867, it became obvious that the language spoken in Ontario, as well as parts of Québec and other parts of the Confederation, was no longer BritEn, nor was it identical to AmEn, but was something else. Several outliers notwithstanding, who still believed CanEn to be pure or “perfectly British,” the evidence strongly points to a new variety of English particular to Canada. The most noticeable difference between this chapter and the last two in terms of this section are the number of comments for each subsection; several generations of British Canadians had been raised in Ontario and Québec, and had therefore developed enough speech habits particular to them that commentators seized on them more readily.

4.2.1.1 Quality or purity

For reasons I have been unable to account for, there was no immediate response to Geikie’s criticism of what he dubbed “Canadian English.” An article or essay published in Québec with similar conclusions would have received an overwhelmingly negative response almost

204 immediately after publication, like the infamous article from Le Courrier des États-Unis on the “Norman patois” spoken by French Canadians. But “Canadian English” did not receive a response of any kind, and his article was seemingly forgotten for several years. Evidently unfamiliar with Geikie’s assertions nearly twenty years earlier, Gustave de Molinari came to a very different conclusion about CanEn: “La langue anglaise est parlée dans toute sa pureté par les Canadiens anglais, tandis qu’on ne lit guère dans le Canada français, et qu’on y parle un français beaucoup trop voisin du bas-normand.” (De Molinari 1876: 145)

The following year, Sulte (1877) considered CanEn to be of poor quality, which he attributed to British Canadians’ (and by extension, Americans’) lack of interest – or negligence – towards their own language:

Les incorrections que l’on ne saurait tolérer en français ne peuvent devenir des qualités dans une autre langue, et on ne contestera pas que non-seulement nos compatriotes ont un accent anglais qui écorche l’oreille, mais qu’ils ne prennent pas le moindre souci de la grammaire et des règles de cette langue. Les étrangers les excusent, parce que ce sont des Canadiens. Disons tout de suite que l’indulgence est réciproque, car sur cent Anglais, Ecossais et Irlandais qui nous entourent, il ne s’en rencontre qu’un petit nombre qui parlent correctement. Ils ne sont pas plus parfaits que d’autres sous ce rapport, soit dit sans blesser personne, dans ce chapitre de vérités. Peu de races respectent moins leur langue que les Anglais, tout en voulant l’imposer à l’univers. (Sulte 1877: 668)

There are two important points that need to be addressed here: firstly, Sulte’s ability to gauge the quality of CanEn; and secondly, Anglophones’ apparent disregard for their own language. Unlike many British and American travellers who commented on CanFr with seemingly little knowledge of the language, Sulte worked for many years as a translator in the House of Commons, and therefore his opinion on the “correctness” of British Canadians’ speech, subjective though it may be, has some weight behind it. The fact that he mentioned the (poor) quality of CanEn at all is the first indication that I have found that French Canadians were aware of the linguistic changes taking place among their neighbours.

Sulte’s second comment about the latter’s ambivalence towards their language is vague, yet may be an allusion to the lack of an institution similar to the Académie Française for the English language; there were certainly a number of influential English dictionaries in print during the

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19th century – Johnson’s Dictionary and The Imperial Dictionary of the English Language189 (1847) for BritEn, not to mention the preparation of the OED in the second half of the century, and Webster (primarily) for AmEn – though neither had the same level of prestige that the Académie had. Despite the absence of such an institution, many British writers (like Geikie) were highly critical of the English language spoken in North America.

In 1888, Aubertin shared an unpleasant conversation he had with a British Canadian, which hints at linguistic insecurity on Aubertin’s part; he was outraged to be considered a Canadian based on his speech. This particular passage is of particular importance, as it illustrates North Americans’ perceptions of BritEn during the late 19th century. In this long passage, Aubertin was informed that he speaks like British Canadians, much to his dismay:

“What part of our country do you belong to?” he asked.

“To no part,” I replied. “I come from England.”

“Dear me!” said he; “I should never have supposed that.”

“Why not?”

“Because of your mode of talking.”

Here I felt somewhat humbled, but ventured a dangerous question and asked, “Don’t I speak correctly, then?”

I felt reinstated at once.

“Oh yes! That’s it. You talk so well;” but then he added, “you talk like us.”

I was almost going to say that I felt as if I had been knocked down, and then picked up, and then knocked down again. My friend had no particular twang in his enunciation, but certainly showed no signs of superior education, and I was tempted to ask him what were the defects of English talkers. He thought that they did not know much their own language; and his answer on one point was a rather curious one, and afterwards became particularly so to me, because I heard it so often repeated in different parts of the States – “All the English come over here leave out their h’s.” It is a seemingly bold accusation. (Aubertin 1888: 10-11)

189 Somewhat ironically, this dictionary, edited by Scottish lexicographer John Ogilvie (1797-1867), was simply a revised edition of Webster’s 1841 Dictionary.

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The fact that Aubertin was offended by the suggestion that he spoke like British Canadians sheds some light on the relationship between the language spoken in the home country (the standard version) and the version spoken on the periphery; there must have been a noticeable difference between his speech and his interlocutor’s, although it is not apparent from this passage what that difference was.

In 1889, British Canadian lawyer and historian William Douw Lighthall (1857-1954) wrote the fascinating article “Canadian English”, which appeared in the Toronto newspaper The Week. Lighthall was the first person since Geikie to discuss at length distinctive features of CanEn, and to posit the existence of several varieties of English spoken in Canada. Lighthall began the article by stating that few British Canadians were even aware that they spoke differently than the British:

(Popular notions) It would probably surprise the average British Canadian to hear it suggested that the language of his people presents any very distinctive features, so widespread are certain half-conscious notions that, excepting a few French, the language of the home-born people of our country is some very British and very un-American and practically uniform dialect, and that, though English, Scotch and Irish immigrants have individually imported their several variations, these never long remain without melting into that uniform dialect. These general impressions, which were not long ago proclaimed unchallenged in the Dominion Parliament by a leading member190, are not correct. Neither do our home-born people speak a uniform dialect at all; nor is a very British dialect general; nor is our speech even practically free from Americanisms; nor is the time near when some, at least, of the variants will disappear. It can be shown that there is a possibility of the English language itself bodily withdrawing from more than half the area of the original Provinces; that what remains will be long diversified by traces of dialectic division; and that our daily speech is far more like that current in the United States than we suspect. (Lighthall 1889: 581)

Although several commentators had remarked on differences between CanEn and Brit or AmEn, this article marks a milestone for the discourse on English in Canada. Lighthall quickly dashed the evidently widespread belief that British Canadians spoke just like the British; in fact, the language spoken by most wasn’t similar to Standard British English at all, but rather contained numerous Americanisms, and was far from homogeneous.

190 This may be Prime Minister John A. MacDonald, whose views on British vs. American speech will be discussed briefly in 4.2.1.3.

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On the following page, Lighthall clearly indicated the role American Loyalist speech191 had had on the English language in Ontario, and later on the western provinces:

(American Influence) A second observation is – what few British Canadians suspect – the great likeness of our speech, in phrases, if not pronunciation, to that of the Americans; partly due to the Loyalist foundations, partly to close and constant communication socially, commercially, and through the press. A very cursory examination will show that the United States have been, and are to-day, the source of the strongest of all influences bearing on our current speech. Though we have nowhere – except, perhaps, along the Vermont frontier – quite the New England twang or drawl, the people of Old England remark in our accent a well- defined tendency to the nasal. (Lighthall 1889: 582)

The specific traits that Lighthall mentioned – the twang, drawl, and the nasal tone of the voice – had been commented on numerous times since the early part of the century, and it was these that distinguished British and North American speech, in addition to Americanisms. Naturally, Canada’s proximity to the United States, and the continual contact between the nations (due to trade, newspapers, books, etc.), meant that the latter would exercise a much greater influence on the language than would Great Britain.

Towards the end of the article, Lighthall highlighted the two institutions with the most power to influence the course of CanEn’s evolution in the coming years: the press and education:

The influence of the newspaper press – that paramount influence now – will it is probable, increasingly as the United States and ourselves progress in importance, approximate us in language to the Americans.

Education and culture in the two countries or in whatever political divisions replace them, will in their advance improve the press and prune from the speech – especially the written speech – of both people, their cruder peculiarities leading them in general direction ever back towards the standard of England’s great literature, but amplifying with such new materials as shall on trial be found useful. (Lighthall 1889: 582)

We have seen the same sort of debate developing in Québec since the beginning of the 19th century, and for good reason: newspapers were commonly read by everyone in the country – Francophones or Anglophones – and many neologisms were coined by journalists, as several French Canadian commentators noted with some contempt.

191 Though as we have seen in the introduction, the issue is not as simple as “Loyalist influence”, but rather the influence and evolution of “18th century English” in North America.

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In 1890, Chamberlain’s article “Dialect research in Canada” was published in Dialect Notes, wherein he remarked with some disbelief that only two people had claimed the existence of a distinctly Canadian form of English: Geikie and Lighthall. Chamberlain noted that much scientific research would need to be conducted on the language:

Towards the investigation, scientifically, of the spoken English of the Dominion little indeed has been done. […] The field for research here is wide; for, as Mr. Lighthall points out, there appear to be several “dialects” of English spoken within the bounds of the Dominion. (Chamberlain 1890: 45)

While not a judgment of CanEn, it is important that Chamberlain recognizes its existence, and recommends that scientific (i.e. linguistic) studies of the language need to be undertaken. The following two sections will illustrate some of the major traits or characteristics that were common to CanEn in the late 19th century.

4.2.1.2 Americanisms

In his travel journal How I spent my two years’ leave (1875), British soldier Robert Cumberland (dates unknown) wrote a list of typical Americanisms, all of which he found wholly unnecessary. Here, Cumberland, adopting a strongly colonial attitude, which is not surprising given his long service in India, noted some differences between American and Canadian speech:

Instead of saying, “I beg your pardon, will you oblige me by repeating that question?” a Yankee would curtail it by asking you “Haow?” or a Canadian by “What-say?” They pronounce marry, “murree”; and very, “vurree.” They are fond of shortening long words. Instead of “I intend to send a telegram,” – “I’ll wire,” or “I’ll ‘gram.” If they shorten sentences, they add words which are quite unnecessary. A Canadian or Yankee will tell you he “guesses,” or “reckons,” or “calculates,” while he is certain and sure of what he is stating all the time, and when there is no occasion to “guess.” I met some splendid specimens of honest John Bull in Canada; but all things being equal, the Canadians, as a whole, are not superior to the Yankees, who are absurdly cried down because we fail to see their good and noble qualities. (Cumberland 1875: 194)

The comment on “I guess” or “I calculate” was a well-worn, stereotypical “Yankeeism” that travellers used to identify Americans or Canadians, as we have seen in the previous chapter. In his thesis Law in Language (1883), Roy observed that there was a noticeable difference between the language British Canadians learned in school, and the language used in daily conversation, or in the newspapers:

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The various forms of human utterance grow. This fact, we can partly observe for ourselves. At school, we are taught to follow certain rules and forms of expression. When we are somewhat older, we read the newspapers. Immediately, we find coming into use, words and phrases and constructions which our previous instructions condemned. We hear the expression, “Help me do this,” instead of “Help me to do this;” “You don’t speak like we do,” instead of “You don’t speak as we do;” “Will I go?” instead of “Shall I go?” We become indignant at what seem barbarisms, though they are often really revivals of speech that had become obsolete. Our indignant protests are unheeded. The barbarism becomes popular. The grammarian learns to defend it; and our language takes one step forward toward its slow, but complete, transformation. (Roy 1883: 4)

The similarities to the debate of the future of French in Canada, especially the belief that any and all deviations from the norm must be strongly discouraged in order to preserve the languages, are striking. Roy was very much in line with Clapin, who fully accepted (and welcomed) that languages evolve and change over time. If CanEn would become less and less like BritEn over time, much like AmEn had done, that was only natural.

Chamberlain (1890) noted that CanEn has absorbed many words and phrases from all over North America, and that the newspapers played a major role in their diffusion:

Owing to the frequency of contact and commercial intercourse with the United States, the English of the province of Ontario abounds in so-called “Americanisms,” some of which, however, are due to the original settlers, and are not recent importations. (Chamberlain 1890: 47)

In other words, it was not evident to Chamberlain when a given Americanism entered the language, or crossed the border into Canada. One set of Americanisms would have been brought to Upper Canada by the American Loyalists in the late 18th century, while later Americanisms were the result of close contact between the Americans and British Canadians over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries.

English writer and amateur historian William Smith (1832-1907) contradicted nearly all of his contemporaries regarding the American nature or sound of CanEn in his journal A Yorkshireman’s trip to the United States and Canada (1892). While staying in Toronto, Smith was amazed by how English everything in the city appeared, even the language: “In driving about the city I was much impressed with the English appearance of both place and people. I met with English speech and ways everywhere, and even in the names of the streets and shops this peculiarity was observable.” (Smith 1892: 263) To account for this seeming discrepancy, it bears

210 mentioning that Toronto was often described as being a very English city, as many more recent immigrants from Great Britain moved directly to the big city, rather than attempt to settle in the country. Moreover, Smith’s comment may be further evidence of a divide between country speech and city speech, or of the existent of various sociolects in the Canadas.

In 1894, British Canadian civil servant Joseph Pope 1854-1926), published Memoirs of the Right Honourable Sir John Alexander Macdonald, under whom he served as the private secretary. In the second volume, Pope noted that Macdonald was a staunch supporter of British spelling conventions, which led to his passing a minute of Council in 1890:

In the matter of spelling he adhered closely to the British usage, and disliked excessively the utilitarian method of orthography in vogue in the United States. With the view of discouraging its spread in Canada, he caused a minute of Council to be passed, directing, that in all official publications, the English practice should be uniformly followed. (Pope 1894: Vol. II 268)

In 1898, Englishman William Thomas Crosweller (dates unknown), member of the British Association and Fellow of the Zoological Society, wrote the travel journal Our visit to Toronto, the Niagara Falls and the United States of America. In this passage, Crosweller claimed that the language spoken by British Canadians and Americans was virtually identical, an assumption or simplification that could cause some consternation among the former:

Although Canadians, as I have said, are English in their sentiments and loyal to the backbone, it is no use disguising the fact that they talk what is called “the Amurrcan language,” and have much of the same peculiar accent which distinguishes Brother Jonathan. Well, a party of Canadians, entering the hotel in question [a famous one in London], asked the way to the bar. The astute English waiter192 instantly replied, “This way to the American bar, sir,” to the great disgust of the speaker, who burst out with: “I guess no one said anything about Amurrcan bars. There ain’t no Amurrcans here, anyhow.” The waiter performed a furtive grin, and I must say I shared his amusement. (Crosweller 1898: 71-72)

In this passage, we see a strong distaste or disapproval for the English language spoken in America, particularly among the well-to-do British like Crosweller and his travelling companions. While we have seen up to this point the term Yankee applying to both Americans and residents of Ontario, this marks the first instance where British Canadians were actually

192 It may also be the case that the waiter in question was simply ignorant of the differences between CanEn and AE.

211 confused for their southern neighbours due to their accent, suggesting that there was a great deal of similarities between the two, or perhaps that the British were quick to over-generalize, and lumped the two peoples and varieties of language together.

The final comments about Americanisms come from Clapin’s New Dictionary of Americanisms (1902). In the introduction, Clapin questioned the definition of the term Americanism: “What is an Americanism? In a good many instances the name is given to some archaism belated, or some English provincialism that has worked its way into general acceptance in the United States.” (Clapin 1902: v) In many ways, this simple definition is similar to the one proposed for a Canadianism in the case of CanFr. On the following page, Clapin explained that there was some confusion about the languages spoken in the United States and Canada:

A very erroneous impression generally exists as to the manner in which the English language is spoken in the United States [and Canada]. This has arisen in some degre [sic] from the circumstance that travellers have dwelt upon and exaggerated such peculiarities of language as have come under their observation in various parts of the Union; but also in greater measure from the fact that in England novels and dramas in which an American figures – whether or not a man of education – he is made to express himself in a dialect happily combining the peculiarities of speech of every section of the country from Maine to Texas. (Clapin 1902: vi)

We have seen many examples of travellers’ exaggerations of Canadians’ language – whether French or English-speaking – and it is noteworthy that Clapin points out the source of these exaggerations and stereotypes: novels (See Sara Duncan’s The Imperialist, 1904), dramas, and travel journals, to which I would add scholarly and newspaper articles (Hellliwell 1902), as well as any book-length study on Canadians written during the final two periods, which often contained erroneous or flawed information, as we have seen for CanFr.

In conclusion to this section, we have seen that seen that CanEn had clearly assimilated a number of American-like characteristics, including matters of pronunciation, vocabulary, and phraseology. The twang was almost universally reviled and Canadian slang or colloquial speech was described as being very similar to, but not exactly the same as, the language spoken in the United States.

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4.2.1.3 Pronunciation

The most noticeable difference for travellers to both provinces was pronunciation; either Canadians sounded the same (like the British), or they didn’t (like the Americans). In 1870, White made a few short, but insightful comments on the language spoken by British Canadians. Almost immediately upon arriving in Canada, White observed that the British Canadians he encountered were almost indistinguishable from the English: “In look, and in many points of manner and address, in accent and in costume, the [Canadian] men now seem to you nearly English.” (White 1870: 4-5) Several pages later, White noted that discussing matters of language with British Canadians could be risky, as they were sensitive to criticisms about their speech (i.e. linguistic insecurity):

If asked by a Canadian whether there is anything un-English in the tone of his voice, be careful, as you hope for forgiveness, not to hint that there is; not that this, indeed, is a point of difference between him and the American; for to mistake even the latter for an Englishman is certainly often accepted as a subtle and delicate flattery. (White 1870: 9)

In other words, White recognized that there was something different about CanEn, but he felt it unwise to point out any differences to his interlocutors. Cricketer Robert Fitzgerald gave a more frank assessment of differences between the British Canadians, the British and the Americans, from manners to speech:

We certainly found a warmer sky, we steamed on broader rivers and wider lakes, we travelled through forests of unimagined beauty and surprising extent, but we experience the same welcome, we met with the same kindness, that in our hearts we knew to be English, though the hand that pressed ours happened to be Canadian, or the tone of voice that addressed us, to be American. (Fitzgerald 1873: 4)

Fitzgerald did not elaborate on the spoken language, but it is noteworthy that he made a distinction between English, Canadian, and American; for him, there was a clear difference between the English and the British Canadian, and between the Canadian and the American voice. Despite this, British Canadians had more in common the British culturally speaking, or at least, the British Canadians he encountered.

In describing the numerous varieties of English he encountered during his travels, Cumberland (1875) grouped the Canadians and Americans together:

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It is very extraordinary how the English language can be idiomized by off-shoots of the old branch. Australians, or “Cornstalks193,” have their peculiar way of speaking English. Half-castes of India have theirs – a sort of quick accent to the end of words, commonly called “che che194”; and Yankees and Canadians have much the same singing, nasal way of talking, which, I must say, is not elegant, but exceedingly catching. (Cumberland 1875: 194)

Roy (1883) remarked that British Canadians had a tendency to under-enunciate word endings:

Our own language furnishes many instances of this tendency to abbreviate, transmute and transpose. Porte Ryerse, on Lake Erie, near the old homestead of the Ryerson family, shows, in its name, the effect of indistinct enunciation on terminations. The Gooderham family are not seldom spoken of as “Goodrum.” (Roy 1883: 14)

In his travel journal A trip to Canada and the far North-west (1887), English agriculturalist Charles Elliott (dates unknown) commented on the nasal twang common to the residents of Guelph: “I noticed that the Scotch and Irish retain their native pronunciation much longer than the English, who soon adopt a nasal twang like the pure Yankee of the States […]” (Elliott 1887: 24)

Returning to Chamberlain’s article (1890), he notes that an intensive (linguistic) study of Canadian pronunciation throughout Ontario would be highly useful: “The writer has noted a few peculiar phonetic forms, as heard in the province of Ontario, chiefly in the district around Peterboro’ [sic], and in Toronto.” (Chamberlain 1890: 50) Chamberlain specifically mentions the unique pronunciation of the words “Sault”, “Canada”, and “wrestle”, among others. He did not, however, provide a phonetic transcription for these words, so it is impossible to determine what he meant.

The final three comments on British Canadian pronunciation are very specific, and come from three very different sources. American linguist George Hempl (1859-1921), who served as the president of numerous organizations (including the MLA), wrote an article entitled “Grease and Greasy” (1896). Hempl noted that in matters of pronunciation, Canada tends to follow American patterns, though not always:

193 A cornstalk was a pejorative term for a non-indigenous native of New South Wales. 194 I have not been able to determine what Cumberland was referring to here.

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In some matters Canada (especially Lower Canada) goes with the North, in others with the Midland and the South. It will probably turn out that in the majority of original differences it affiliates with the Midland and the South, but with the North in more recent matters – due to mutual contact and to similarity of climate and social conditions; this theory, however, presents some difficulties. In parts of Canada the influence of Irish English, in others of London English, is marked. (Hempl 1896: 439)

Hempl lent further support to Lighthall and Chamberlain’s earlier assertions that geographical proximity played a key role in the development of CanEn, though not the only role; Hempl’s note that Irish and London English (another term for King’s or Queen’s English, perhaps?) still enjoyed some influence on Canadian speech pointed to the existence of several coexisting varieties of CanEn.

The following year, Lady Jephson made two harsh – one might even say mean-spirited – comments about the North American accent. In an early passage, Jephson compared the speech of the habitants with that of British Canadians: “The habitant’s accent leaves much to be desired as regards beauty, and in this respect he shares the fate of his compatriot the English Canadian. American air does not seem to favour the cultivation of soft voices and graceful modes of speech.” (Jephson 1897: 13) In a later passage, Jephson expressed her strong distaste for the American, or Yankee, twang:

What with Irish nurses, and French and Scotch and American servants, the poor young Canadian of the present moment has little chance of preserving his English accent in its beauty. A twang prevails which is unequalled all the world over for ugliness, and the most hopeless feature in the case is that the victim is unconscious of the gravity of his symptoms. He lets the disease eat its way without an attempt to check it, and even jeers at an English accent as “affected,” and prides himself on his mongrel pronunciation. (Jephson 1897: 92-93)

There are a number of prejudiced assertions contained within this short passage, beginning with Jephson’s lament at the loss of the “beautiful” English accent, which she believed had been vilified by the twang. Jephson herself was British Canadian, though married to a Scot, so it is not entirely clear to which “beautiful accent” she was referring. Secondly, the notion that British Canadians were seemingly aware of their own speech habits – a claim corroborated by Lighthall nearly a decade earlier – specifically its deviation from BritEn. Finally, Jephson’s observation that British Canadians (which ones?) ridiculed British pronunciation is a curious one, as it underlies a national identity defined in opposition to those from the “Old Country.”

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The final comment comes from a magazine article entitled “Womans [sic] Sphere” (1902), written by M. MacLean Helliwell (dates unknown). The article, which appeared in The Canadian Magazine of politics, science, art and literature195, is critical of Canadian pronunciation, which Helliwell deemed no better than the language spoken south of the border:

Nor is the average Canadian voice – the voice which greets one on boat or train, in hotel parlours and at public gatherings – so wonderfully sweet and musical that we can afford to throw stones at our neighbours. Indeed, that which most strongly impressed the keen observer was the slip-shod pronunciation, very unpleasant intonation and lamentably unmodulated voice of the average speaker. The most distressing voice that ever jarred upon mortal tympanum was that which came from the mouth of a Canadian University graduate and school teacher who called water watter and drawled out her sentences with a nasality that would have done credit to the most Yankee of New Englanders. (Helliwell 1902: 556)

In comparison to CanFr, there are few comments on CanEn pronunciation, but the commentary is consistent throughout the period, and highlights some of the major differences between CanEn and BritEn; the most obvious being the development of the nasal twang, so often associated with American speech. Roy and Helliwell also allude to a somewhat indistinct pronunciation of certain sequences. Of particular interest is the fact that British Canadians were aware of differences between their language and the British or Americans, or that some weren’t, but didn’t want to admit it.

4.2.2 Utility and legitimacy

The final category is comprised of only one sub-section, but it is an important one, being a reversal of what travellers had been saying about French Canadians for over a century: British Canadians wouldn’t speak French. We have already seen some commentators admit that they had little command of the language – Carruthers (1861) and Thoreau (1866), for example – but now we see French Canadians criticizing their Anglophone neighbours for refusing to learn French, while they must learn English. This is by no means a new complaint – commentators as early as 1809 (Gray) noted that only speaking English was detrimental for British Canadian

195 The Canadian Magazine was founded by British Canadian businessman Thomas Henry Best (1850-1928) in 1893, and edited by James Gordon Mowat (1851-1906). Best designed the monthly magazine to spread and promote Canadian patriotism and Canadian interests, through numerous articles on politics, society, and literature.

216 parliamentarians, for example – but in this final period, we see some passionate commentary from both British and French Canadians on the matter.

4.2.2.1 British Canadians don’t speak French

The first to comment that British Canadians neglected to learn French was an anonymous French Canadian, who wrote: “Les Canadiens-Français apprennent l’anglais bien plus facilement que les Anglais ne peuvent apprendre le français: pour un Anglais sachant le français, vous trouverez vingt Canadiens parlant très-bien l’anglais.” (Anonymous 1871: 479) This passage strongly recalls La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt’s statements made nearly a century earlier, who stated the complete opposite; that only one in a hundred French Canadians spoke English. In 1879, Gélinas expressed disbelief at British Canadians’ alleged disdain for French:

N’est-ce pas une chose extraordinaire, dans une ville à moitié française, et parmi une population aussi éclairée que la population anglaise de Montréal? Ce dédain, que l’on dirait systématique, pour une langue qui est reconnue comme la plus belle des langues modernes, n’est-il pas à la fois ridicule et maladroit! Et si nos concitoyens anglais sont insensibles aux beautés du français, s’ils refusent de reconnaître sa supériorité, encore ne devraient-ils pas, pour des motifs d’intérêts, eux, si pratiques et si positifs, tenir à le faire apprendre à leurs enfants, appelés à vivre dans un milieu français, dans un monde d’affaires aux trois quarts français, dans une ville qui est le principal centre commercial, le marché, la métropole d’une province essentiellement française? (Gélinas 1879: 458)

Gélinas was stunned that British Canadians could not (or perhaps would not) see the utility in learning French, especially in a city where it is widely – though not exclusively – spoken by all classes of people. Gélinas continued, offering a possible explanation:

On explique cette indifférence par le fait que la plupart des Canadiens-français de Montréal parlant l’anglais, la nécessité de savoir le français n’est pas absolue pour les Anglais. La connaissance de notre langue devient par là même pour eux une connaissance en quelque sorte facultative, une superfluité, une science d’agrément, comme elle l’est partout ailleurs, en dehors de la France même, le complément d’une éducation supérieure; et ils nous montrent le peu de cas qu’ils en font à ce point de vue, en négligeant de l’acquérir. C’est ainsi beaucoup une question de goût, et nous laissons à nos voisins tout le mérite de leur manière de voir. (Gélinas 1879: 458)

In other words, British Canadians didn’t need the French language in their daily lives, as the language of commerce was almost always English, even in cities like Québec and Montréal. I

217 suspect the situation would have been different in smaller towns in the province, but I have found no testimony to that effect.

De Lamothe specified that a certain class of French Canadian knew English, but the same was not true for British Canadians:

En thèse générale, on peut dire que tout Canadien français instruit connaît l’anglais, tandis que la réciproque est loin d’être vraie. J’ai entendu un jour attribuer à cette particularité quelques-uns des avantages remporté par les premiers sur le terrain de la politique. (De Lamothe 1879: 31)

This final sentence recalls Gray’s belief that the English MPs put themselves at a disadvantage by speaking French in Parliament; how can it be disadvantageous to know both languages? In 1886, Sulte made a bold claim about British Canadians, and their unwillingness to speak French, citing it to be a matter of some personal importance:

Les Canadiens-Français des villes et des gros villages parlent l’une et l’autre de ces langues. Les Anglais, les Ecossais, les Irlandais, les Yankees, ignorent le français et se font un point d’honneur de ne pas l’apprendre. Nous les plaignons. Eux se croient plus forts – à cause de leur incapacité. Ils se bercent d’un espoir de domination qui devient de plus en plus impossible. (Sulte 1886: 759)

Sulte then described how he discouraged a British Canadian friend from learning French, as that would negate French Canadians’ advantage over British Canadians. In 1890, Bouthillier- Chavigny repeated Sulte’s sentiment regarding honour: “Les Canadiens ne sont-ils pas en relation constante avec les Anglais, et ceux-ci ne se font-ils pas un point d’honneur de paraître ignorer notre bel idiome!” (De Bouthillier-Chavigny 1890: 88) After having praised French Canadians for learning English, Demanche criticized British Canadians for not doing the same:

Il n’est pas inutile de faire remarquer que chez les Canadiens-Anglais le même phénomène ne se produit pas. Là où la population est en très grande majorité anglaise, on ne sait pas un traître mot de français. Il en est à peu près de même dans les régions où les deux races sont également mélangées. Ce n’est que dans les contrées où ils sont incontestablement en minorité que les Anglais daignent apprendre et parler notre langue. Quand un Canadien-Français et un Canadien- Anglais se rencontrent, neuf fois sur dix la conversation a lieu en langue anglaise, car sans cela, elle accuserait une infériorité par trop accentuée pour le sujet anglais, ou elle serait même matériellement impossible. C’est ce qui explique pourquoi, dans des villes d’origine toute française, le bruit d’une conversation en anglais vient, plus fréquemment que l’on ne s’y attend, frapper et surprendre votre oreille. (Demanche 1890: 16)

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According to Demanche, British Canadians would mark themselves as inferior by speaking French, a belief that apparently stems from their sociopolitical and economic dominance of the country since the 18th century. Why should the élite of the country learn the language of the workers (and possibly reveal their ignorance in doing so)? The image painted of British Canadians by these commentators was one of complete disdain for any language but their own, which, according to Sulte (1877), they didn’t even care about that much. Parkin (1895) opined that British Canadians were doing themselves a great disservice – regardless of the reason – by not learning French: “Rather it is to be regretted that more of the people of the English provinces do not make themselves familiar with French. Such a knowledge, especially among public men, would create a very real bond of sympathy which does not now exist.” (Parkin 1895: 142)

While it would seem that nothing ultimately came of these admonishments to learn the French language, their very existence is important, as it demonstrates the attitudes of some British Canadians’ towards the French language in general, and CanFr specifically; namely, that they could not be bothered to learn it, as it would somehow tarnish their reputation. Despite these accusations, we also see a number of British Canadians pushing for their fellowmen and women to learn French, in order to understand their Francophone neighbours better (see Nicholson 1902).

4.3 Conclusion

Due to the vast amount of commentary discussed in this chapter, there are several conclusions to be made about both languages. I will begin with summarizing the attitudes towards CanFr, which received far more varied opinions during this period than in the previous two. From the quality point of view, we have seen that there are three distinct groups, only one of which has the support of linguistic and philological inquiry behind it: those who believe in the legitimacy of CanFr, and recognize fully that a great deal of language polishing – or policing – would have to be done in order for the language to come into its own, out from the shadow of so-called Parisian French, and free from the influence of the English language, which had tarnished the language for nearly a century and a half.

The other sections on pronunciation, Anglicisms, and Canadianisms fuel, in a sense, the fierce debate between the three groups, though we begin to see a consensus regarding what was acceptable, and what was not. Anglicisms, the bane of French Canadians, were made public

219 enemy number one in this period, and great pains were taken by journalists, writers, educators, among other professionals, to curb their use. Canadianisms, both in terms of lexical items and pronunciation, gained some acceptance, with some (such as Legendre and Clapin) expressing their pride and admiration for these features. Clapin’s Dictionnaire canadien-français fulfilled an important task in categorizing the various elements that characterized CanFr, clearly pointing out what was to be kept, and what ought to be thrown away in the move towards language “purification”.

As for CanEn, this period marks a strong increase in the number of negative comments about the language, not only in terms of quality or purity, but especially the aesthetics of the language. While earlier commentators had mentioned the characteristic Yankee twang, writers such as Lady Jephson and Helliwell were appalled by the “ugliness” of the language spoken by a large section of the British Canadian population. We also see evidence that there are at least two distinct varieties of the language being spoken: the popular, colloquial one, commonly spoken by the middle and lower classes, and the affected British one, maintained by the upper classes, in the effort to appear more English. Finally, British Canadians are accused of refusing to learn or speak French – or at least, the variety spoken in Canada – an accusation for which there is ample evidence, even from British Canadians themselves.

Now that the texts from each period have been analyzed and discussed separately, I will give a global analysis in the next chapter, where I will illustrate some of the major trends that spanned across multiple periods, including the frequency of certain terms (patois and jargon, in particular), the significance of certain years (1856, for example), where the same kinds of observations are being made by numerous commentators, and the gradual shift from amateur accounts to professional studies, which began in the early years of the second period, but exploded at the end of the third period, to the point where virtually no amateur texts were being published at all.

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Chapter Five The emergence of the Canadian Voices

Having discussed the metalinguistic commentary on CanFr and CanEn in each of the three periods individually in chapters 2-4, I will now analyse the data from a different perspective. The purpose of this chapter is two-fold: firstly, I will discuss what I have termed the emergence of the Canadian voices, that is to say, when French and British Canadian began to assume control of the metalinguistic discourse in Canada, which had been dominated by foreigners – the British primarily – up to the Confederation. Specifically, I will discuss the three essential traits of the French and British Canadian voices – opposition or rejection of foreign opinion, conflict between exogenous and endogenous norms, and a movement from an amateur to a professional approach – and provide examples and evidence for each. Therefore, I will demonstrate some of the underlying causes for this significant shift, namely the serious political, cultural, economic, and linguistic consequences of the Confederation, and an increasing rejection of foreign (British and French) norms, whether cultural or linguistic in nature.

Secondly, I shall explain how there is evidence for both a parallel, largely independent development of each voice, as well as some degree of cross influence or interference that existed across language, ethnic, and geographical boundaries. In other words, it is clear that the French and British Canadian voices developed among their respective communities, but given the constant contact between the two peoples, and their shared endeavour, i.e., (re)defining themselves in relation to the French and the British, each was inevitably aware of the other’s struggles with language. There is therefore evidence to suggest that this awareness had some influence on the development of both languages, CanFr in particular. The matter is less clear for CanEn, as we shall see in section 5.3.2.

Prior to considering these, however, it is useful to summarize the main findings from the previous three chapters in order to obtain a more comprehensive view of commentary on both languages. Re-examining the data as a whole, and not as three individual parts, as I have done in the previous three chapters, will more clearly demonstrate the emergence of several key trends, and will serve as a basis of comparison between the metalinguistic commentaries on both languages. Finally, given that this dissertation is meant to be a bridge between previous studies

221 on CanFr and CanEn, I will also note where my findings coincide with and diverge from what researchers like Bouchard, Caron-Leclerc, and Chambers have found.

5.1 Origins and development of language beliefs and stereotypes

As I explained in the introduction, the periodization scheme I have employed in this dissertation was selected to ascertain whether there was a correlation in the amount of negative metalinguistic (and cultural, religious, political, etc.) commentary on both languages or people – and therefore a more negative attitude – around periods of major political or social change, e.g., the Rebellions of 1837-38 and the Act of Union, the Confederation in 1867, and the foundation of the Société du parler français au Canada in 1902, among other events. Since my periodization scheme differs significantly from those of Bouchard and Caron-Leclerc (French regime and English regime), I expect somewhat different results. Now that I have gone through the commentary on each language in all three periods, I can now determine the validity of this hypothesis, or amend it: was there an increase in the number of comments on CanFr and CanEn around those events, or were there other periods that saw a surge of a particular kind of commentary? If so, how can these unexpected surges be explained?

The following two sections (5.1.1 and 5.1.2) are divided into a number of subsections (7 for CanFr, 5 for CanEn), and contain several tables and graphs. Three tables indicate the first appearance of a given language belief or stereotype, with a count of the occurrences, given both as a number and as a percentage: one for CanFr, one for CanEn, and a third one comparing the two in section 5.1.3. Secondly, two bar graphs demonstrate the number of occurrences of a given belief or stereotype by decade, given as a percentage of the total occurrences. Thirdly, two tables which present the previous graph as numbers, in order to get a better of the progression. For the sake of consistency, the order of the subsections is the same as in the previous three chapters:

1. Quality or purity 2. Patois, jargon, etc. 3. Anglicisms (CanFr only) 4. Canadianisms, Normanisms, and archaisms (CanFr) or Americanisms (CanEn) 5. Pronunciation 6. Refusal to speak English (CanFr) or French (CanEn)

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7. Bilingual problem (CanFr only)

Finally, I will summarize and compare the commentaries on both languages, and discuss some of the other variables such as gender, profession, socioeconomic class, and the overall ratio of positive to negative comments in section 5.1.3. While this dissertation is primarily concerned with the nationality of each commentator, it is worthwhile to determine whether there are any patterns or trends in the data seen through a different lens.

5.1.1 Canadian French

There are a number of characteristics that serve to distinguish the metalinguistic commentaries on both languages. Firstly, there is the simple fact that French had been spoken in Canada much longer than English (Newfoundland being an exception), which means that the first commentary of CanFr appears much earlier (by nearly 120 years), and the content is more varied as a result. Secondly, there are considerably more texts (272 to 57), and in a wider variety of genres for CanFr. Thirdly, the nationality of the commentators is more diverse, with writers from five European countries (as well as four parts of the UK), the United States, British and French Canadians all giving their assessment of the language. Significantly, French Canadians were far more outspoken about their language than were the British Canadians. Finally, the difference in status (minority vs. majority) may explain why the commentary on CanFr was far more political.

The following table contains the first appearance of language beliefs and stereotypes about CanFr, as well as the total number of occurrences for each. There is a “generic” heading for each belief or stereotype (“patois, jargon, etc.”), and several subheadings (“patois”, “jargon”). The latter are offset for better readability, and the numbers and percentages are in parenthesis for the same reason.

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Table 5.1 Origins and occurrences of beliefs or stereotypes: CanFr

Belief/stereotype 1st appearance # of occurrences %

Quality or purity 1810 115 20.2%

Patois, jargon, etc. See below 107 18.8%

Patois 1803 (78) (13.7%)

Jargon 1810 (13) (2.2%)

Other196 1821 (16) (2.8%)

Anglicisms 1810 75 13.2%

Other –isms See below 116 20.4%

Canadianisms 1789 (33) (5.8%)

Normanisms 1833 (39) (6.9%)

Archaisms 1846 (44) (7.7%)

Pronunciation 1810 77 13.6%

196 The other words include “barbarous”, “corrupt”, “uncouth”, “peculiar dialect”, “Canadian French”, “lingo”, and “babel”. None of these words was used frequently enough to warrant a separate entry for this table.

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No English 1799 24 4.2%

Bilingual problem 1806/1809 54 9.5%

Total N/A 568 100%

As we can see from this table, the most common observations about CanFr during the 18th and 19th centuries were about quality or purity (20.2%), patois, jargon, etc. (18.8%), pronunciation (13.6%), which was followed closely by Anglicisms (13.2%). All of these appeared early in the 19th century, and as we shall see in the following sections, would become more prevalent throughout the century.

In the following figure, I have presented the occurrences of each belief or stereotype by decade. Canadianisms, Normanisms, and archaisms are grouped under “other –isms”, as they were described in similar terms. I will discuss them individually in section 5.1.1.4. In order to show the ratio of the various commentaries by decade, Figure 5.1 presents the data as percentages.

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100% 90% 80% Bilingual problem 70% Anglicization 60% No English 50% Pronunciation 40% Other -isms 30% Anglicisms 20% Patois, jargon 10% Quality or purity 0%

Figure 5.1 Number of occurrences (in %) of each belief or stereotype by decade, CanFr

From this graph, we can observe a number of important trends regarding the frequency and total number of occurrences of each language belief or stereotype over time. Proceeding in the order we have followed up to this point, comments on the quality or purity of CanFr remained steady throughout the 19th century, ranging between 18% and 35.3%; we see a similar trend for occurrences of the terms patois and jargon, though the overall proportion decreases somewhat after 1880, largely as a result of the increasing instances of the other beliefs or stereotypes. Both Anglicisms and the other -isms – Canadianisms, Normanisms, and archaisms – appear very early in the century in small numbers, but the proportion of these increases significantly after 1850; this is especially the case for the other -isms in the 1870s and the 1890s, with a small dip during the 1880s. While the overall number of comments regarding pronunciation was quite high (76 total occurrences), it was only towards the end of the 19th century that these become more important. Finally, comment regarding the utility or legitimacy of CanFr represent a small percentage of the total comments to begin with (less than 10%), but they were present throughout the 19th century.

In the interest of presenting this data from another angle, the following figure shows the number of occurrences of each belief or stereotype by decade. Of particular interest is the spike in the number of comments that appeared in specific decades.

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Figure 5.2 Number of occurrences of each belief or stereotype by decade, CanFr

As we can see from this figure, the total number of comments increases for nearly all of the beliefs and stereotypes, beginning with the decade 1851-1860, which is likely due not only the significant increase in population in in the first half of the century, but also to the fact that more visitors began coming to the Canadas (and North America in general) at this time; the completion of two major, international railways (see section 5.1.3) undoubtedly played a hand in this increase, as the Canadas became far more accessible. Then, there is a sharp increase in the 1870s, and nearly all the beliefs or stereotypes (save Anglicization) reached their peak in the 1880s. In the final decade, we see a steep decline for all of these, which may reflect the fact that fewer travel journals (in particular) were published after 1890, and virtually none after 1900.

5.1.1.1 Quality and purity

The first indication I have found that CanFr was considered to be of lesser quality or purity than the language spoken in France dates back to an anonymous British traveller’s unpublished travel journal, which he wrote during his travels in 1792-93. This comment predates Lambert (1810), who had previously been considered by researchers such as Caron-Leclerc and Bouchard, among others, the first Anglophone to criticize the quality or purity of CanFr, by approximately 17

227 years. Since the anonymous text remained unpublished until 1912197, it does not appear in the statistics presented in the second chapter or in this one; I only mention it here to draw attention to an earlier first occurrence of a negative assessment of CanFr.

Not all of the commentary on the quality of CanFr was negative, however. Three similar beliefs about the alleged superiority of CanFr appeared during the 1820s-1840s. Although those who held these beliefs were in a clear minority, they would persist throughout the 19th century. Significantly, all three of these beliefs were first recorded by Anglophones, though in each case, the author acknowledged a French Canadian source: “I have been told/assured, etc.” The early appearance of these beliefs would indicate that they were already well-established and accepted in Lower Canada in the early 19th century, possibly even earlier. After all, (most) French Canadians had little reason to believe prior to 1840 that their language had “worsened” since the colony became English. The aftermath of the Rebellions, which included Lord Durham’s scathing report, the Act of Union, and the subsequent loss in status French Canadians suffered on social, political, and linguistic fronts, naturally led to a questioning of this belief. As Bouchard (2012) has discussed, it is hardly a coincidence that Maguire’s Manuel was published shortly after these events: French Canadians needed to “modernize”, or be assimilated.

Proceeding in chronological order, the first belief was that upper class, educated French Canadians spoke good, quality French (Silliman 1820); though it must be mentioned, as I explained in the second chapter, Silliman only reported this belief, and did not (fully) believe it himself. While a compliment for members of the middle and upper classes, i.e. those most susceptible to linguistic insecurity, the other side of this belief was that members of the lower or “common” classes did not speak good French, or a “substandard” variety of the language (Labov 1972). Out of all the beliefs on CanFr, this is perhaps the one that changed the most over time; by the 1870s, many of the French Canadian commentators such as Lépine (1875), Dunn (1876), and Tardivel (1880), among others, wrote scathing criticisms of the quality of the language used by lawyers, journalists, and politicians, which was characterized by the frequent use of

197 The short collection of letters bore the title Canadian Letters: description of a tour thro’ the Provinces of Lower and Upper Canada in the course of the years 1792 and ’93. A portion thereof was reprinted in historian Gerald M. Craig’s Early travellers in the Canadas, 1791-1867 (1955).

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Anglicisms, whereas the speech of the habitants was held in much higher regard for its so-called purity, or linguistic conservatism (Sulte 1877).

While most commentators considered the purity of the language as being indicative of the quality (as early as 1793), it is important to note that these were not true equivalents, particularly in the late 19th century. An excellent example of this can be seen in LaRue’s essay (1867), in which he was far more critical of upper class French Canadians, and held them to a higher standard than the working class; according to LaRue, the former were responsible for maintaining the quality and purity of the language for the latter. In other words, the quality of the language spoken by educated French Canadians was considered quite high, it lacked in purity on account of the Anglicisms, whereas the language spoken by the Habitants, for examples, was described as being remarkably pure and homogeneous (Sulte 1877), but not necessarily of good quality; see the third belief below.

The second belief was that CanFr was superior to ParFr (Boardman 1833). While the first instance of this belief appeared early in the century, it wasn’t until the 1870s that there was a “resurgence”, or serious attempt at promoting this idea. Supporters of this belief such as Roy (1877), Marceau (1882), and Sulte (1882) posited that ParFr had been corrupted by the influence of the lower and working classes, and had a number of esthetically displeasing characteristics, such as the guttural r (grasseyement), and slang (argot). From the texts I have studied, this belief was relatively short-lived, lasting just over a decade, as French Canadian commentators became far more interested in establishing the (il)legitimacy of CanFr linguistic forms, beginning with Dunn (1880).

The third belief was that the habitants spoke better than their French counterparts, i.e., French farmers or peasants (Lyell 1845). Of these three beliefs, this is by far the most influential and longest-lived, lasting well into the 20th century (Bouchard 1998). This belief was shared by Anglophones and Francophones, Europeans and North Americans alike, and was based on the notion that French peasants didn’t speak French, but a patois. Specifically, the French spoken by the habitants was reputed to be more correct (Chauveau 1853, Shaw 1856, Blain de Saint-Aubin 1871) and more homogeneous than the French spoken by French peasants (Anonymous 1874, Dunn 1874, Sulte 1877, and de Lamothe 1879). However, this was not to say that the Habitants

229 spoke a “high quality” French; they were just reputed to speak better (more purely, and more homogeneously) than French peasants.

Concerning the relation between nationality and the level of criticism towards CanFr, I only partially concur with what Caron-Leclerc concluded in her dissertation, and the beliefs espoused in the primary sources such as Tardivel (1881). That is, up until the beginning of the 20th century. According to Bouchard (1988, 1998), and from some of the primary sources I consulted, there is ample evidence supporting the belief that many British Canadians believed that their neighbours spoke a “French patois.” Revisiting Caron-Leclerc’s dissertation briefly, she concluded from the 82 texts analysed (nearly all of which are also in my corpus, and which also go up to 1900) that the English and the Belgians were the most critical of differences between CanFr and Standard French, while the French were more accepting, often even expressing nostalgia or a fondness for the language spoken by their cousins across the Atlantic. As for the French Canadian primary sources, it was frequently stated that Americans, British Canadians, and the French were both the most critical of CanFr, and the most misinformed on the subject. From the texts that I have studied, I am able to further qualify or nuance these beliefs.

The nationalities that wrote the most critically of the quality (and legitimacy) of CanFr were the British (both collectively, and individually as the English, Scottish, and Irish), French Canadians themselves, and the Belgians. Despite the many references to negative opinions held by Americans and British Canadians, I have not found sufficient evidence to support this claim; in fact, British Canadians were among the least critical, and admonished others about discriminating against the French Canadians (Parkin 1895, O’Hagan 1901, and Nicholson 1902). However, my corpus contains very few English-language newspaper articles; in order to get a more complete view of the matter, one would need to go through the archives of the numerous newspapers published in the late 19th century in several cities (at least Toronto, Kingston, and Montréal) to find these references198. As for the French, I would agree that they were certainly less critical than the British, but there were more than a few commentators like Duvergier de Hauranne (1866), Kowalski (1872), Foubert (1875), and Coubertin (1890) who held CanFr in low esteem.

198 This is not to mention the American newspaper articles to which Tardivel (1901) referred, or the French-language Le Courrier des Etats-Unis.

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As an addendum, it is important to briefly mention the commentary on the French spoken by the voyageurs. The French they spoke was universally considered to be bad or corrupt, from the first appearance of this belief by Howison (1821), to Moore’s mention of their “barbaric” pronunciation (1854), and Oliphant’s distinction between “good French” and voyageur French (1855). Related to this, I believe, is the first appearance of the term “Canadian French” (Vigne 1832), which initially seemed to refer to a mixture of French and First Nations languages, though given the paucity of details, the matter is not entirely clear. Was it Canadian French because it was French spoken in Canada, or did it have a more specific, possibly pejorative, meaning? A further investigation of this term, specifically its first appearance and precise meaning, would be the basis for a future study.

5.1.1.2 Patois, jargon, etc.

The first mention of the term patois in relation to the French spoken in Canada comes from Jean- Baptiste d’Aleyrac’s posthumously published journal (1935), the original containing records from the mid-to-late 1750s. In keeping with what other contemporary French commentators wrote on the language, who unanimously agreed that the French spoken in Canada was identical to that spoken in Paris, d’Aleyrac emphatically stated that there was no patois in Canada, a belief which was reaffirmed somewhat by Volney (1803), who expressed surprise at discovering that the French inhabitants of Louisiana did not speak a patois. Given the implications of his statement on French in North America, it is surprising that Volney was not mentioned by other researchers on the history of CanFr, even though his work was referenced in Dulong’s Bibliographie.

Volney’s comment, along with those of d’Aleyrac and Le Clercq (1691) point to the existence of a patois myth or belief dating back to the early 18th, possibly even the late 17th century. Why else would Allart, who spent less than four months in Québec in 1670, have assured Le Clercq that Canadians spoke pure French, or would Volney have been told that a patois was spoken in North America? Determining even earlier evidence of such a belief would be the basis of a future study, and would require a significant broadening of the scope of the texts examined, particularly those texts written in France about the various patois, regional languages and dialects. The Abbé Grégoire’s Rapport (1794) was by far the most influential text written about the various “patois” spoken in France, but it was certainly not the first.

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The term patois was first used in the pejorative sense by Beaufoy in 1828, a usage which was quickly adopted (within the span of six years) by commentators of nearly every nationality, beginning with other English (Coke 1833), the Swedish (1834), the Americans (Irving 1836)199, the Irish (Jameson 1838), French Canadians (Chauveau 1853), the Scottish (Oliphant 1855), the French (Florimond 1860), and finally British Canadians (Lighthall 1889). Although they strongly criticized other aspects of CanFr, namely regarding quality and pronunciation, neither the German Kohl (1861) nor the Belgians considered CanFr a patois. Multiple occurrences of this term in the same text notwithstanding, a total of 78 commentators either described CanFr as a patois, or refuted this very claim. Uncovering these comments pushes back significantly the origin of the French Canadian patois myth (Bouchard 1990), by over 40 years, and possibly even more, in light of Volney’s commentary.

The term jargon, which is used exclusively in the pejorative sense (see the introduction for definitions of jargon and patois), appeared even earlier than patois: first in 1810 (Lambert) and then in 1817 (Bibaud). Perhaps on account of its strictly negative connotation, jargon was used considerably less frequently than patois: I have found only 16 uses of this term during the 19th century, only four of which suggested that CanFr was a jargon. Significantly, only 3 of the commentators to use this term were Anglophones; the other 13 were Francophones, 12 of whom200 argued that CanFr was definitely not a jargon.

5.1.1.3 Anglicisms

Despite the fact that French Canadians had been living under British rule since 1763, I have not found any references to the Anglicisms during the latter half of the 18th century, which is due to essentially two reasons: firstly, that there was little interaction between the majority of French Canadians (the habitants) and the English-speaking minority, even up to the mid-19th century, when many of rural French Canadians moved to the cities for work (Bouchard 1998). Secondly, it would take time for Anglicisms to gain currency among French Canadians, politicians and lawyers being the first to adopt the language and terminology of the English-run institutions where they worked. The first mention of Anglicisms and their deleterious effect on the purity or

199 Note that since Irving was working from Astor’s personal notes, it is ultimately unclear whether this was Irving’s own view, or Astor’s. If we are to discount Irving’s testimony on account of this ambiguity, the next American who considered CanFr was Nathaniel Bishop (1878). 200 The 13th being Duvergier de Hauranne (1866), who complained of the “jargon normand” he encountered.

232 quality of CanFr can be traced back to Lambert (1810), “un Québécois” (1817), and M.D. (1828). Considering that no mention had been made of Anglicisms up until the 1810s, the vehemence with which the latter two commentators criticized their fellow countrymen’s susceptibility to English terms and phrases201 is somewhat unexpected; this would suggest that Anglicisms were common enough in the early 19th century – if not the late 18th century, following the establishment of Upper and Lower Canada in 1791 – for there to be written evidence of their existence.

With few exceptions, the discussion of Anglicisms and the general influence of British culture and the English language in Lower Canada were largely restricted to French Canadians; it is somewhat ironic that while journalists were among the most ridiculed for their poor writing, which was often riddled with Anglicisms, it was their fellow journalists like Dunn, Sulte, Legendre, Tardivel, Fréchette, Buies, Gélinas, etc. who were the most fervent denouncers of the use of English turns of phrase. This can be in part attributed to the obviously higher linguistic standard to which the educated class held each other (LaRue 1867), particularly regarding the written language, which is indicative of their linguistic insecurity vis-à-vis the French; the Habitants and working class were typically spared from such harsh criticism (Dunn 1870), and were instead praised for the so-called “purity” (i.e. linguistic conservatism) and homogeneity of the language they spoke (Sulte 1877, 1882). In short, we see a distinct contrast between the quality of the language educated French Canadians wrote, which was negatively affected by Anglicisms, and the purity of the language the lower classes spoke. Despite differences of opinion regarding which linguistic norm to follow in Canada, all the French Canadian writers whose works I have included in this dissertation were united in their attack on Anglicisms. In addition to these French Canadians, some French and Belgian commentators also weighed in on the matter, such as Ampère (1856), Florimond (1860), Blain de Saint-Aubin (1866), Frary (1879), Réveillaud (1884), and Coubertin (1890). While I will save discussion of Canadian reactions to these in section 5.2, it should be noted that French Canadians and the French saw these Anglicisms (or any other –ism) in a very different light. Ernest Gagnon tidily summed up the difference in the following passage from his article “De retour à Québec” (1878):

201 Neither Bibaud nor M.D. specified the source or context for these Anglicisms, though it is likely they were criticizing the speech of politicians and lawyers, i.e., those who were the most exposed to the English language through their work.

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Ce qui frappe tout d’abord un Canadien qui revoit son pays après avoir séjourné un peu longtemps à Paris, c’est la cruauté avec laquelle nous traitons cette belle langue française, qui, pourtant, nous est si chère.

Toutefois, il faut se garder de croire que les étrangers trouvent les incorrections de notre langue aussi choquantes que nous les trouvons nous-mêmes – je parle des étrangers qui ne font qu’un court séjour au milieu de nous. Ils voient du cachet là où nous ne voyons qu’un défaut. Pour eux, un anglicisme à peine compréhensible devient une curiosité philologique tout-à-fait intéressante. (Gagnon 1878: 352)

Apart from Buies, who spent several years studying and working in France, Gagnon was one of the few French Canadians whose texts I analysed who spent extended periods of time in France, and was therefore more attuned to the differences between CanFr and Standard French. Considering that philological and linguistic studies of CanFr would begin in the 1880s, notably those of American linguist Aaron Marshall Elliott, it is important to keep this difference in mind.

The push to eliminate Anglicisms began in earnest after 1841, a year which marked the publication of Maguire’s Manuel. However, as indicated in Figure 5.2, references to Anglicisms dramatically increased in the 1870s, and peaked in the 1880s: from 1861-1870, I have only found 6 mentions of Anglicisms, whereas I found 21 references from 1871-1880. In keeping with what we have seen in the case of quality and purity, and patois, jargon, etc., this spike in the number of comments corresponds with the aftermath of the Confederation, where the number of prescriptive works, newspaper editorials, and journal articles greatly eclipsed those of travel journals. Given that French Canadians wrote critically of their language in the final third of the century, it is natural that we should see a similar progression for most – but not all; see (5.1.1.6 and 5.1.1.7) – of the beliefs and stereotypes.

5.1.1.4 Canadianisms, Normanisms, and archaisms

The existence of distinctly Canadian words and phrases, which includes Canadian innovations, Normanisms or other regional words, and archaisms, was attested far earlier than Anglicisms: both Pierre Potier’s Façons de parler proverbiales, which he wrote from 1743-58, and Jean- Baptiste d’Aleyrac’s journal noted the existence of terms specific to French Canadians, though neither of these works was published until the 20th century. The first publish reference to Canadianisms that I have found is from Anburey (1789), followed by La Rochefoucauld- Liancourt (1799) and Volney (1803). Aside from his consternation in learning a new word for potato, Anburey had no difficulty whatsoever communicating with a very eloquent French

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Canadian farmer, and neither of the latter two felt that the “militaristic” vocabulary they observed202 – which they did not elaborate on – affected the purity or quality of the language.

The legitimacy of Canadianisms, or perhaps their effect on the language, was first called into question in 1841 (Maguire), but it wasn’t until nearly three decades later that we see a clear increase in the number of comments on their value, or lack thereof. Not surprisingly, much like we saw for Anglicisms, this increase coincides with the post-Confederation era, and the subsequent surge of interest among French Canadians in modernizing their language, specifically the debate over which linguistic norm to adopt. Commentators like Maguire and Buies felt that since these lexical items were not to be found in the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, Canadianisms – as well as archaisms – were illegitimate. However, these were seen as less harmful to CanFr than Anglicisms (Rinfret 1896). In fact, proponents of an endogenous norm such as Legendre (1884, 1887) and Clapin (1894) found Canadianisms and archaisms to be proof of the legitimacy of CanFr, and felt that lexical innovations – and linguistic conservatism, in the case of archaisms – were a necessity, and should not be vilified, but rather praised or admired.

In addition to comments on those lexical items native to Canada, there are numerous references to the similarities between CanFr and NorFr, and more commonly, between French Canadian and Norman culture and dress. The first mention that CanFr resembled in some way NorFr comes from Tocqueville’s journal (ca. 1831), though these comments were not published until 1970; the first published reference that I have found was Lebrun (1833). Although quite common in the late 19th century, this belief spread slowly over the course of the following decades, beginning in the 1850s, and peaking in the 1880s. Perhaps more so than any other belief we have examined in this dissertation, the belief that French Canadians spoke (specifically) NorFr, or worse, a Norman patois, helped trigger the discussion of the legitimacy of CanFr, and gave rise to the French Canadian voice. An article that appeared sometime in 1874 claiming that French Canadians only understand a Norman patois immediately drew the attention of Sulte, Dunn, and an anonymous contributor to the Journal de l’Instruction Publique, all of whom categorically denied that French Canadians spoke anything but French. Despite their efforts, the belief would in fact become more common in the following decade, but become almost non-existent at the beginning of the 20th century.

202 Or in the case of La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, heard about, as he was barred from entering Lower Canada.

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5.1.1.5 Pronunciation

French and British commentators during the 18th century all agreed that the French spoken in Canada sounded identical to the variety spoken in Paris, which is coherent with what Gendron (2007) outlined, namely that le grand usage was spoken by the majority of the populace in both locations prior to the French Revolution of 1789. It bears mentioning as well, and this applies to all of the various commentary on CanFr, that each commentator expressed his or her own beliefs about the language, which may or may not have corresponded with reality; there is no evidence that Jefferys (1760) or d’Olivet (1767) ever went to North America, yet they believed that the French spoken in New France sounded just like the French spoken in Paris. The first indication that there was some difference between the two can be traced back once again to the anonymous British traveller (ca. 1793), who noted that French Canadians had a tendency to pronounce the final consonant in words like beaucoup and lait. As previously stated, though, this text was not published until 1912, so the first official, published commentary on French Canadian pronunciation comes from Lambert (1810), who remarked upon the same phenomenon, as well as on words like icitte for ici, fréte [sic] for froid, and paré [sic] for prêt.

From the texts I have studied written during the first period and into the second, I find myself partially in disagreement with Bouchard (2012), who wrote that the first clear indication that CanFr and Standard French – which had evolved from le bel usage – had diverged significantly from one another can be traced back to the dispute grammaticale (Dionne 1912) among Maguire (1841), Demers (1842), and Bibaud (1842); rather, the articles written by “Grammaticus” and “un Québécois” in 1817 foreshadowed the later, much better known and influential debate nearly 25 years later. Much of what these three disagreed upon would be discussed throughout the rest of the century, and expanded upon by Dunn (1874, 1876), Lagacé (1875), and Rivard (1900a, 1900b, 1901), among others. As I mentioned in earlier chapters, it is difficult to separate comments on pronunciation from those on quality or purity: given that differences in pronunciation are among the most obvious markers of change, commentators were quick to label these as symptomatic of corruption or degeneration, rather than as the natural evolution of the language, or the linguistic conservatism of French Canadians.

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5.1.1.6 French Canadians don’t speak English

Moving on to observations regarding the utility and legitimacy of CanFr, it bears mentioning three important differences from observations on aesthetics and grammar: firstly, that there are far fewer observations that fall under this category; secondly, that we see a very different trend for these observations than those in the previous five sections; and thirdly, that these observations are by far the most politically charged. In other words, it is possible to make an observation about the aesthetic aspect of a language without political, religious, or nationalistic undertones – though these definitely exist – but the same cannot be said for the following: there was a segment of British and British Canadian society that actively sought out the elimination of the French language in Canada for political gain.

The belief that French Canadians didn’t speak English was a fairly common observation throughout the century, but also the one with most contradicting evidence, particularly in the latter half of the 19th century: while rural French Canadians (understandably) had little need to speak English from day-to-day, urban rural Canadians had to speak both languages out of necessity. This belief appears for the first time in two travel journals published in 1799 (La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt and Weld), and appears intermittently until the end of the 19th century. Contrary to my expectations, there is no apparent correlation between the Rebellions or the Confederation and an increase in the occurrences of this belief; rather, there is an early peak in the 1820s and a sharp increase in the 1880s. One explanation for the first peak may perhaps be linked to the aborted attempt at creating a United Province of Canada in 1822 with the Union Bill, which would have put French Canadians at a significant disadvantage in the Legislature, becoming a minority despite their numerical majority. Regarding the second spike in the 1880s, there is not one single event or factor that appears to be responsible, and the trend was actually moving in the opposite direction: more and more French Canadians living in major urban centres necessarily had to speak both languages, whereas the reverse (section 5.1.1.5) was not true.

This belief was often accompanied by some justification or explanation for why French Canadians (allegedly) did not speak English. The Catholic Church, for example, was blamed for keeping its parishioners ignorant, not only of the English language, but of many subjects (Wright 1821). Others like Buckingham (1842) argued that French Canadians didn’t (or wouldn’t) speak English because that would be tantamount to aiding their oppressors. French Canadian views on

237 the matter supported this belief in some respects, as they acknowledged the need to speak English in order to survive, but refused to give up their own language to do so (Bourassa 1902), as this would be tantamount to renouncing their cultural, social, national, and linguistic identity, a matter which achieved much greater attention following the Confederation.

5.1.1.7 The bilingual problem

While most of the commentary on CanFr has political undertones, the “bilingual problem” is the most overtly political of all: at various points during the 19th century – namely in the 1830s and from 1851-1890 – (some) British and British Canadians called for “amalgamation”, a euphemism for Anglicization, or elimination of the French elements in Canada. The first to call for amalgamation, or “defrenchification”, were Anglicanus (1806) and Gray (1809), both of whom understood the strong link between language and nationality. Unlike the previous belief, my prediction about the increase in the occurrences of this belief was largely accurate: we see a definite increase in references to amalgamation/”defrenchification”/Anglicization in the first decade of the 19th century, prior to and following the Rebellions, and before – but not after – the Confederation.

The second belief that falls under this category, that allowing both French and English to be used in Parliament, the courts, and in other official contexts was a problem, dates back to 1799 (La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt). It must be noted, however, that La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt had to rely on second-hand information, as he was barred from entering Lower Canada. There are more occurrences of this belief than the previous one – 32 to 22 – with a major increase in the 1830s, and a sustained peak from 1850-1890, after which it tapered off significantly. Not all of these observations were negative, however: these figures also include the commentary of those like Molinari (1882), Sulte (1885), and Demanche (1890), all of whom believed that speaking both languages was a considerable asset for French Canadians, and Doucet (1896) explained why “dual language” was in no way a hindrance for Canada, but a major advantage.

5.1.2 Canadian English

As noted in section 5.1.1, there are far fewer comments on CanEn than on CanFr; this does not mean, however, that the metalinguistic commentary was any less rich or informative as a result. In addition to the disparity in number, there are three traits that serve to distinguish

238 metalinguistic commentary on CanEn from CanFr. Firstly, the interaction between the American Loyalist base – on both a linguistic and cultural level – and the steady influx of British immigrants following the War of 1812 made for a highly diverse population. Secondly, we can see the early development of a prestige dialect – “Canadian Dainty”, characterized by an emulation of British speech patterns – developing among upper class British Canadians, which was symptomatic of their linguistic and cultural insecurity vis-à-vis the British. Finally, the status of CanEn of as a majority language in Canada (and North America as a whole) meant that British Canadians didn’t politicize discussion of their language in the way French Canadians did, nor did they write nearly as much on the matter; it is only in the 1930s that we begin to see a number of articles on CanEn similar to those on CanFr in the 1870s-1880s.

The following table shows the first appearance of language beliefs and stereotypes about CanEn, as well as the total number of occurrences for each, given as both a number and a percentage. Unlike Table 5.1, there is no need for a “generic” heading for each belief or stereotype, as we only encounter one kind of –ism for CanEn: Americanisms. Overall, I have 68 unique references to one of the aforementioned aspects or qualities of CanEn.

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Table 5.2 Origins and occurrences of beliefs or stereotypes: CanEn

Belief or stereotype First appearance # of occurrences %

Quality or purity 1807 7 10%

Patois, jargon, etc. 1845 4 5.7%

Americanisms 1835 22 31.4%

Pronunciation 1844 19 27.1%

No French 1871 14 20%

Other comments203 N/A 4 5.7%

Total N/A 70 100%

The interesting thing to note about the figures in this table is that unlike CanFr, there were very few comments regarding the quality or purity of CanEn, while the numbers for Americanisms (Canadianisms being the rough equivalent for CanFr), pronunciation, and British Canadians don’t speak French are similar in proportion. Although the date of the first comment on the quality of the language appears in 1807, it is not entirely clear why there are so few during the 19th century. A further explanation of this anomaly would certainly be the basis of a future study.

In the following figure, I have presented the occurrences of each belief or stereotype by decade, in percentages. Just as figures 5.1 and 5.2 began with the year 1789, as that was the occurrence

203 This includes comments that the speech and manner of British Canadians was very “English” (Smith 1892), or that British slang was a danger to the purity of English in North America (Mactaggart 1829)

240 of the first difference between CanFr and Standard French, this figure and the following one begin in 1807.

Figure 5.3 Number of occurrences (in %) of each belief or stereotype by decade, CanEn

Although the numbers for CanEn are significantly less than those for CanFr, there are still a few conclusions that can be drawn from the above figure. Firstly, that rather than quality or patois, it was Americanisms, differences in pronunciation, and the allegation that British Canadians didn’t speak French that received the most consistent attention: the numbers for pronunciation and Americans hovered at the same proportion from the 1840s onward – with the 1890s being a notable exception for Americanisms – while “no French” was numerically significant in the final third of the century. As I have stated before, the only references to quality, purity and patois were during the 1840s-1850s, with two outlying mentions of quality in 1807 and 1888; it is at present not evident why there are no other references to these.

The following figure presents the data according the number of references for each belief or stereotype by decade. The most significant difference between this figure and figure 5.2 is the disparity in volume, for reasons already discussed.

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Figure 5.4 Number of occurrences of each belief or stereotype by decade, CanEn

Much like we saw in Figure 5.2, there is a similar – though not identical – progression for the occurrences of Americanisms/other –isms, which began to increase by the 1840s. As for the other stereotypes or beliefs, however, there are significant differences: we only see accusations that British Canadians didn’t speak French towards the end of the 19th century, while we see the reverse at the end of the 18th. Aside from the brief spike in the number of comments on the quality of CanEn in the 1870s, or the comments on patois/jargon in the 1840s or 1850s, I cannot say that there is a pattern that both languages follow. However, in section 5.1.3, I will attempt to account for the first appearance of these beliefs and stereotypes for both languages.

5.1.2.1 Quality and purity

Due to immigration from the American Colonies during and following the America Revolutionary War, and from Great Britain after the War of 1812, the linguistic situation in Upper Canada was remarkably diverse, though only in the first half of the 19th century (Chambers 2004). For this reason, there are a number of contradicting reports concerning the exact nature of the English language spoken by the colonists: was it British, or was it American? The first comment on the quality of CanEn that I have found was Harriott (1807), who believed that the English spoken in North America was better spoken and more homogeneous than the

242 numerous varieties spoken in England. Considering that the overwhelming majority of Upper Canada was populated by the American Loyalists and their descendants (only second generation by this point), many of whom arrived from the Mid-Atlantic states (Chambers 1993, 2004), it is hardly surprising that Harriott found North American speech homogeneous: (nearly) everyone sounded the same because they were the same people.

The next comment I found on the quality of the language was Fidler (1833), who completely contradicted Harriott’s claims: namely, that the English spoken in Upper Canada was wholly heterogeneous, with a wide variety of British dialects (in addition to Irish and Scottish Gaelic) spoken throughout the Province. Given that Fidler resided in Richmond Hill during the emigration period from Great Britain, he would have found many dialects and regional languages from the Old Countries. The ramifications of the interaction between the American Loyalist base, or linguistic substratum, and the British superstratum, along with the emergence of “Canadian Dainty” among the upper classes help to account for the diverging opinions on the language spoken by British Canadians.

Similar to the belief that the habitants spoke better than their French counterparts, I have found one instance of a similar belief for CanEn (Traill 1836). Given that this was an isolated comment, there is no reason to afford it the same weight I have given to CanFr, but it is noteworthy all the same that the same belief about both languages appeared at approximately the same time. Commentators like Molinari believed CanEn to be of excellent quality, while Sulte (1877) found it to be decidedly inferior to BritEn. Of particular interest is the fact that all four of the commentators were Francophones: the Belgian Molinari (1876), French Canadians Sulte (1877) and (Maximilien) Bibaud (1879), and the lone French commentator, Desaché (1878).

5.1.2.2 Patois, jargon, etc.

Although these terms were mostly associated with CanFr, there are a handful of instances in which CanEn was described in a similar manner. The term “Yankee patois” made its first (and only) appearance in 1845 (Tolfrey), while the following year, Coursen (1846) referred to the “Yankee English” she encountered. Geikie (1857), who coined the term “Canadian English”, considered the language spoken in Canada to be a “corrupt dialect”, and compared it to the “Negro Patua” and the “Chinese Pidgin.” Such terms were not used after this date for CanEn, which was simply considered AmEn, or “Yankee English.” (White 1870, Fitzgerald 1873)

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5.1.2.3 Americanisms

Although American Loyalists and their descendants had been living in the Canadas since the late 18th century, and British travellers had been to both provinces from the 1780s, it wasn’t until 1835 (Todd) that the first comments on Americanisms appear. These comments fall into essentially two categories: discouraging neologisms, and warning against the deleterious effects of American schoolbooks and teachers on the language. It is hardly a coincidence that these complaints appear just before and following the Rebellions of 1837-38, as it was feared that the rebels, who had Republican leanings, had American sympathizers. In this they were not mistaken, if one considers the existence of the Hunters’ Lodge and the Frères chasseurs, two groups founded in the United States that supported a Republican – not Monarchical – Canada.

The first admonishment against lexical innovation I have found is from Brown (1844), who noted that English-speaking Canadians, much like the Americans, felt the need to “rashly coin” new words, a sentiment which Geikie (1857) also shared. As American writer H.L. Mencken discussed (1919), British critics had a very similar view of AmEn throughout the 19th century. Taylor (1846) noted that CanEn was “of the new school” – presumably meaning American – and was the first to comment on the ubiquitous Americanism “I guess”, which Darling (1849) and Moodie (1852) also remarked upon, among other neologisms.

As for the second category, the first admonishment against American influence in Upper Canadian classrooms comes from Rolph (1836), who was very concerned about the “anti-British dialect and idiom” students were learning, a sentiment which was shared by Brown (1844) and Darling (1849). While Americanisms by no means disappeared after this point – we in fact see far more references to them from the 1850s onward – I have not found any further complaints about the Americanization of the language, which is largely due to the fact that the offending school materials were replaced by British ones (Chambers 1993).

5.1.2.4 Pronunciation

Much like we saw for CanFr, commentators were particularly critical of differences of pronunciation between BritEn and CanEn. Similar to the first appearances of Americanisms, the earliest recorded observations on Canadian, or “Yankee” pronunciation appeared in the 1840s, with Godley (1844) mocking the so-called Yankee drawl, Taylor (1846) the nasal twang, and

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White (1870) and Fitzgerald (1873) commenting on the American “tone” of the British Canadian voice. By the turn of the century, the British Canadian accent, which by outsiders was deemed to be the same as AmEn, was simply described as “ugly” (Jephson 1897), or “slip shod…unpleasant…and lamentably unmodulated.” (Helliwell 1902: 556)

5.1.2.5 British Canadians don’t speak French

As early as 1809 (Gray), it was believed that British Canadians had a poor command of French, which put them at a significant disadvantage to French Canadians, who were often accused of “deliberating” speaking in French during trials and sessions of Parliament; indeed, any of the commentary regarding the bilingual problem could equally apply to British Canadians. However, it wasn’t until the late 19th century that French Canadians like Gélinas (1879) and Sulte (1886) took British Canadians to task for their alleged refusal to learn or speak French. Even French visitors like Bouthillier-Chavigny (1890) and Demanche (1890) noted that British Canadians “made it a point of honour” to speak only English. Of particular interest for this belief is the fact that even British Canadians like Parkin (1895) and O’Hagan (1901) chastised their peers for not learning the language of their neighbours.

5.1.3 Summary

Despite the obvious differences between French and British Canadians, and their respective languages, there are a remarkable number of similarities regarding the development of language beliefs and stereotypes (and therefore attitudes) about each during the 19th century. As I posited in the Introduction, and shall reiterate in section 5.2, I do not believe that this is simply a matter of coincidence, but rather an expected, predictable outcome: on the one hand, both the British and the French visitors to the Canadas were surprised to find that the French they spoke (or learned in school, in the case of the British) was in many ways dissimilar to the French spoken in Canada, for the reasons outlined in Gendron (2007) and Bouchard (2012), for example. As such, commentators of both nationalities seized upon similar linguistic phenomena, with the former being far harsher in their criticisms than the latter. On the other hand, the later British immigrants (post-1812) to the Canadas were equally shocked to discover that the inhabitants of a British colony did not speak BritEn (Chambers 1993), but rather a variety that had more in common with AmEn.

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The first similarity between the metalinguistic commentary on both languages is that we see the same words being used to describe – or more frequently, criticize – CanFr and CanEn: patois (CanFr primarily), jargon (CanFr only), corrupt, bad, degenerate, unpleasant, ugly, etc. While both languages had incorporated a number of words from indigenous languages by the 19th century, not one commentator cited word borrowing as being a source of corruption or deviation; lexical innovation – Canadianisms and Americanisms – however, were another matter. Rather, it appears to be mainly due to the natural evolution or development of the French and English languages in North America, which were both effectively isolated from Great Britain and France during the “formative years”, so to speak. When foreign commentators like the British and French visited (and settled) the Canadas in the 1820s-1830s, they were naturally struck by how different the North American variety of their mother tongue sounded, and saw these differences as degeneracy, corruption. In the case of the French, as Bouchard (2012) eloquently explained, major political and social upheavals on both sides of the Atlantic greatly quickened the pace of the linguistic divergence. As for the British, they were evidently unprepared to encounter an English language any different than the King’s (Chambers 2004), and severely criticized the “American” sounding language the “Yankee” settlers of Upper Canada spoke.

Secondly, it is clear that the British commentators were the harshest critics of both languages, as well as the most likely to take language beliefs and stereotypes at face value, and further propagate them without further investigation of the matter. From what we have seen, it appears that the negative attitudes towards CanFr were born from suspicion, distrust, and ethnic, religious, and cultural prejudice towards the French Canadians, especially during the first few decades of the 19th century; the same could be said of CanEn, with most commentators strongly condemning American, “Republican” influence on the Anglophone residents of the Canadas. For their part, British and French Canadians were also critical of their own language. Given that their language (culture, religion, nationality, etc.) and very identity were constantly in danger from radical politicians throughout the century, French Canadians were naturally much more concerned, and therefore wrote more, about the “faults” of CanFr. As for the British Canadians, their status as a linguistic, economic, and political majority in Canada meant that they never needed to justify the use of their language in the same way their neighbours had to, but their linguistic and cultural insecurity vis-à-vis the British in the latter half of the 19th century led some to be harsh critics of the American influence on the language.

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Thirdly, the language beliefs and stereotypes about both languages spread at a fast rate: it took less than ten years for the belief that French Canadians spoke a patois to take hold, and awareness of the Yankee drawl and twang took approximately the same amount of time. This isn’t to say that these beliefs are groundless: French Canadians did employ a number of words that originated from provinces in northern France, and certain segments of the British Canadian population – the descendants of the American Loyalists, for example – spoke an English more akin to the American variety than the British. Rather, the stereotype that all British Canadians spoke with a drawl or twang spread very quickly, despite the fact that many upper class Canadians, many of whom were recent immigrants from Great Britain, spoke BritEn. While it is clear in some cases that the commentators were familiar with previous travel journals, for example, there is evidence that many of the beliefs originated among French and British Canadians themselves, who served as “informants”, so to speak, to foreign travellers. These foreigners in turn published these account, with certain years (1854-1860, 1878-1890) seeing a marked increase in the number of works containing metalinguistic commentary.

Fourthly, and perhaps most significantly, we see a noticeable spike in the number of comments about both languages at approximately the same times. These points correspond more or less with major political or historical events, namely the Rebellions of 1837-38, the opening of the Grand Trunk Railway (1852) and the Great Western Railway two years later (1854), and the period following the Confederation (1867), which lasted up to the beginning of the 20th century.204 Although an event of major political importance, I have excluded the Constitutional Act of 1791 which created the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, as there were only two texts published in the 1790s (both in 1799), and comparatively few texts on either language prior to 1820.

It would be a vast understatement to say that the aftermath of the Rebellions of 1837-38 was a troubled time for Canada. Accused of harbouring Republican, and therefore anti-British, sentiments, French and British Canadians were held in low repute by the British, an attitude which was fueled by Lord Durham’s infamous Report (1839), upon whose recommendation Upper and Lower Canada were united into one Province. The belief that French Canadians spoke

204 At least, that is as far as this dissertation is concerned. Skimming through Dulong’s bibiliography, there are hundreds of works published up to 1966. A further investigation of this matter would be warranted.

247 a patois had become firmly entrenched during this time, and it is hardly coincidental that the first prescriptive work on CanFr, Maguire’s Manuel (1841), appeared shortly thereafter. At the same time, we see a number of criticisms concerning the American influence not only on CanEn, particularly in terms of spelling and pronunciation, but also on the culture and politics; Rolph (1836), for example, was very concerned by what he considered “anti-British sentiment” being promoted in Upper Canadian classrooms. The term “Yankee”, as we have seen, was used frequently during this period to describe any Anglophone resident of Upper or Lower Canada whose language or habits were similar to the Americans’.

The creation and rapid expansion of the Grand Trunk Railway system in 1852, which would eventually run from Windsor to Portland, Maine greatly facilitated travel in British North America, and therefore, we see a marked increase in the number of travel journals published after this point. In addition to this, the arrival of La Capricieuse in 1855 essentially set the stage for renewed diplomatic and economic ties between French Canadians and the French, and led to a marked increase in the number of French travellers to Canada after this point. Of the 65 French travellers who wrote works containing metalinguistic commentary on CanFr, 52 (80%) were published in 1855 or later205.

Finally, following the Confederation in 1867, we see a massive increase in the number of texts written by British and French Canadians in particular, as well as foreigners like the French. The number of texts published during the final third of the century (165) is nearly 1.5 times that of the previous two periods combined, spanning some 176 years. As we have seen, French Canadians became increasingly occupied with the legitimacy of their language, and sought to disprove erroneous beliefs (such as the patois myth), whereas British Canadians became compared more and more often to Americans on account of the language they spoke, and were also criticized for their alleged disdain for French. In particular, the years 1878-1890 were especially replete with texts containing metalinguistic commentary: more than half (90) of the texts published during this period were written during this twelve year stretch. It is difficult to say whether this increase is simply due to the fact that more works were published after the Confederation (and perhaps even because of the Confederation) – because there were more texts

205 This number excludes the works of Bougainville (1867), Franquet (1889), and Montcalm (1895), all of whom were in North America during the 18th century.

248 published – or if there was another, not wholly evident cause for this surge during this 13-year stretch. Given the wide variety of texts published during this time – travel journals, journal and newspaper articles, monographs, prescriptive and normative works – there does not appear to be a common thread that would explain the abundance of texts published during this period. More investigation is required.

In short, the sum of foreign commentary created a particular narrative of Canadians and the language they spoke, which was largely (but not entirely) built on hearsay, stereotyping, and driven by national, ethnic, religious, and cultural prejudices towards the French and “Yankees”. There were of course those who rejected this narrative, these beliefs, but they were a small minority. By the end of the 19th century, the common view was that CanEn and CanFr were both illegitimate, corrupted varieties of the original language.

The following table – combination of tables 5.1.1 and 5.1.2 – compares the first appearance of a given language belief or stereotype, as well as the total number of occurrences, for both CanFr and CanEn. In presenting the figures side by side, one can see some interesting parallels, as well as notable differences, regarding the metalinguistic commentary on both languages. The figures for CanFr are on the left, while the numbers for CanEn are on the right.

Table 5.3 Comparing origins and occurrences: CanFr and CanEn

Belief or stereotype Date # %

Quality or purity 1810/1807 115/7 20.2%/10%

Patois, jargon, etc. See below 107/4 18.8%/5.7%

Patois 1803/1845 (78/2) (13.7%/2.9%)

Jargon 1810/- (13/-) (2.2%/-)

Other 1821/1846 (16/2) (2.8%/2.9%)

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Anglicisms 1810/- 75/- 13.2%/-

Other -isms See below 116/22 20.4%/31.4%

Can/Am-isms 1789/1835 (33/22) (5.8%/31.4%)

Normanisms 1833/- (39/-) (6.9%/-)

Archaisms 1846/- (44/-) (7.7%/-)

Pronunciation 1810/1844 77/19 13.6%/27.1%

No English/French 1799/1871 24/14 4.2%/20%

Bilingual problem See below 54/- 9.5%/-

Bilingual 1799/- (32/-) (5.6%/-)

Anglicization 1806/- (22/-) (3.9%/-)

Total N/A 568/70 100%/100%206

With the sole exception of quality and purity, there is a significant gap in the first appearance of a given language belief or stereotype between CanFr and CanEn: 34 years for remarks on pronunciation, 36 years for Americanism/Canadianisms, 42 years for patois, and 72 years for the accusation that British and French Canadians didn’t speak the others’ language. Since we have already discussed why we begin seeing negative commentary about CanFr in the early 19th

206 I have not included the four “other” comments about CanEn here.

250 century – the natural evolution of the language in isolation, the establishment of a new linguistic norm in France following the Revolution – it behooves us to examine the case of CanEn. At first glance, it seems strange that there would be such a significant lag, so to speak: American Loyalists had been in Upper and Lower Canada since the mid-1770s, and would have spoken a variety of English if not identical, very similar to the one in the Mid-Atlantic States; hence Harriott’s comment on the homogeneity of the English spoken in North America.

However, there are two important factors to consider: firstly, although British travellers made up the bulk of the commentators during the first period, most of them spent their time in Lower Canada, in Montréal and Québec specifically. Therefore the British had little interaction with the “Yankees” or Upper Canada until the 1820s. Secondly, it was only in the late 1820s and 1830s that immigrants – like Thomas Rolph, Susanna Moodie, Catherine Parr Traill, etc. – arrived in Upper Canada, and noticed that the language the locals spoke was very different from their own. I believe that one of the reasons for the delay between the first appearance of a belief or stereotype in CanEn was not that it was identical to BritEn prior to the 1830s – that was patently not the case, at least, among the descendants of the American Loyalists – but that commentators simply weren’t interacting with or living among the “Yankees” until much later; rather, they would have been interacting with the British (Canadian) élite in major urban areas.

In addition to accounting for chronological differences, it is important to discuss the significant differences regarding the percentages for language beliefs and stereotypes between CanFr and CanEn. Concerning matters of quality or purity, the proportions (and volume, of course) for CanFr are significantly higher than for CanEn, which demonstrates that the question of quality or purity was far less important in the case of CanEn during the 19th century. We see a similar set of circumstances for patois, jargon, etc.: while many foreign commentators labelled CanFr as a patois, nearly every French Canadian writer discussed the patois matter as well. Given how rarely these terms were used to describe CanEn, the proportion is far lower.

Regarding the commentary on Canadianisms/Americanisms, differences in pronunciation, and the belief or accusation that French and British Canadians did not speak the others’ language, we in fact see the opposite: the proportions are much higher for CanEn than for CanFr. Observations about Americanisms and pronunciation were by the far the most common metalinguistic commentary one encounters for CanEn, while commentary on CanFr was more divided, with

251 patois, Anglicisms, Canadianisms (all three types), and pronunciation receiving significant attention. Finally, the most striking difference is the disparity in the claim that French Canadians didn’t speak English, and British Canadians didn’t speak French: the proportion of the latter is nearly five times that of the former, with all of the comments appearing in the final third of the century.

This review of the commentary on both CanFr and CanEn, along with a closer examination at why foreign travellers made the observations they did, sets the stage for a discussion of the Canadian reaction to these observations, i.e. the Canadian voices.

5.2 The emergence of the Canadian voices

As foreign beliefs and stereotypes about CanFr and CanEn continued to become more popular and more firmly entrenched over the course of the 19th century, to the point where seemingly few travellers or other commentators made the effort to verify claims about either language – or Canadian themselves – we can see the development of a counter narrative among Canadians, a development which I call the emergence of the Canadian voices. Not surprisingly, the emergence of these distinctly Canadian voices coincides with an increasing sense of Canadian – particularly French Canadian – nationalism. From the texts I have examined for this dissertation, I have ascertained three defining traits of the French and British Canadian voices.

1. The opposition to or rejection of foreign (mostly colonial) beliefs or stereotypes about Canadians and their language. For example, the stereotype that French Canadians all spoke a (Norman) patois incited a major uproar among the educated class, who sought to disprove this “ridiculous” notion. 2. The beginnings of the debate over whether to adopt and exogenous linguistic norm (i.e., Standard French, the Queen’s English), or to cultivate and promote an endogenous one. 3. The progression from an amateur to a professional approach towards the study of both languages in Canada. The advent of linguistic and philological studies on both languages, such as those of Roy (1877, 1883), Elliott (1884, 1887), and Chamberlain (1890, 1894) from the late 1870s onwards are representative examples of this.

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Given the difference in the volume of the texts written and the different statuses of both peoples and their language during the 19th century, there are a few clarifications that need to be made concerning the British Canadian voice.

Firstly, there were very few British Canadians (10) who wrote about their own language during the 19th century; at least, only from the texts that I have studied. It is highly probable that there are more references to CanEn tucked away in newspapers, though no work of any kind has been done on this subject. The vast discrepancy between British and French Canadian commentary on their own language can be attributed to a number of factors, including, but not limited to: the “time lag” of 30+ years that I discussed in the previous section, the important, manifold differences between the two peoples and their majority/minority status, and the apparent unawareness or unfamiliarity of some British Canadians with other English dialects spoken in Canada (Lighthall 1889).

Secondly, given the 30+ year time lag between the appearance of the first metalinguistic commentary on CanFr and CanEn, the debate over whether to adopt the British or American linguistic norm, while it certainly began in the 19th century (as early as the 1830s-1840s), did not come into full force until the 1920s-1930s. I will briefly discuss some of these works in the Conclusion, as this would be the next logical step to extend this research. Not surprisingly, we see British Canadians engaging in similar arguments about the legitimacy of certain linguistic form, and which variety of English they spoke; much like French Canadians had done (and were still doing) from the 1870s onwards.

Thirdly, there is a distinct absence of prescriptive or normative works written explicitly for British Canadians during the 19th century207. While this would appear at first glance to be an insurmountable difference, and thereby weaken the case for the emergence of two Canadian voices at approximately the same time, there were such works in use: the standard British schoolbooks, dictionaries, and grammars that were brought in to replace the American ones, thereby “fixing” the problem of American influence on the language. I will discuss this particular case in greater detail in section 5.2.2.3.

207 Even Clapin’s New dictionary of Americanisms (1902) contains very few “true” Canadianisms, being dedicated mostly to the language south of the Canadian border.

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Much as I have done throughout this thesis, this section is divided into two main parts: the characteristics of the French Canadian (5.2.1) and the British Canadian voice (5.2.2). These are further divided into three subsections, in which I will discuss each of the three aforementioned features of these voices, and provide examples for each.

5.2.1 The French Canadian Voice

While the first texts written by French Canadians on CanFr date back to the beginning of the 19th century – 1817 (Bibaud) and 1828 (M.D.) being the earliest I have found – it wasn’t until after the creation of the United Province of Canada in 1841 and the publication of Thomas Maguire’s Manuel in the same year that French Canadians began to discuss in earnest (and in ever- increasing numbers) the differences between CanFr and Standard French. Prior to this point, only three French Canadians – the two mentioned above, and Bouchette (1832) – wrote about the aesthetics or utility of CanFr, compared to 13 during the second period. Of particular importance is the appearance of the first prescriptive works designed for French Canadians, by French Canadians: Boucher-Belleville’s Dictionnaire des barbarismes (1855), and Gingras’ Recueil des expressions vicieuses (1860) and its two subsequent editions (1867, 1880). It is also during this middle period that we see the first evidence that French Canadians like Chauveau (1853) were aware of what foreigners thought about CanFr.

Following the Confederation, we see a significant increase in the number of works on CanFr written by French Canadians (56), ranging from newspaper and journal articles, essays, prescriptive works, and several book-length studies or monographs. Naturally, this does not include the numerous language chronicles written during this period, including those of Buies (1865-66, 1888), Fréchette (1893-1903), Lusignan (1884-85), or Rinfret (1895), among others. Considering the concentration of these numerous texts on CanFr in the post-Confederation period, it is evident that discourse on CanFr had become predominately a French Canadian affair. Moreover, there is a clear increase in the number of linguistic, philological, and lexicographical studies and articles written during this period, many of which lent support to those in favour of an endogenous linguistic norm.

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5.2.1.1 Opposition to, or rejection of, foreign opinion

The claim that the language spoken in Canada was not French, but a patois or jargon, must have come as a great surprise to French Canadians, who had spoken nothing but French (of le grand usage) since settling in North America in the 17th century. Indeed, French Canadians were praised by numerous commentators, such as Marmier (1851), Rameau de Saint-Père (1859), and De Lamothe (1879) for having preserved the French language more or less intact, Anglicisms and Canadianisms notwithstanding. While we have seen some of the likely explanations for the “sudden” appearance of negative attitudes towards CanFr, namely the ascension of Standard French in France and Europe following the French Revolution, there is a conspicuous lack of early (pre-1850s) refutations of foreign beliefs about CanFr (the patois myth in particular) by French Canadians. How can we account for this apparent lacuna in the literature?

On the one hand, it is entirely possible that French Canadians simply didn’t know about what foreigners thought about their language, or they did, but simply didn’t care. Why would French Canadians – city-dwellers or habitants – read foreign travel journals, the overwhelming majority of which were written in English? On the other hand, there are clues in some of the primary sources from the early 19th century that indicate that French Canadians were in fact aware of these beliefs, and rejected them outright. This attitude can be inferred, I believe, from the travel journals of Boardman (1833) and Coke (1833), two English travellers who evidently were well- acquainted with the French Canadians. Boardman’s young French Canadian travelling companion remarked that the French Canadian dialect “was one which the Parisians themselves might study with advantage.” (Boardman 1833: 389) For his part, Coke remarked that the average or “typical” Canadian believed that a patois had been introduced in France, and that pure French survived and thrived in Canada alone. While it is evident that both writers were somewhat skeptical of their interlocutors’ claims – Boardman even admitted to humouring the young Canadian – their commentary points to very early evidence that (some) French Canadians were aware that the language they spoke was different from the one spoken in France, which they believed had become a patois.

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Moreover, we have Chauveau’s outright dismissal of the claim that French Canadians spoke a patois in the notes of his novel Charles Guérin (1853)208. His highly detailed commentary on the history of the French and English languages in North America further supports the theory that French Canadians were aware of foreign opinion (the British and the Americans specifically) of their language. They did not, however, appear to be terribly concerned by what Anglophones thought of their language at this point. (The negative effects of the English language were another matter altogether.) As Noël (1990) explained, prior to 1850, French Canadians were far more concerned with proving that the French language had a right to exist alongside English (see Meilleur 1842) in Canada. Furthermore, Bouchard (1998) demonstrated that French Canadians were also preoccupied with the modernization of their language, which had been triggered by the three-way grammatical debate between Maguire, Demers, and Bibaud in 1842. It is my belief that the combination of these two major concerns meant that what foreigners believed about the language was of tertiary interest to French Canadians at best; hence Chauveau’s casual dismissal.

The years following the Confederation marked a turning point on this matter for French Canadians, who became increasingly insistent on disproving foreign beliefs about their language, as evidenced by the marked increase not only in the number of prescriptive works, but also the numerous newspaper and journal articles, essays and monographs that were published in the final third of the century: of the 158 texts written on CanFr from 1867-1902, more than half (94) belonged to one of these genres, 56 of which were written by French Canadians. Since beginning this dissertation, I have often wondered why French Canadians only became interested in this matter at this particular moment, when they had seemingly been content to casually dismiss – or remain silent about – foreign beliefs about CanFr for nearly 70 years. The first possibility to consider is the effects of Confederation: the creation of Canada in 1867 had significant, long- lasting effects on all Canadians, who began the progress of renegotiating their respective cultural, national, social, and linguistic identities.

Secondly, French Canadians’ increasing interest in disproving foreign beliefs about CanFr – namely the belief that it was a patois or jargon – can be seen as the next stage of modernizing the French language in Canada, as Bouchard has theorized. Although many educated French Canadians were highly critical of the problems or flaws of CanFr (Anglicisms primarily, though

208 The novel was originally published in La Revue Canadienne in 1846.

256 increasing attention was paid to differences in pronunciation and Canadianisms), this did not mean they welcomed foreign opinions on the matter, even from the French. Building on these, I will further posit that the explosion of interest in dismissing or countering beliefs and stereotypes about CanFr is linked to the publication of several French travel journals, newspaper and journal articles which described French Canadians and their language in less than flattering terms. Although the following is not an exhaustive list – as names and titles were not always specified by the author – these works were singled out by Sulte (1873, 1877, 1885), and anonymous contributor (also 1874), Dunn (1874, 1876), and Legendre (1887):

1. Duvergier de Hauranne’s Huit mois en Amérique (1866) and Kowalski’s À travers l’Amérique (1872)209. 2. French academic Francisque Michel’s lost article210 on CanFr, which allegedly borrowed liberally from LaRue’s essay (1867). 3. An article that appeared in Le Courrier des États-Unis (ca. 1874), claiming that French Canadians spoke (and read) a Norman patois.

It was one thing for Anglophones to claim that French Canadians spoke a patois or jargon – they had been doing so for over 40 years by the 1870s – but another matter altogether when the French started to believe it too. This was simply unacceptable for journalists like Dunn and Sulte, who took it upon themselves to show that there was no patois in Canada, nor had their ever been one. Whether it is directly due to these journalists’ efforts and zeal for disproving erroneous beliefs about CanFr, or a natural development in how French Canadians viewed their own language, it is evident that after this point, French Canadians were loath to accept foreign criticism of their language. This new attitude was first observed by French writer Auguste Foubert (b. 1840) in his travel journal La vie d’émigrant en Amérique (1875):

Les Canadiens, qui déclarent parler le pur français du XVIIe siècle, sont très- susceptibles sous le rapport de leur langue et n’entendent pas facilement badinage à ce sujet. Un journal français de New-York publia, il y a quelques temps, une des fables de Lafontaine: le Corbeau et le renard, traduite en vieux patois normand; ‘idiome qui tend à s’effacer de jour en jour sauf au Canada,’ ajoutait le journal.

209 See sections 4.1.1.1 and 4.1.1.2 for their commentary. 210 Dunn (1876) claimed that article in question appeared in an issue of the popular journal, La Revue Britannique, while Dulong (1966) gave a date of 1870 for the publication date. I have not found an extant copy of this journal, but portions were reprinted by Dunn, and Sulte (1877) also commented on some of the content.

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Cette simple allusion dite sans arrière-pensée, - nous le croyons, - produisit dans la société canadienne l’effet d’une torpille. Les journaux de Montréal prirent feu aussitôt et entamèrent une violente polémique contre les écrivains français, qui, assuraient-ils, ne parlaient du Canada que pour le tourner en ridicule. (Foubert 1875: 258)

While Foubert was certainly skeptical of French Canadian claims about the purity of their language – “Sans la moindre intention d’offenser les Canadiens, prêter leur accent à Bossuet, Corneille, Molière, Racine ou Boileau, cela est assez contestable” (1875: 258) – his passage clearly shows that French Canadians were not pleased with the uninformed metalinguistic commentary of foreigners. Dunn (1876) singled out the belief that French Canadians spoke a patois, ridiculing an unnamed group of foreign writers:

Les Canadiens Français ont-ils un patois?

Oui, si l’on en croit quelques écrivains qui sont venus au Canada ou qui en sont repartis miraculeusement sans y être venus211. Ils se plaisent à dire que nous parlons le patois normand212 et citent pour le prouver des mots qu’ils ont entendus chez nos habitants, mais que ceux-ci ne comprendraient pas s’ils leur étaient répétés. (Dunn 1876: 262)

Later, Dunn highlighted the importance of disseminating the truth about CanFr particularly among the French, who often received erroneous information from those who had travelled to Canada:

Nous sommes toujours fiers de faire parler de nous à l’étranger, surtout en France; mais nous tenons à ce que l’on ait de nous une opinion juste dans notre ancienne mère-patrie, et rien ne nous blesse tant que les appréciations de certains publicistes qui semblent avoir vu notre pays à travers les lunettes de la fantaisie. Pour ceux-là nous sommes sans pitié, et plus d’un parmi nous a pris la résolution d’aller les213 dénoncer jusqu’à Paris. (Dunn 1876: 265)

Dunn continued by highlighting the numerous problems with Michel’s article, namely the “impossible” words and pronunciation the latter ascribed to French Canadians, and the striking similarities to LaRue’s article.

211 This is most likely a reference to Michel and the writer of the article in Le Courrier des États-Unis. 212 See also Blain de Saint-Aubin (1867), who admonished his fellow French for spreading such rumours. 213 It is not clear to whom Dunn was referring in this case.

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In his essay Situation de la langue française (1885), Sulte singled out Duvergier de Hauranne (nearly twenty years after the latter published Huit mois en Amérique) for his comment about the “jargon normand” spoken in Canada:

Le préjugé joue dans ce monde un rôle énorme; la plupart des “Français de France” qui nous visitent, entendant des sons qui rappellent la Normandie, sans examen, comme M. Duvergier de Hauranne, que nous parlons “un jargon normand qui a gardé tout l’accent du terroir.” Le mot “jargon” dépasse la mesure. Nous n’avons ni Breton bretonnant, ni Gascon gasconnant, ni grasseyeurs, ni chanteurs.

Cet accent de terroir normand dont parle M. Duvergier se réduit à fort peu de chose. (Sulte 1885: 4)

French Canadian soldier and prolific writer Narcisse-Édouard Faucher de Saint-Maurice (1844- 1897) made a similar observation in his essay Honni soit qui mal y pense: notes sur la formation du Franco-Normand et de l’Anglo-saxon (1892). While Faucher de Saint-Maurice wrote essentially the same as the previous authors – that foreign commentators were misinformed about the nature of the CanFr – he was the first to remark that AcFr was seen in similar terms214:

Le Canadien français parle-t-il le patois? Cette question a été mainte fois discutée et même affirmée par d’autres; niée par nous.

Ceux qui crient au patois et assurent qu’il est généralement parlé par le Canadien français et par l’Acadien se rendent-ils bien compte des mots de la vieille langue française que renferment la chronique de Saint-Denis, les gestes du roi Pépin […] (Faucher de Saint-Maurice 1892: 10)

Although he did not specify commentators of a specific nationality, it is evident that by this point, French Canadians had heard and read countless iterations of the patois myth. In a later passage, Faucher de Saint-Maurice asked a rhetorical question regarding patois, and echoed both Dunn and Sulte’s earlier comments on the matter:

Pourquoi aller partout répétant que les Canadiens français et les Acadiens ne parlent qu’un patois? Cette rumeur a été répandue souventes [sic] fois par de ces écrivains ternes, par de ces penseurs postiches qui n’ont passé que quelques jours avec nous, juste assez de temps pour nous mal juger et pour se copier les uns les autres. (Faucher de Saint-Maurice 1892: 21-22)

214 Rather, the first writer in the corpus I employed. It would be a worthwhile endeavour to examine all the travel journals, newspaper and journal articles, etc. that emphasize the Maritime Provinces.

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While Faucher de Saint-Maurice did not provide a response to this question, focusing instead on a history of the French and English languages, it is notable that the stereotypical foreign commentator – regardless of his or her nationality – would only spend a short time among Canadians, and write not so much from experience, but what previous writers had said.

In short, it can be said that there is a perceptible shift in French Canadian attitudes towards foreigners beliefs about CanFr over the course of the 19th century: while seemingly content, or perhaps even unaware of foreign travellers commentary on CanFr during the first half of the century, a number of high-profile French Canadian journalists and writers called out these travellers for their erroneous, misinformed accounts of the language, and sought to dispel or counter these beliefs. Although it cannot be said that the French Canadians were successful in disproving the patois myth – if anything, belief in the French Canadian patois only grew stronger in the first half of the 20th century (Bouchard 1988) – the surge of interest in the legitimacy of CanFr during the final third of the century set the stage for a debate over which linguistic norm to support, a debate which I will now discuss.

5.2.1.2 Conflict between endogenous and exogenous norms

As discussed by Bouchard (2012), the years 1841-42 marked a major turning point for how French Canadians – educated members of the upper classes, specifically – viewed their own language. Early testimonies like those of Bibaud and M.D. notwithstanding, it is likely that the overwhelming majority of French Canadians had a favourable attitude towards CanFr; after all, why should they feel any differently about the language they spoke on a purely aesthetic level? Obviously, the matter of the loss in political and social status following the Treaty of Paris in 1763 had significant repercussions of its own, namely French Canadians becoming a minority population in virtually every sense of the word. The heated debate over the legitimacy and correctness of CanFr, which was set off by Maguire, split public opinion into essentially three groups, as defined by Tardivel (1881). Having summarized and reviewed all the commentary on CanFr in 5.1.1, I feel it is necessary to review and expand upon Tardivel’s three categories, and provide specific examples of each.

Firstly, there are those who believed that CanFr was as good as, or superior to the French spoken in France, or Paris, the location depending on whether it was a matter of comparing “peasants to peasants”, or city-dwellers to city-dwellers. None of the French Canadian commentators

260 perfectly espoused this belief, although there are numerous references to this group in the primary sources. We have already seen the opinions of Boardman and Coke’s interlocutors (1833), as well as Lyell’s (1845) belief that the French spoken by French peasants was “often far less correct” than the language spoken by the habitants, a view that Chauveau (1853) shared as well. In the introduction to his Dictionnaire des barbarismes et des solécismes (1855), Boucher- Belleville implied that this group was fairly large:

The remarkable part about this passage is not that some French Canadians believed they spoke “decent enough” French, a position which is not the same as supporting an endogenous linguistic norm – rather, it would be indicative of contentment or even complacency – but that other French Canadians would be against showing off the “flaws” or “mistakes” of contemporary CanFr. Although this is a position I infrequently encountered, it is notable that Bibaud (1879) was harshly criticized for the same reason by Fréchette (1879, writing under the pseudonym Jules Airvaux), as was Tardivel (1880) by Gélinas (1880), and Manseau (1881) by Hix (1881). It would be appear to be a case of not wanting to appear weak before the so-called enemy – British Canadians and Americans, primarily – or providing them with ammunition to use against French Canadians. (See 5.3.2 for a more detailed discussion on these.)

Secondly, there are those who believed that CanFr was of poor quality, degenerate and corrupt on account of the numerous Anglicisms, barbarisms, solecisms, and, to a lesser extent, Canadianisms. Specifically, members of this group believed that in order to “fix” the language, French Canadians needed to adhere as closely as possible to the French spoken and written in France. In other words, these were the supporters of an exogenous linguistic norm. This group, whose roots can be traced back to Bibaud’s language chronicle from 1817, and which would persist throughout the 19th century and into the 20th included writers such as Maguire (1841), Buies (1888), and Rinfret (1896). Although other writers of prescriptive works like Gingras (1860, 1867, 1880) and Caron (1880), among others, were critical of the numerous problems

261 with CanFr, Buies was adamant that French Canadians ought to model their speech entirely on the French model:

Je ne demande au lecteur qu’une chose, c’est de bien se pénétrer des dangers réels et redoutables de la situation, de bien se persuader que le baragouin que nous parlons fait de nous des déclassés ou plutôt des inclassables au milieu des autres peuples, et que si nous ne nous décidons pas enfin à parler le français comme il l’est communément parlé ailleurs, à rendre nos pensées intelligibles, à leur donner des expressions, nettes et rationnelles, nous devons nous attendre à toute sorte d’humiliation et à des dédains bien cruels pour notre amour propre. (Buies 1888: 5)

In other words, Buies established the following dichotomy: French Canadians could either speak a clear, intelligible language – French – or they could suffer humiliation speaking a bastardized form of the language, strongly influenced not only by the English language, but also by Canadianisms of all sorts. Buies revisited this notion later, employing metaphors of war and horror:

Le temps est venu, et il presse, où il faut mettre un terme au galimatias qui nous envahit, nous résoudre enfin à parler un français réel, et non pas, sous la dénomination trompeuse de français, un anglais travesti, corrompu, interlope, également étrangère à la nature des deux langues. Le nombre des expressions dont nous nous servons, des tours de phrase que nous employons, qui sont purement anglais, et que nous croyons français parce que les mots qui les composent sont français, parce que nous appliquons aux mots des terminaisons françaises et que nous soumettons les phrases, par une traduction littérale, à de véritables contorsions, à des constructions dont le sens comme l’origine échappent à ceux qui ne connaissent que le français pur, est tellement effrayant que, lorsque j’essayai d’annoter toutes les horreurs de style qui débordent dans nos journaux et dans les documents imprimés quelconques, je ne tardai pas à être pris d’épouvante et de désespoir de jamais arriver à une réforme victorieuse, et je résolus de me laisser aller avec le torrent, mais en me tenant toutefois la tête hors de l’eau…mais j’avais tort. (Buies 1888: 10-11)

Colourful language aside, Buies argued for cleaning up the language, the best method for which would be to simply follow the example set by the French. Rinfret shared Buies’ views on following the French linguistic norm, though he conceded that Canadianisms were not necessarily an evil for CanFr:

Il nous faut apprendre le français tel qu’il existe en France. Il ne peut être question pour nous de créer une langue spéciale. Je suis forcé de condamner, bien à regret, une foule d’expressions employées ici tous les jours, mais qui ne sont plus correctes parce qu’elles ont vieilli ou changé de signification. Si nous

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commençons à nous écarter, de propos délibéré, du véritable français, tel qu’il est parlé et compris de nos jours, en conservant nos archaïsmes, où nous arrêterons- nous?

Il est inutile d’ajouter que je ne condamne pas les mots de la langue canadienne qui n’ont pas d’équivalents en France. (Rinfret 1896: iii)

To sum up the philosophy of the supporters of an exogenous linguistic norm, one need only look at the terms employed by Buies and Rinfret; there was only one “real”, “veritable”, and “intelligible” form of French: the variety spoken and written in France by the educated class. In other words, “Canadian French” is not a concept that should or ought to exist.

Finally, there are those who understood that CanFr was not the same as the French spoken in France, but believed that the former was no less legitimate or valid because of it. This group, which included writers like Dunn, Legendre, Sulte, and Clapin, were strongly in favour of promoting an endogenous linguistic norm. Since we examined all four of these authors’ arguments for the legitimacy of CanFr in 4.1.1.1, there is no need to repeat their words here; essentially, however, the argument for an endogenous linguistic norm essentially comes down to one simple truth: Canada was not France, and had not been for over a well over a hundred years when the first supporters of an endogenous norm began writing.

While such an argument is incredibly simple, it was one that was evidently not common until the end of the century. Rather than seeing lexical innovations and word borrowing (Canadianisms) as a weakness or defect of CanFr, writers like Legendre and Clapin in particular found them to be proof of its legitimacy and history. Most significantly, supporters of a Canadian linguistic norm turned to the fields of philology, linguistics, and lexicography to justify their arguments: Roy (1877), Elliott (1884, 1885, 1886) and Chamberlain’s (1894) articles seem to have been the trigger for this, as both were cited by a number of French Canadian (and French) writers such as Sulte (1877, 1882), Réveillaud (1884), Legendre (1887), and Clapin (1894). In addition, Dunn’s Glossaire and Clapin’s Dictionnaire were both well-researched, and made reference to earlier lexicographic and linguistic studies, whereas those like Maguire, for example, relied exclusively on the DAF for his pronouncements. This will lead us directly into a discussion of the final characteristic of the Canadian voices: the progression from an amateur to a professional approach.

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Regardless of the significant differences in opinion, both supporters of an exogenous and an endogenous linguistic norm agreed on one important point: that CanFr needed to be purged of undesirable elements, as it had been “corrupted” in various ways since the English assumed control of the colony in 1763. The exact nature of this task, as well as which elements were considered undesirable, varied: although Buies and Rinfret were both in favour of emulating French in all respects – the “real” language – Buies sought to eliminate or cut out anything that wasn’t explicitly Standard French – Anglicisms and all manner of Canadianisms – whereas Rinfret felt no need to replace words for which there was no true French equivalent.

5.2.1.3 The progression from an amateur to a professional approach

The final defining characteristic of the French Canadian voice is a progression from an amateur approach to the study of CanFr towards a more professional one, which came to fruition in the 1870s. Stated more simply, we begin to see not only an increase in the number of linguistic, philological, and lexicographical studies215 written by French Canadians and foreigners alike, but also in the use of these works to support (or rather refute) certain beliefs about CanFr, and to demonstrate its legitimacy or authenticity. In short, this was a battle between what the “folk” believed about CanFr, i.e., the vast majority of foreign commentators216, and what language professionals knew from actual linguistic evidence.

While it is tempting to consider the earliest prescriptive works – those of Maguire, Boucher- Belleville, and Gingras – as being indicative of a professional approach, I do not believe that would be an entirely accurate assessment of the matter. All three authors had the aim of “fixing” problems with CanFr, such as eliminating Anglicisms and other “barbarisms”, but they relied entirely on what was written in the DAF to support their claims; if a word wasn’t in there, it wasn’t French. Therefore, French Canadians should stop employing the word in question. In addition, references to previous travellers who had either a good or bad impression of CanFr do not reflect a movement towards the professional either: all the “I have been assured/told/informed by Mr. X” is not linguistic evidence, but hearsay, regardless of the

215 Obviously, I am not considering the numerous cultural, historical, and political studies that were also published during this time. 216 There are of course several notable exceptions to this: British travellers Shaw (1856), Day (1864), and White (1870) displayed a strong familiarity with the French language, and gave very specific, unique examples of the speech they encountered.

264 informant’s social status or position. Finally, Maximilien Bibaud’s Le Mémorial des vicissitudes et des progrès de la langue française en Canada (1879), which was essentially a collection of quotations about CanFr, does not count either: not surprisingly, this work was harshly criticized by Fréchette (writing under the pseudonym Jules Airvaux) shortly after its publication.

Rather, works that are indicative of a more professional approach are evidence-based; in other words, we begin to see far more specific commentary on a variety of linguistic matters: for pronunciation, precise examples are given; for Canadianisms, Normanisms, and archaisms, the appropriate reference to a dictionary or dictionaries are provided; and perhaps most significantly, for linguistic change, actual evidence is given. Given how many texts written in the final three decades of the 19th century were written, I cannot possibly comment on all of them in this section, but will discuss only those which are the best representative examples of each. Many of the following were written by French Canadians, while those written by outsiders – the articles by Roy, Elliott, and Chamberlain – were evidently well-known by these, and used as evidence or proof.

In terms of pronunciation, the works of three French Canadian writers are of particular importance: Lagacé’s Cours de lecture à haute voix (1875), Dunn’s essay A propos du “patois canadien” (1876), and a pair of articles written by Rivard, “De la prononciation dans la lecture à haute voix” (1900), which fed into his Manuel de la parole (1901). Where previous commentators referred to French Canadian pronunciation in somewhat vague terms, i.e., anyone who wrote that CanFr had a Norman sound to it without explaining why (Lebrun 1833, Pavie 1850), or caricaturized Canadian speech (Tolfrey 1845), these three writers (among others) provided specific examples. As we saw in section 4.1.1.3, Lagacé enumerated the various “vices” of French Canadian pronunciation, e.g. nasal vowels, the diphthong oi, è, the distinction between /a/ and /α/, /ʁ/ and /r/, the drawl, etc. In addition to highlighting the pronunciation of oi, Dunn noted the palatalization of the consonants d and t, giving “dzire” and “partsir”. Rivard, for his part, further elaborated on the previous works, and discussed a number of words in which French Canadian pronunciation was “defective.”

Realizing that “Canadianisms” was far too general a word for it carry any real meaning, Clapin (1894) undertook the task of defining and categorizing them; this act marked a huge step forwards for supporters of an endogenous linguistic norm, as it became clear that not all “isms”

265 were created equally, nor were they all a “corruption” on the language. In the introduction to his Dictionnaire canadien-français, Clapin lists the six types of Canadianisms that existed in CanFr, and dedicated a chapter to each one. I have chosen to reproduce this passage in full, as it demonstrates his methodical (professional) approach to the problem:

Les mots en usage parmi les Canadiens-Français, et qui ne se trouvent pas dans les dictionnaires usuels, peuvent être groupés dans les six catégories suivantes:

1° Les termes ‘vieux français,’ tombés en désuétude en France, et conservés au Canada, soit dans toute leur intégrité, ou avec quelques légères modifications ;

2° Les différentes formes particulières à celles des provinces de France, qui ont fourni autrefois les plus forts contingents de colons pour le Canada. Nommons ici entr’autres la Normandie et la Saintonge. Ainsi que pour le vieux français, plusieurs de ces formes sont encore intactes, tandis que beaucoup d’autres ont été plus ou moins remaniées;

3° Les mots absolument français, si l’on s’en tient à leur forme écrite ou parlée, mais ayant au Canada une acception différente du français moderne. Ces interversions, dont plusieurs sont des plus curieuses, sont surtout la conséquence directe du contact avec la population anglaise;

4° Les canadianismes proprement dits, c’est-à-dire les nouveaux mots créés de toutes pièces au Canada;

5° Les termes anglais et sauvages, écrits et prononcés tels que dans les langues originelles;

6° Les termes anglais et sauvages, plus ou moins francisés. (Clapin 1894: vii-viii)

While previous writers had noted the existence of different kinds of Canadianisms, Clapin was the first to organize them systematically, and discuss them in turn. The publication of this dictionary clearly marked a dedication to a systematized study of the language, which resulted in the foundation of the Société du parler français au Canada less than ten years later.

While most of the French Canadian writers during the third period alluded to the 17th century (occasionally 16th, or even earlier) origins of CanFr, it was in fact Anglophones who posited that the French language spoken in Canada was as legitimate or valid – if not more so – than the variety spoken in France, Paris specifically. A British Canadian by birth, Roy lived in Montréal for nearly all his life, and was keenly interested in the matters of the French and English languages in Canada, particularly in their evolution. In his highly influential article “The French language in Canada” (1877), Roy hypothesized that, based on pronunciation and lexical items,

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CanFr had in fact deviated less from 17th century French than had ParFr. American linguist Elliott, who was allegedly told by a colleague that he would be wasting his time studying the French spoken in Canada (see Legendre 1887), arrived at a somewhat different conclusion in a series of articles, claiming that the French spoken in Canada at the end of the 19th century was a compromise between the “good French” spoken by the clergy members, and the rougher French spoken by the habitants. Naturally, both writers’ claims would be better understood in light of Gendron’s distinction between le bel usage and le bon usage. In any case, French Canadians like Sulte and Legendre were clearly familiar with their works, and utilized them – Roy’s in particular – to substantiate claims that CanFr was legitimate.

It cannot be said that the movement towards linguistic studies solved all the problems for French Canadians; on the contrary, Bouchard (1998) demonstrated that CanFr continued to lose prestige throughout the first half of the 20th century, and reached a low just prior to the Quiet Revolution. However, the foundation of the Société du parler français au Canada in 1902 marked a commitment to the development of professional discourse on language; the Bulletin contained a variety of linguistic and lexicographical-themed articles in each issue, and made available for the first time both Potier and Viger’s manuscripts. In addition to the Society’s Glossaire (1930), the first half of the century also saw a huge increase in the number of prescriptive works published (those of Etienne Blanchard being particularly popular).

5.2.2 The British Canadian voice

According to the sources that I consulted, the British Canadian reaction to criticism of CanEn was almost non-existent. There were no equivalents of Dunn, Sulte, or Legendre to promote the legitimacy of CanEn, nor was there an Anglophone Buies to denounce any and all Americanisms. I believe this void is due to principally three factors: firstly, British Canadians were the political, economic, and numerical majority in Canada217, so their language was never in danger or being replaced, or “amalgamated” with the French. Moreover, the English language enjoyed a prestige in North America was directly related to the power of both the United States and the British Empire. Secondly, the members of the British Canadian élite were strongly encouraged to follow the British linguistic norm, particularly after the 1850s (Chambers 1993).

217 It is also important to note that Anglophones were the linguistic majority in North America.

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Thirdly, despite their superior numbers, I have not found one text written by a Canadian “Yankee”, or rather, by a British Canadian who wasn’t part of the upper class.

This is not to say that British Canadians were unaffected, or uninterested in matters of language, however: Chambers (2004) demonstrated that members of the upper classes were concerned enough with the quality and sound – particularly the sound – of the language they spoke that they committed to using only British textbooks, (mostly) followed British spelling conventions, and cultivated a British-like pronunciation through elocution lessons. Given the testimonies of British Canadians like Jephson (1897) and Helliwell (1902), however, it does not appear that these measures were particularly effective. A significant obstacle in characterizing the British Canadian voice is that only a handful of British Canadians commented on CanEn, and only then in the final decade of the 19th century, Canniff’s monograph (1869) notwithstanding. For this reason, much needs to be inferred about their voice from the observations of foreign commentators.

5.2.2.1 Opposition to, or rejection of, foreign opinion

Although the first clear evidence of British Canadian linguistic and cultural insecurity did not appear until the 1850s, it is probable that such feelings were decades older. Considering that the British Government expressly promoted emigration to Upper and Lower Canada following the War of 1812 to both counterbalance the French population, and to dilute Republican sentiment in the colony (the goal was the same after the Rebellions), it would be remarkable if there were no tensions between the two very different groups of Upper Canadians. Indeed, as early as 1824, Talbot remarked that Upper Canadian settlers – presumably those of American Loyalist descent – mocked the British dialects, and praised the American ones, “both Republican [American] and Monarchical [Canadian].”

In addition to commenting on the speech and manners of their “Yankee” neighbours, Parr (1836) and Moodie (1852) both noticed that these “Yankees” were an exceptionally proud people, and had an antagonistic attitudes towards the newer British settlers. Moodie wrote down the following from one of her conversations with a young “Yankee” girl who lived next door: “‘Now, don’t go to call me “gal”- and pass off your English airs on us. We are genuine Yankees, and think ourselves as good – yes, a great deal better than you. I am a young lady.’” (Moodie 1852: 63) Bishop (1856) noted a similar attitude among the British Canadians she encountered,

268 and recorded what one could consider British Canadians’ insecurities – both linguistic and cultural – towards the British. Surprisingly, Bishop noted that the antagonism was not limited to the descendants of the American Loyalists:

The manners of the emigrants who settle in Canada are far from prepossessing. Wherever I heard torrents of slang and abuse of England; wherever I noticed brutality of manner, unaccompanied by respect to ladies, I always found upon inquiry that the delinquent had newly arrived from the Old Country…The Irish are the noisiest of the enemies of England, and carry with them to Canada the most inveterate enmity to “Sassenach” rule. The term “slang-whangers”218 must have been invented for them. (Bishop 1856: 199)

While the above is more a social or cultural commentary than a linguistic one, it is important to recognize that anti-British sentiment existed among Upper Canadians, even those who had recently arrived in the colony. In other words, the British Government’s plan to Anglicize their remaining North American colony was not altogether successful, as they were never able to completely eliminate anti-British sentiments among its subjects, nor modify in any appreciable way the English language as it had been spoken in Canada since the late 18th century.

Regarding the language specifically, there are several indications that British Canadians were somewhat embarrassed by, or highly sensitive about the language they spoke. White (1870), for example, thought it unwise to tell British Canadians that they sounded more like Americans than the British, while Crosweller (1898) noted the outrage a British Canadian felt upon being mistaken for an American on account of his language. British Canadian by birth, Jephson (1897) remarked that British Canadians had a negative opinion of BritEn, and mocked anyone who spoke with British accent. How widespread this negative attitude towards BritEn was cannot be determined from the texts that I studied, as only Talbot and Jephson mentioned this phenomenon, but it might be indicative of a cultural and linguistic conflict between the British Canadian élite, who sought to emulate British speech and habits, and the rest of the populace, who were more Americanized in all respects.

218 According to the 1913 edition of Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, a slang-whanger is: “One who uses abusive slang; a ranting partisan.” (Webster 1913: 1352) It is clear from the context that Bishop intended the second meaning for the Irish Canadians.

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5.2.2.2 Conflict between exogenous and endogenous norms

Unlike the previous trait, there is more textual evidence indicating a conflict about which linguistic norm ought to be adopted in Canada during the 19th century: the American or the British. As early as the 1830s, British visitors like Rolph (1836), Harris (cited by Canniff 1869), and Brown (1844) expressed concern at the potential harmful effects American influence would have not only on the language, but also on the security of the colony and its people. That this was considered a problem of the utmost importance prior to and following the Rebellions was hardly surprising: Americans were largely sympathetic towards the Rebellions, and the Republican- leaning politics of its leaders. The British and British Canadians were obviously keenly aware of the important link between language and nation – “Anglicanus” having written in favour of abolishing the French language in Canada for that very reason – and saw the dangers of using American textbooks and dictionaries in the classroom. That Webster’s dictionary, which was written with the express purpose of standardizing (or creating) a distinctly American form of English, was used in Upper Canadian classrooms (Canniff 1869) gave cause for significant concern.

With such dangers as Webster’s dictionary “threatening the purity” of English in Canada and challenging the preeminence of BritEn, the absence of prescriptive works published for British Canadians seems to have been a tremendous oversight; surely there was a need to purge the Americanisms that had entered the language in the early 19th century. However, it turned out that there was never a need for works designed specifically for British Canadians: American schoolbooks were simply replaced by British ones, and the Webster was exchanged for a British one (Canniff 1869, Chambers 1993); through this simple substitution, it was believed, British forms would regain preeminence in Canada. Whereas French Canadians felt compelled to debate the validity of Canadianisms and Anglicisms throughout the 19th and into the 20th century, British Canadians simply followed the British linguistic norm; or perhaps better and more accurately stated, the British linguistic norm was imposed upon them, as they were for all intents and purposes still British.

As we have seen, however, the so-called victory in the war of the schoolbooks and dictionaries, and the promotion of the British standard, were clearly not enough to overcome the variety of the language introduced by the American Loyalists nearly a century earlier. The fact that Prime

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Minister Macdonald felt it necessary to mandate British spelling for government purposes (a very restricted application, it must be noted) suggests that American spelling was evidently common throughout much of the Dominion, and therefore was not one of the various “Canadian Dainties.”

A final thought to consider regarding the debate over whether to adopt an exogenous or endogenous linguistic norm is that technically, Standard British and American English were both varieties that were ultimately foreign to Canada. For although CanEn shared many characteristics with both varieties of English, a matter which was complicated somewhat by the cultivation of various “Canadians Dainties” in the latter half of the 19th century, it possessed (and still possesses) its own unique traits that distinguish it from BritEn and AmEn. The real push for a Canadian dictionary of the English language didn’t begin until the 1950s, when Anglo-Canadian linguists like Scargill, Avis, and others established an endogenous, Canadian norm.

5.2.2.3 Progression from an amateur to a professional approach

This is the one aspect of the British Canadian voice for which there is evidence from the British Canadians themselves; there were however only two sources written during the 19th century. Although not strictly a linguistics article, Lighthall himself was a prominent British Canadian academic, and his article (1889) which appeared seemingly out of nowhere was the first to state that not only was CanEn – not BritEn, and not AmEn – a reality, but there were in fact several distinct varieties, all of which needed to be studied. Of particular importance in this article is Lighthall’s opening paragraph, where he implied that most British Canadians, presumably those belonging to the upper classes, the Anglophiles, were unaware that different dialects of English were spoken throughout Canada.

The following year, British Canadian anthropologist Chamberlain (1890) wrote what is considered the first linguistic work on CanEn, albeit a short one. Like Lighthall, to whose article he referred, Chamberlain called for more (any, really) linguistic studies on the English language spoken in Canada, as none had been conducted up to that point. This was in stark contrast to CanFr, which had seen a steady increase in the number of linguistic and philological studies published since the 1870s. Despite this brief spike of interest in CanEn at the turn of the century, which lasted a single year, it wasn’t until the late 1920s that we see a steady increase in the number of articles written, though even many of these focused on regionalisms. The true push

271 for professional studies on CanEn did not begin in earnest until the 1950s, when a host of Anglophone linguists including Avis, Scargill, Kinloch, and McDavid became fully engaged in its study, and founded the Canadian Linguistic Association (CLA) in 1955.

We have now seen that French and British Canadians responded in similar ways, albeit at different rates, to the linguistic, cultural, political, and social influence of the former colonial powers of Great Britain and France. The moment French Canadians, for example, began to debate the legitimacy of Canadianisms clearly indicates that they were not ready (or willing) to adopt an exogenous linguistic norm. The same could be said of Lighthall’s article, in which he argued for the existence of numerous, non-British, varieties of English spoken in Canada. What remains to be seen is the relationship between French and British Canadians on matters of the other’s language.

5.3 Independent, parallel development and cross influence

Finally, there is one question left to consider: did French and British Canadians develop their voices independently of one another, or is there some evidence to suggest that one community influenced the other, i.e. cross influence? From the texts that I have studied for this dissertation, there is evidence that supports both scenarios, albeit at different times, or perhaps better stated, at a different pace; there is certainly more evidence of both scenarios in the case of French Canadians. Given the much older history of French-speakers in Canada, and the very serious matter of defending the use and legitimacy of their language to the British, it is expected that the French Canadian voice would have developed earlier than the British Canadians’, some of whom arrived nearly two centuries after the French colonists, and never had to justify the use of English in Canada or North America.

On the one hand, it is evident that each community developed its own voice in response to a number of factors, both internal (the natural process of linguistic change and innovation) and external, e.g. a disparity in social, economic, and political power, status as a linguistic majority or minority, and of course, the antagonistic relationship between Great Britain (and to a lesser extent, France) and the British and French Canadians. The British victory in the Seven Years’ War had a profound effect on the future development of the colony formerly known as New France; not only did it set the stage for British immigration to the province, thereby establishing the use of English, but it also forever changed the history of French Canadians and their

272 language in numerous ways. Namely, they lost their once privileged social status they enjoyed under French rule, became a minority population, and were effectively isolated from cultural, political, and linguistic influence from France. As we have seen, this isolation had important ramifications for the development of CanFr (Gendron 2007, Bouchard 2012). Moreover, the steady stream of immigrants from the American Colonies in the late 18th century, and Great Britain in the first half of the 19th century, coupled with strong anti-French sentiment among certain members of the ruling class, i.e., those in favour of amalgamation219, threatened the survival of French in North America, thereby forcing French Canadians to develop their voice.

As for CanEn, the early settlement of both Canadas (and the Maritime Provinces), which were only very sparsely populated prior to the Revolutionary War, by the American Loyalists guaranteed that the English language spoken in the Canadas would be closely related to AmEn. As Chambers (2004) has discussed, and from what we have seen in some of the earliest testimonials of CanEn (Canniff 1869), there was a concerted effort by the British and upper class British Canadians in the second half of the 19th century to instill “norms of propriety and correctness” (Chambers 2004) on the Anglophone population of Canada. This was evidently only a partial success, as it more and more commentators remarked on the American character of British Canadian speech from the 1870s onward, and the various forms of “Canadian Dainty”, which was a phenomenon common among the upper class only, died out by the 1950s. For both CanFr and CanEn, then, it can be said that these narratives or voices developed largely independently of one another, spurred on by (negative) colonial attitudes and practices.

On the other hand, it is evident that by the late 19th century, both French and British Canadians were aware of the language issues the other was facing; Sulte (1877) and Bibaud (1879), for example, noted that few British Canadians spoke good English, and employed Americanisms, whereas Parkin (1895) was familiar with French Canadians’ efforts to eliminate Anglicisms from their speech and writing. While I have found little evidence for a British Canadian prejudice against CanFr220 in the texts I have examined – although such texts must exist, given French

219 There is evidence of this almost immediately following the creation of Upper and Lower Canada. Several of the articles in Le français au Québec (2000) examine some of the anti-French sentiment among certain parliamentarians during this period. 220 As for cultural, political, or ethnic prejudices, however, there are numerous examples, but also several notable counter-examples, such as O’Hagan (1901) and Nicholson (1902).

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Canadians’ frequent allusions to these – it is undeniable that French Canadians were bothered by what their Anglophone neighbours believed (or thought they believed) about CanFr. Concerning cultural, political, ethnic, or linguistic prejudices (or attitudes), however, there are numerous examples, like Roberts and Ingersoll (1891), Jephson (1897), and Williams (1901), but also several notable counter-examples, such as O’Hagan (1901) and Nicholson (1902). As for CanEn, I have found several examples of French Canadians mocking or criticizing the language, but there is no evidence to suggest that British Canadians were affected by these comments. In the following two sections, I will discuss both possibilities, and provide several examples for each.

5.3.1 Independent, parallel development

Given the very different histories and cultures of French and British Canadians, and the fact that the former were a political, economic, ethnic, and linguistic minority from the late-18th century onwards, not to mention a numerical one by the mid-19th century, both communities shared one important thing in common: they were both colonial peoples who were faced with the task of renegotiating their identities in relation to the (former) colonial power(s). Bouchard (1998) remarked that Canadians became French Canadians following the Confederation, which signified a loss for their identity; no longer were they the Canadians they had been since the 17th century, a demonym they thereafter had to share with the Anglophone residents of the Dominion. On the other hand, it could be said that the British, who became British or Anglo-Canadians, underwent a similar process, although the difference in status between the two peoples meant that the loss was more keenly felt – and therefore more directly addressed – by the French Canadians. This simple shift in terminology (French to Canadian French, Canadian to French Canadian) highlights a major social and cultural change: the residents of Canada were no longer just British and French residing on the other side of the Atlantic, but people distinct in many ways from their forbears. In the following paragraphs, I will discuss the evidence for an independent, parallel development of each voice.

From the Treaty of Paris (1763) to the present day, language has continued to be a political issue for all Francophone Canadians. Although the first British rules of the Province of Québec were remarkably lenient regarding the language spoken and religion practiced by their newly-won subjects, French Canadians have struggled for over two centuries to ensure that their language has a place next to English in Canada, particularly in the public sphere. In conjunction with the

274 massive change in social status, and the numerous, long-lasting effects that would have on French Canadians and their culture, the urgent necessity to legitimize the usage of French in a British Colony (Noël 1990) ensured that the French Canadian voice developed very early in the 19th century. Simply put, if French Canadians – politicians in particular – did not work together to ensure the future of French in Canada, they would quickly be amalgamated, or assimilated with their Anglophone neighbours. The fear of amalgamation with the British helps account for French Canadians’ aversion to Anglicisms, the further perpetuation of which would lead to them speaking a patois, not French, in the not-so-distant future.

In addition to their contentious relationship with the British (Canadians), French Canadians also had to contend with their relationship – linguistic, cultural, political, religious, etc. – with the French, who continued to exert a strong, if somewhat distant, influence well after they ceded New France to the British. While Maguire was largely responsible for triggering the long-lasting language debate over whether to emulate Standard French in all ways, or to promote a distinctly Canadian form of the language, the renewal of ties between the French and French Canadians greatly accelerated the independent (though clearly externally influenced) development of the French Canadian voice. The dozen of articles, essays, and monographs during the 1870s and 1880s are symptomatic of the voice that had been developing for decades by that point; the Confederation simply gave an extra, emphatic push.

British Canadians, however, were never in danger of losing their language, or ceding their political, economic, or social status to the French Canadians, not even when the latter were a numerical majority. Perhaps more accurately stated, British Canadians of the Protestant faith had little to fear; outside of a few enclaves (such as Cape Breton Island and Glengarry County), Scottish and Irish Gaelic speakers were quickly assimilated, and Irish immigrants in particular faced a number of difficulties because they were Catholic, like the French Canadians. While British Canadians were seemingly immune to the threat of French language, apart from the wholly non-threatening phenomenon of word borrowing, they were the target of British prejudice due to the American-like character of the language they spoke and the institutions that existed in the colony (Chambers 1993).

This anti-American sentiment led members of the British Canadian élite to act, dress, and speak more British on purpose, in the hopes of curbing or eliminating the American influence on the

275 language. In one of his early novels, Their Wedding Journey (1871), American writer William Dean Howells (1837-1920) remarked that some British Canadians were too zealous in their emulation of the British:

At dinner they spent the intervals of the courses in guessing the nationality of the different persons, and in wondering if the Canadians did not make it a matter of conscientious loyalty to out-English the English even in the matter of pale-ale and sherry, and in rotundity of person and freshness of face, just as they emulated them in the cut of their clothes and whiskers. Must they found even their health upon the health of the mother-country? (Howells 1871: 216)

While the above account may be somewhat of an exaggeration, when taken together with other cultural commentary from that same time period, it quickly becomes clear that this was one of the strategies that British Canadians adopted in the face of cultural and linguistic insecurity vis-à- vis the British, i.e. emulate them in every possible way.

In summary, it can be said that French and British Canadians developed their voices individually, though nearly concurrently, in response to pressure they experienced redefining themselves in relation to the former colonial powers. Since French Canadians were in a significantly disadvantaged position from 1760 onwards – having been cut off from France, and absorbed into an often hostile British colony – their voice necessarily developed more quickly, and at a faster rate than the British Canadians’ voice, which only began to emerge when American influence on the language and culture was recognized as a threat in the 1830s and 1840s.

5.3.2 Cross influence

The final goal I had when undertaking this thesis was to determine whether there was any evidence of cross influence; in other words, did what British Canadians write about CanFr influence how French Canadians viewed their own language, and therefore the development of CanFr, and vice-versa? It was evident from reading Tardivel’s essay (1901) that the former was true: (some) French Canadians were undoubtedly very concerned with what Americans and British Canadians thought about their language, but to what extent? I was somewhat more skeptical about finding that British Canadians were influenced in some way by what French Canadians (or other Francophones) wrote or said about CanEn.

From the texts that I have examined for this dissertation, I can definitively state that there is no evidence that British Canadians were outwardly affected or concerned with what anyone other

276 than the British thought about CanEn, including fellow British Canadians: Geikie’s paper (1857) went seemingly unanswered, and I have found no replies to Sulte’s (1877) or Bibaud’s (1879) accusations that British Canadians spoke poor English, or to accusations that they refused to learn French. With the notable exception of Chamberlain’s article (1890), there weren’t even any follow-ups to Lighthall’s important, groundbreaking newspaper article (1889). Could it be that British Canadians simply weren’t concerned with language matters at this point in history221? Or was it that their superior status made them immune or at the very least, highly resistant to criticism from French Canadians?

While it is tempting to attribute the dearth of debate about CanEn among British Canadians to the fact that they were the majority, and therefore were unconcerned what others thought of their language, there is another possible explanation. In the first part of his article “L’enseignement du français” (1886), Sulte suggested that British Canadians were utterly unaware of what French Canadians wrote in the newspapers: “Tout ce qui paraît dans la presse anglaise nous est connu. Les Anglais ne savent ni le premier ni le dernier mot de ce que nous imprimons. Lequel de ces deux éléments est le mieux renseigné? Celui qui voit dans les cartes de l’autre, n’est-ce pas?” (Sulte 1886: 758) According to Sulte, then, (most) British Canadians wouldn’t have even known that their language was being criticized, as they didn’t read French language papers. A few pages later, Sulte cheekily wrote that it would be in French Canadians’ best interests if British Canadians remained unaware:

Un Anglais de mes amis me disait hier:

- Savez-vous que mes compatriotes éprouvent le besoin d’apprendre le français? - C’est dans leur intérêt, lui répondis-je. Il est temps qu’ils s’en aperçoivent! Mais, si vous me permettez d’exprimer mon sentiment, je vous dirai que je leur souhaite le moins de succès possible dans cette nouvelle entreprise. - Pourquoi donc? - Parce que plus vos compatriotes se croiront supérieurs aux miens, plus ils seront dans l’ignorance de ce qui se passe chez un bon tiers de la population du Canada. Loin de tourner à notre désavantage, votre système d’abstention nous fortifie. (Sulte 1860: 760)

221 This is partially true: while we do see some interest in CanEn in the final decade of the 19th century, the overwhelmingly majority of texts written on the language appear several decades later.

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In spite of Sulte’s clear bias against British Canadians regarding their own language and general attitude towards French Canadians, this is an important possibility to consider: we don’t see any British Canadian reactions to commentary by French Canadians because they didn’t – or couldn’t – read them. Since Sulte was the only commentator to suggest this, I am hesitant to accept this at face value. A further investigation of the English-language newspapers, particularly those written in Montréal, Kingston, and Toronto222, would shed some more light on the matter.

As for French Canadians, however, I have found a number of texts indicating that they were the concerned about what British Canadians (and Americans) believed about their language, and subsequently attempted to modify or restrict what was written about CanFr as a result. The first evidence I have found to this effect comes from Sulte’s article “Notre langue” (1877), in which he praised the English press in Canada for rushing to French Canadians aid, as well as numerous unnamed French Canadian writers who adamantly denounced the belief that CanFr was a patois:

Les deux mois qui viennent de s’écouler n’ont pas manqué d’intérêt. Notre langue, remise en question, a beaucoup fait parler d’elle. Un auteur américain bien connu223 a publié un livre dans lequel il dit ‘que les Canadiens-français ne parlent qu’un misérable patois et que, pour ce qui est de la littérature, leur ignorance est complète’. Si la croyance populaire n’est pas fausse, les oreilles ont dû lui tinter, car il s’est élevé une véritable clameur contre lui. Il est bon de noter que, cette fois, c’est la presse anglaise224 qui a pris notre défense, et elle l’a fait spontanément, d’un bout à l’autre du pays. Tout aussitôt, une convention des écrivains canadiens-français s’est tenue à Ottawa, donnant, sans l’avoir prémédité, une réplique écrasante à l’assertion de cet étranger. Et la presse anglaise de recommencer la charge de plus belle. (Sulte 1877: 659)

It is important to note that Sulte specified that “this time” the English language press leapt to the defence of CanFr, a statement which implies that British Canadians had mocked or written negative things about CanFr in the past. In the next three years, several short articles, in the guise of book reviews, were published that harshly criticized Bibaud (1879), Tardivel (1880), and

222 This is not to dismiss the importance of English-language newspapers published in other Canadian cities during the 19th century. I specified these three because of their cultural and political significance, as well as being cities with a long history of Anglophone residents. The newspapers from Québec City and Ottawa would also be of interest. 223 I have not been able to document this author’s identity, nor determine the title of the book in question. 224 From the context, it is clear that Sulte was referring to the English-language press in Canada, not the English themselves.

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Manseau (1881). These three writers were accused of pointing out the faults or problems with CanFr (e.g. Anglicisms), thereby providing the British Canadian press with ammunition or proof that the language French Canadians spoke was of poor quality. While I have not found such articles, the implication that these three individuals were somehow traitors is of great importance, as it demonstrates that some French Canadians did not want their Anglophone neighbours to think even more poorly of them on account of their language.

Louis Fréchette, writing under the pseudonym Jules Airvaux, wrote a harshly worded critique of Bibaud’s Le Mémorial des vicissitudes et des progrès de la langue française en Canada shortly after its publication in 1879. In addition to the factual errors that Fréchette alleged Bibaud’s work contained, Fréchette was concerned that Bibaud would spread erroneous, potentially harmful ideas about CanFr to the public:

Nous avons autour de nous assez d’éléments dissolvants pour cette langue que nous avons su conserver, à deux mille lieues de la mère patrie, à travers plus d’un siècle de lutte et d’envahissement étranger, sans permettre à personne des nôtres de venir – au nom du bon goût et de l’orthodoxie du langage – tromper des centaines de lecteurs de bonne foi, avec une olla-podrida de barbarismes, d’anglicismes, d’idiotismes, de fautes de syntaxe et d’orthographe, d’inexactitudes de toute espèce et d’hérésies sans fin. (Fréchette 1879: 484)

The use of this term is particularly interesting in this context, and recalls what Irving (1836) wrote about the voyageurs’ patois. Olla-podrida is a pork and bean stew from Spain, with an assortment of other vegetables. The Littré offers a figurative definition of the term: “mélange, macédoine”, whereas Merriam-Webster offers the following sample sentence: “the olla podrida of tongues that one hears on the streets of a bustling metropolis like New York City.” In other words, Fréchette believed Bibaud to be guilty of presenting an “olla-podrida” of bad language to his readers. Considering that Fréchette himself was in favour of eliminating Canadianisms and Anglicisms from CanFr, it is telling that even he found Bibaud’s work excessive, and deceitful.

In 1880, Tardivel published his influential work, L’anglicisme, voilà l’ennemi, in which he clearly pointed to Anglicisms as being the biggest danger to the future of the French language in Canada. While L’anglicisme was well-received among French Canadians like Chandonnet (1880), who considered Tardivel’s work “patriotic criticism”, Gélinas wrote two articles that called into question Tardivels’s motives, and even accused him of plagiarism. In the first article,

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“La langue française au Canada” (1880), Gélinas claimed that Tardivel brought unwanted attention from the British Canadians to the language:

La campagne entreprise par M. Tardivel a produit certain résultat regrettable. Elle a attiré l’attention de nos concitoyens d’origine étrangère qui, dans leur ignorance de ce qui nous concerne, sont portés à se figurer que les Canadiens parlent et écrivent un jargon au lieu du français véritable. Ils ont vu dans les dénonciations virulentes et exagérées de M. Tardivel la preuve que leurs soupçons étaient fondés, et quelques journaux anglais se sont empressés de reproduire ses écrits. (Gélinas 1880a: 121)

While it is certainly true that Tardivel pointed out numerous Anglicisms in common use among the lawyers, politicians, and journalists in Québec in order to illustrate his point, Gélinas evidently missed the point of the essay: to identify and propose a method of eliminating Anglicisms from CanFr. It would be remarkable if articles or editorials of this type inspired British Canadians to do the same for their language, i.e., eliminate or reduce the influence of Americanisms, as the British were rather harsh in their assessment of the literature and newspapers published in Canada. However, I have not yet found any evidence that would suggest that this was the case. In a second article published two weeks later, Gélinas attacked again, noting that a British Canadian publication (The [Globe and] Mail) had commented on Tardivel’s essay:

Le Mail applaudit à M. Tardivel prétendant que les écrivains-français ne savent pas leur langue et que notre population parle un jargon moitié française moitié anglais. Que M. Tardivel n’ait pas vu ce mépris, qu’il ne le voit pas, même à présent que nous lui avons signalé la chose, c’est encore précisément ce que nous avons dit. (Gélinas 1880b: 148)

So even though Tardivel made no such claims, as he was a fervent defender of CanFr and French Canadian nationalism, there was a fear that British Canadians and other non-French Canadians would come to see CanFr as something other than French. Therefore, it was better to avoid drawing attention to the problem if possible. Gélinas criticisms of Tardivel reveal that, contrary to Sulte’s later assertion (1886), some British Canadians (presumably members of the middle and upper classes residing in Montréal or Québec) read newspapers in French, or at the very least, were familiar with the content discussed therein. If this was not the case, that British Canadians were wholly ignorant of French Canadians affairs, commentators like Gélinas and Hix (see below) would have nothing to fear, as the problem would be safe “in-house”, so to speak.

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We see a similar concern regarding the publication of Manseau’s ill-fated Dictionnaire des locutions vicieuses du Canada (1881), which was to be the first in a long series. In an article which appeared in L’Opinion publique entitled “N’exagérons pas” (1881), the writer, known only as Hix, accused Manseau of giving British Canadians reason to ridicule CanFr:

Qu’un pareil dictionnaire tombe entre les mains de ceux qui nous dénigrent par système et ils se croiront autorisés à rire de notre langue. Il y a de tels Anglais qui ne veulent pas apprendre le français que nous parlons parce que, disent-ils, les Canadiens ne parlent qu’un grossier patois. Le travail de M. Manseau n’est-il pas fait pour leur donner raison. (Hix 1881: 460)

Of particular interest in this short passage is the implication that British Canadians were perfectly willing to learn French, just not the French spoken and written in Canada. This may well be a reference to the so-called “Parisian French” translators based in Toronto claimed to be proficient in (Bouchard 1998). While later French Canadian writers would note that British Canadians and the Americans were misinformed about the true nature of CanFr such as Sulte (1882), Legendre (1887), and Tardivel (1901), discourse on CanFr became decidedly more inward focused from the 1880s onward.

To tie everything together, we see that French Canadian commentators were preoccupied with three different, yet related, problems: firstly, they were concerned that British Canadians would think less of their language (that “stupid prejudice” that Squair lamented), and would refuse to learn the language, or “patois”, that French Canadians spoke. Secondly, French Canadians experienced linguistic insecurity vis-à-vis the French from the 1840s onwards, an insecurity which was born from the realization that CanFr was quite different in a number of ways from Standard French. As we have seen, this dominated language discourse in Canada for well over a century, if not to the present day. Thirdly, French Canadians have had to deal with the fact that they lost their political, social, and cultural status and prestige following the English Conquest, and have fought ever since to maintain the use of French in Canada. The matter was far simpler for British Canadians, who only had to deal with the second issue.

In conclusion, we can say that there is definitive evidence for the parallel, independent development of the British and French Canadians voices, each of which emerged in response to colonial pressure: in the case of French Canadians, this pressure was very overt; namely, the numerous attempts to eliminate or at least restrict the usage of French in Canada. In addition,

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French Canadians were very much preoccupied with their relationship to the former colonial power, France, particularly regarding matters of language, i.e., linguistic insecurity; was CanFr legitimate or not? For British Canadians, however, it was more a matter of conforming (or not) to British culture, a symptom of linguistic and cultural insecurity. As for cross influence, we have seen several texts that demonstrate French Canadians were concerned with what British Canadians thought about CanFr, but the reverse was not true, for reasons that are not entirely clear. A study of English-language Canadian newspapers may help resolve this ambiguity.

5.4 Conclusion

In this chapter, which is built directly upon the foundations established in chapters 2-4, I sought to discuss the data in several different ways in order to respond to the research questions I asked in the introduction. By reviewing the various language beliefs and stereotypes about CanFr and CanEn, we saw the bigger picture of where each originated and subsequently developed, and noted the similarities and differences between the commentaries. Notably, there was a definite time lag of 30+ years in between the first appearance of a given belief about CanFr and CanEn, a discrepancy which is largely due to the “youth” of English in the Canadas, and weak contact between the British Canadian élite (and also travellers to the Canadas) and the descendants of the American Loyalists who settled in Upper Canada. Also, we saw that there is a significant difference concerning the proportion of occurrences of a given belief or stereotype; in terms of percentages, there were far more references to quality or purity, patois, jargon, etc. for CanFr, whereas the majority of the comments about CanEn were related to pronunciation, Americanisms (the French analogue being Canadianisms), and the belief that they didn’t speak French.

In section 5.2, I defined the three characteristics of the French and British Canadian voices, and provided several examples for each one. These voices grew from a conflict between Canadians and the former colonial powers of Great Britain (both French and British Canadians) and France (French Canadians only), and included a rejection of foreign beliefs or stereotypes, the beginnings of the exogenism/endogenism debate, and the progression from an amateur to a professional approach to the study of language. Although these voices developed at different times, and at a different pace, we can see evidence of all three characteristics for both languages.

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In the final section, I discussed whether these voices developed independently of each other, or whether there was evidence of cross influence. As it turns out, this was somewhat of a false dichotomy: the French and British Canadian voices largely developed independently of one another, though it is clear that the French Canadian voice was influenced by what British Canadians thought about CanFr. I have found no evidence for the contrary, however.

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Conclusion

This dissertation was born from my own personal desire to understand the origins and development of (negative) language attitudes towards CanFr and CanEn. Over the course of my research, I have made a number of important discoveries – some were expected, others wholly unanticipated – about French and British Canadians and their languages during the 18th and 19th centuries. From the corpus that I studied, I have been able to answer many of the research questions that I established in the introduction, some of which further refine or nuance what earlier researchers in this field had found. In addition, this dissertation has shown that there are several questions that merit further (perhaps individual) examination, and also points to new research possibilities, any one of which would advance our understanding of language attitudes towards French and English in Canada.

I have some difficulty with labelling this chapter a conclusion, as I feel that my work has only just begun. Rather, I shall treat this brief chapter as a summary of the contributions this dissertation has made to the study of CanFr and CanEn, and as an outline for several future research projects. This chapter is therefore divided into three distinct sections: a summary of this dissertation’s contributions and documentation, research questions that require further examination, and new research possibilities. Finally, I will conclude with a brief discussion of the present dissertation’s importance not only to the scholarly community, in a variety of academic fields, but also to anyone interested in the history and usage of the French and English languages in Canada.

Summary of contributions and documentation

Beginning with the issue that inspired this dissertation, I have been able to determine the origins of various language beliefs and stereotypes about CanFr and CanEn, and trace their subsequent development and proliferation throughout the 19th century from the texts that make up the corpus. From these texts, I have been able to establish earlier dates for the first appearance of commentary on either language than those proposed in previous works, such as Bouchard (1988, 1998) or Chambers (1993, 2004). Speaking strictly in terms of the quality or purity, the first comments I have found date back to 1793 (the anonymous British traveller) for CanFr, and 1807 (Harriott) for CanEn. The establishment of earlier dates for the first appearance of negative or

284 positive metalinguistic commentary is an important step, as it shows that CanFr and CanEn were perceived as being different from Standard French and Standard British English very early in Canadian history, which would in turn affect how each language would later develop, as we saw in chapter five. As for the stereotype that French Canadians spoke a patois, and not “real French”, this dates back much earlier than previously thought; the first possible recorded instance dating back to 1803 (Volney), and definitely by 1828 (Beaufoy).

As I discussed in the introduction, one of the main goals for this dissertation is to establish a bridge between previous studies on the French and English languages in Canada. Specifically, between the works of French Canadian researchers like Bouchard and Caron-Leclerc, who have both made significant contributions to the history of CanFr from a sociocultural and sociolinguistic point of view, and the extensive work done on CanEn by Chambers since the early 1970s. Historically, there has been an unofficial, though very real, separation between the study of the history of these two languages, with CanFr being largely the domain of French Canadian researchers, and CanEn being almost exclusively studied by English-speaking Canadians. This trend has only started to change in recent years, as more and more foreign researchers (like Dollinger for CanEn, or Lothar Wolf for CanFr) have begun to take an interest in the matter.

By studying and comparing the origins and development of numerous beliefs and stereotypes about CanFr and CanEn, I have shown that we see similar, though not identical, metalinguistic commentary on both languages, particularly from British commentators. Moreover, we also see that each language underwent similar kinds of changes during the 19th century, primarily (though not exclusively) due to British and French Canadians’ often antagonistic relationship with the former colonial powers of Great Britain in France. It was this relationship that led to the widespread phenomenon of linguistic and cultural insecurity among both peoples.

While undoubtedly the source of much strife, this linguistic and cultural insecurity among French and British Canadians had another, far more important effect: the emergence of distinctly Canadian – neither American, nor British or French – voices. These Canadian voices developed in the late 19th century in an effort to “reclaim” discourse about Canadians and their language. While British and French commentators would continue to write about CanFr and CanEn well into the 20th century, it is clear that Canadians were becoming more involved in the development

285 and discussion of their own languages, a trend best characterized by a rejection of what foreigners believed or wrote. These two major discoveries, that CanFr and CanEn share much more in common than previously thought, and the emergence of the Canadian voices in the late 19th century, were only possible through the study of dozens of hitherto unexamined English- language travel journals and pamphlets. If there were only one idea that I wish to convey with this dissertation, it would be the following: it is vital to recognize and accept that the French and English languages are not two separate entities in Canada, isolated from each other, although they have often been treated as such; rather, they have much more in common regarding their history and their development than previously thought.

Prior to writing this dissertation, I was keenly aware that the language question was (and still is) a strongly political one for French Canadians (Noël 1990, Bouchard 1998), as the use of the French language in Canada has often been at risk, particularly in the century following the English Conquest. What I did not expect, however, was how politicized the foreign commentary on CanFr was, particularly from the British, some of whom wrote with the express aim of eliminating the French language in North America, or denigrating it to such a point that French Canadians would no longer want to speak it. In other words, it was no accident that CanFr was described as a patois by British commentators on numerous occasions despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary by the late 19th century, but rather a calculated choice of terminology designed to depict French Canadians in an unfavourable light (Cornwallis 1860, Cumberland 1887). However, it must be said that not every commentator wrote with such malice or ill-will in mind; some like Jackson (1886) merely repeated what they had read or heard about CanFr in the past, i.e., bought the stereotype, while others such as Dawson and Gannett (1897) remarked that the language was definitely not a patois.

For the reasons discussed in the previous chapter, namely that British Canadians enjoyed a privileged status in comparison with the French Canadians, commentary on CanEn was decidedly less political in nature, with the exception of the accusations levelled against British Canadians who allegedly made it a point of honour to not learn French. While we have seen ample evidence, such as Moodie (1852) and Bishop (1856), indicating that the British were critical of British Canadians –or perhaps more specifically, the Canadian “Yankees”– on a cultural and political level I have yet to find any evidence that CanEn was directly discriminated against in the same way that CanFr was, or that British Canadians were concerned with the status

286 or legitimacy of the language they spoke, at least, not until the mid-20th century. However, as we shall see in the following section, an examination of other texts may shed further light on this subject.

Concerning how language beliefs and stereotypes spread, my analysis of the texts has shown that travel writers were particularly susceptible to accepting, and subsequently propagating these. I have found several instances of British commentators copying nearly word-for-word what an earlier visitor had written about CanFr, namely that it was a patois, not “real French”, etc. Tellingly, these passages are completely devoid of examples, or evidence of their claims, apart from statements like “I have been told”, “an acquaintance has assured me”, etc. Only a select few British travellers, like Lambert (1810), Shaw (1856), or Day (1864), wrote in any detail about the French spoken in Canada. French travellers, however, generally provided more specific examples of differences they noted, particularly in terms of vocabulary and pronunciation, but as Blain de Saint-Aubin (1867) remarked, many were also quick to repeat what they had been told or what they had read about the language.

It is not altogether surprising that the British and the French were by far the most “guilty” of accepting these beliefs and stereotypes at face value, and then repeating them. Because they were outsiders, largely unfamiliar with the differences between their home countries and the North American (former) colonies, these British and French commentators could only compare CanFr and CanEn with their own prestige varieties of the language; i.e., the King’s/Queen’s English for the British, the French language based on the speech of the upper-class Parisian élite. In other words, they had no other frame of reference, or basis for comparison, so any difference between the languages, cultures, customs, etc. was seen as a corruption of the original (European) version, rather than as the natural result of isolation from the language and culture of the home country. It wasn’t until late in the 19th century, with the advent of philological and linguistic studies, that commentators began to understand how language changes and evolves over time, and so we see fewer harsh assessments of the languages. For their part, Americans and British Canadians were far less susceptible to these, proportionately speaking, as they were much more attuned (and obviously familiar with) differences between their language and the varieties spoken across the Atlantic. This is not to say that these were not harsh critics; rather, they were fewer in number.

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By studying the English-language travel journals and emigration pamphlets referenced in Waterston’s annotated bibliography (1989), I have been able to add further nuance to the claims of Caron-Leclerc (1998) and 19th century French Canadians like Tardivel, Legendre, and Sulte’s concerning the nationality of the commentators who were the most critical of CanFr and CanEn. British commentators, the English in particular, who vastly outnumbered the Scottish and Irish, were by far the most critical of both languages, followed distantly by the French, Americans, and other Europeans like the Belgians. Considering the comparatively insignificant number of texts written by commentators of other nationalities – there are only one author from Sweden (Arfwedson 1834) and Germany (Kohl 1861), and a single Acadian writer (Doucet 1896) – no conclusion can be drawn from these.

Concerning the relationship between the commentators’ socioeconomic class, which is closely tied to their profession, and the favourable or unfavourable opinion of CanFr and CanEn, a distinction must be made between foreign and domestic (i.e. Canadian) opinions. In the case of foreign opinion, it is clear that members of the middle and upper classes, particularly those from Great Britain, and to a lesser extent, from France, were the most critical of deviation from standard usage for both languages. CanFr was seen as being less prestigious and less pure than so-called “Parisian French”, or rather, the language that British commentators associated with Paris (Blain de Saint-Aubin 1871). Although the French were less critical overall than the English in matters of language, the harshest comments on CanFr came from middle-to-upper class writers, such as Duvergier de Hauranne (1866) and de Coubertin (1890). We see the same correlation between higher socioeconomic class and degree of criticism for CanEn; all the commentators who disparaged the quality and American-like quality of CanEn, like Moodie (1852) and Aubertin (1888), were well-educated, and therefore occupied higher rungs in the social ladder.

In the case of domestic opinion, we see two very different, albeit expected, opinions expressed by the educated classes on CanFr: on the one hand, French Canadians were highly critical of the language spoken by the middle and upper classes (the lawyers, the journalists, the politicians), as they were thought to be the gatekeepers or protectors (LaRue 1867) of the French language. In other words, their role was to serve as the linguistic model for all French Canadians, a role which was threatened by Anglicisms and other “expressions vicieuses” that commentators like Lépine (1875) and Tardivel (1881) so harshly criticized. On the other hand, this same educated class of

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French Canadians was less critical of the language spoken by the habitants and the working class (Dunn 1870), with the language of the former often being praised for its purity and homogeneity (see Bouchard 1998). Concerning domestic views of CanEn, there are not enough data from which I can draw a meaningful conclusion, though judging by the harsh comments made by Jephson (1897) and Helliwell (1902), who were both members of the educated British Canadian élite, the educated class had little but contempt for the American-like speech that members of the working class spoke.

Although I had not purposely sought out the answer to this question at the beginning of this study, I have also found that female commentators were almost universally more critical of the quality and pronunciation of the French and English languages than were the men, Louise Bourbonnaud (1889) being the sole exception to this trend225. There was a much greater variety of opinions among the men, a variety which appears to be tied to their socioeconomic class, nationality, and profession, as we have seen above. It would be important to see if this was a trend that continued into the 20th century, particularly in novels and other works of fiction, like those of Sara Jeanette Duncan, whose novel The Imperialist (1904) contains at least one passage that ridicules the affected accent – Canadian Dainty – of a British Canadian woman:

In this respect Dora Milburn, the only child, was said to be her mother’s own daughter. The shoulders, at all events, testified to it; and the young lady had been taught to speak, like Mrs. Milburn, with what was known as an “English Accent.” The accent in general use in Elgin was borrowed – let us hope temporarily – from the other side of the line. It suffered local modifications and exaggerations, but it was clearly an American product. The English accent was thought affected, especially the broad “a.” The time may come when Elgin will be at considerable pains to teach itself the broad “a,” but that is in the embroidery of the future, and in no way modifies the criticism of Dora Milburn. (Duncan 1904: 71)

Finally, I have shown that the advent of more professional or scholarly works on language, which began to appear in the late 1870s, strongly lent themselves to supporters of an endogenous, or perhaps more accurately, a North American linguistic norm. This is certainly the case for French Canadians, as we see the works of Roy (1877), Elliott (1884, 1885), and Chamberlain (1890) referenced by French Canadian supporters of an endogenous linguistic norm

225 Of the 287 texts, only 16 (5.6%) were written by women; the other 271 (94.4%) were written by men. Of these 16 texts, 14 (87.5%) had a negative opinion of CanFr or CanEn; only Murray (1856) and Bourbonnaud (1889) had a positive view.

289 like Sulte and Legendre, among others. Furthermore, the foundation of the Société du parler français au Canada in 1902 marked a commitment towards a professional study of the French language in Canada. No such definitive claim can be made for British Canadians, however, who lagged behind their Francophone neighbours by several decades probably due to their more recent arrival in Canada. However, it is important to note that they began the same process by the 1890s, a process which only truly gained currency in the 1930s.

Questions requiring further investigation

While I have resolved many of the research questions that I set out to answer in this dissertation, there remain a number of phenomena that I have not been able to account for in full. Nearly all of these unanswered questions are related to the British Canadian, and to a lesser extent, American, attitudes towards both CanFr and CanEn. This knowledge gap is due to the fact that no bibliographical work has been done on British Canadian newspapers, specifically in terms of metalinguistic commentary both on CanFr and CanEn. While there are a number of questions that bear further investigation in the future, the following three questions or problems are the most obvious, and ought to be addressed.

Firstly, where are criticisms of CanFr by British Canadians and Americans? Several French Canadians like Dunn, Sulte, Legendre, Tardivel, Hix, Gélinas, etc. all remarked that British Canadians and Americans had an overwhelmingly negative opinion of CanFr, and that it was best that they didn’t know about the prescriptive works, like those of Bibaud (1879) or Manseau (1881). According to Bouchard (1988), this was certainly true during the 20th century, as the “French Canadian patois” myth became even more firmly entrenched in the public consciousness, but I have not seen sufficient evidence for it during the 19th century. In fact, Americans and British Canadians, as I discussed in the previous chapter, were among the least critical of CanFr, especially when compared to the British. Judging from French Canadian articles written during the 1870s and 1880s, many of these negative opinions of CanFr were published in English-language newspapers, a resource which I have not yet exploited due to the scope of such a project. The newspapers published in major Ontario cities like Toronto, Kingston, and Ottawa would be a natural starting point, but it would also be essential to go through the English-language newspapers published in Montréal and Québec.

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Secondly, why was there no response to Geikie’s paper in 1857, from either the British or British Canadian press? I find it difficult to believe that none of the members of the Canadian Institute, to whom the paper “Canadian English” was addressed, commented on Geikie’s statement that Canadians did not speak BritEn, but a corrupt form of the language. If Canadian Dainty was first adopted during the 1850s by the British Canadian élite, as suggested by Chambers (2004), why would none of them respond to such a damning account of the language they spoke? Building on this, why did Lighthall’s article of the same name (1889) receive just as little press? Considering how specific, and well-detailed Lighthall’s article was regarding the various dialects of English spoken in Canada, it is peculiar that only one other writer (Chamberlain 1890) saw fit to comment on it. As with the previous problem, the first step in resolving this mystery lies in combing through English-language newspapers published in Ontario, particularly in Toronto, where the conference was held.

Thirdly and finally, is there any evidence that British Canadians were affected or influenced by what French Canadians thought and said about CanEn? From the texts that I have studied, I have found no conclusive evidence of this, only linguistic and cultural insecurity vis-à-vis the British. It is therefore unknown whether British Canadians felt threatened in any way by what their neighbours thought; none of the texts written by British Canadians on CanEn resemble even remotely works like Tardivel’s essay La langue française au Canada (1901), or any of the many articles written by Sulte, Legendre, or Dunn. Is this because British Canadians didn’t share the same passion for defending and discussing their language openly the way that French Canadians did, or is it simply a matter of looking elsewhere for such commentary? Not surprisingly, the first place to start would be in the various English-language newspapers and magazines/journals written in the late 19th century.

New research questions

Finally, there are a number of research questions that came to my attention since beginning this project, anyone of which would form the basis of a new, yet related, study. Some of these research questions would directly expand upon the work that I have done in this dissertation, both in time (post-1900) and geography (beyond Upper and Lower Canada), while others came up during the analysis stage of this dissertation. Far from an exhaustive list, the following five research questions are among the most interesting and important not only for the study of

291 language attitudes towards French and English in Canada, but also for the history of each language in North America.

Firstly, did the French believe that a patois was spoken in Canada, and by extension, in any other French colony prior to 1800? In light of Volney’s admission (1803) that he had been told a French patois was spoken in North America, this would certainly appear to be the case, with d’Aleyrac (ca. 1755-60) and Le Clercq (1691) further corroborating this claim with their own remarks. How far back in time does this belief go, and where and why did it originate, and among whom? Apart from the two works previously mentioned, I have not found any other references to belief that French colonists spoke a patois in various travel journals and monographs written during the 18th century. There must be other documents (histories of Canada, essays, literature with Canada as the subject) that mention the language spoken in New France (and Acadia). An examination of L’abbé Grégoire’s Rapport sur la nécessité d’anéantir les patois (1794), as well as other contemporary works pertaining to patois would be the first step in this process, as they would help to explain what a patois meant to the French (or Francophones in general) in the late 18th century.

Secondly, a separate study could be done on the changing attitudes towards the various “patois” spoken in France at the end of the 19th century, a period when linguists and philologists began to take much greater interest in the numerous regional languages and dialects spoken in France (specifically for my purposes) and Europe (in a much broader sense). While French remained unquestionably the only official language of the State, regional languages like Occitan (and its numerous varieties) experienced a kind of Renaissance during this period, particularly in terms of literary output. It would be useful to determine whether there is a correlation between the increasing interest in the various regional languages and dialects spoken in France and the greater acceptance of Canadianisms by French Canadians. In other words, were the supporters of an endogenous linguistic norm in Canada influenced in some way by this changing attitude towards non-standard varieties of French in France, or was this more indicative of the development or negotiation of a linguistic, political, and cultural identity distinct from that of the founding country?

Thirdly, there is the question of the importance of French Canadian literature for cultural identity and linguistic identity. Since Lord Durham’s notorious statement that French Canadians were a

292 people “without history and without literature”, there was a concerted effort to cultivate a national literature in Canada throughout the 19th century. In fact, many of the French Canadian commentators discussed in this dissertation, such as Dunn and Sulte, frequently referred to the rise of a national literature, pointing to the success of writers like Fréchette, who received the Prix Montyon in 1879 for his poetry collection, Les fleurs boréales, les oiseaux de neige. Considering that Dunn and Sulte were both interested in cultivating an endogenous linguistic norm, it would be worth examining whether there is some correlation between the increasing prestige of French Canadian literature and the question of legitimacy for Canadian French. In other words, did the increase in literary productivity in Canada in the latter half of the 19th century lead to more positive attitudes towards CanFr, both among French Canadians and foreigners?

Thirdly, we have seen that the term “Canadian French” dates back to 1832 (Vigne). Does this term coincide or correspond with the first usage of the term “French Canadians”, rather than simply “Canadians?” And more specifically, what did these terms mean to those (i.e. the British) who employed them? There are hundreds of texts of a variety of genres discussing French Canadians during the 19th century that I had to exclude from the corpus because they did not meet the criteria established in the first chapter, namely the criteria of language and geography. It would be imperative to go through these travel journals, guides, emigration pamphlets, and monographs, in addition to other contemporary works on Canada and the Canadians, in order to determine in which contexts (and why) these particular terms were used. Were they used simply to qualify the language or people in terms of geography, or did they have a specific (possibly pejorative or derogatory) implication for those who employed them?

Fourthly, how does the discourse – both political and metalinguistic – on both languages change or evolve up to the end of the First World War (1918)? Or the Second World War (1945)? Bouchard (1990, 1998) has discussed at length the period up to 1960 for perceptions of CanFr, but what of CanEn? What sorts of criticism did British Canadians have of their own language during the 20th century? Avis and Kinloch’s Writings (1978) lists at least 100 texts containing references to CanEn published between 1900 and 1950, many of which are full-length articles in scholarly journals, as well as monographs and chapters from longer books on the English language, not to mention the hitherto unexploited newspaper resources. This would essentially be

293 an extension of this dissertation, which would require a slightly different periodization to take into account the major events of the 20th century, namely the Two World Wars.

Fifthly, I discussed in the first chapter that this dissertation was intentionally limited in scope to the Canadas (Upper and Lower, East and West) only. In the interest of attaining a more complete understanding of language attitudes in North America, it would be worthwhile to examine the texts that discuss the French and English languages spoken (and written) in the Maritime Provinces, and eventually, the whole of Canada. Given the very different histories and cultures of the Maritime Provinces, how did language attitudes towards Acadian French develop and change over time? Do we see the same kinds of criticisms, at the same times, or are commentators more interested in different linguistic phenomena? Between Waterston and Dulong’s annotated bibliographies, there are at least two hundred texts (travel journals, monographs, academic and popular articles, etc.) that deal in part or exclusively with the Maritime Provinces, thereby greatly facilitating this important next step. Furthermore, the research presented at academic conferences like Les français d’ici clearly shows that there is currently a great amount of interest in examining newspapers, travel journals, and diaries for metalinguistic commentary and language ideologies on many varieties of French throughout the world, including Québec, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, the French Antilles, Belgium, to name only a few.

Finally, a similar geographical extension could be done for the Francophone population of New England, namely the states of Maine and Vermont, which saw large numbers of Québécois immigrants in the latter half of the 19th century. The reason for this interest can be traced to Lacasse (1880), who mentioned in passing (albeit with obvious disdain) French Canadian workers returning from those states, and speaking worse than when they had left. How were French Canadians, and the language they spoke, regarded in the United States in the 19th century? There were a number of French-language newspapers published in the American Northeast during that time, and many of the travel journals and articles I studied for this dissertation make mention of the French-speaking residents of these states.

Final words

While I began this dissertation largely to satisfy my own personal curiosity about language attitudes, what I have discovered over the course of this study will be of great interest to the

294 scholarly community, particularly to sociolinguists and those interested in the history of the French and English languages in North America. By demonstrating that the French and English languages in Canada share much more in common than previously thought, I have established a bridge between the hitherto separate, isolated studies on both languages, and by extension, peoples. Furthermore, this dissertation is aimed at anyone who found themselves believing in, and likely repeating, stereotypes about both languages; both languages have been the subject of much misinformation and stereotyping over the past two hundred years, and an understanding of where these erroneous beliefs came from, and why they persisted, will help to explain the current state of affairs of language discourse in Canada. Returning the central goal of this dissertation, it is imperative that Francophone and Anglophones, the French and English languages, no longer be treated as being separate and unrelated. Rather, we must know and understand that they share far more in common with each other in many respects, and in so doing, casting aside once and for all the “stupid prejudices” that Squair lamented a century ago.

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Appendices Biographical information

Adam, Graeme Mercer. (1839-1912) Scottish publisher, editor, and author. Adam emigrated to Canada West in the late 1850s, and immediately set up a publishing business with James Rollo. Adam was responsible for the British American Magazine (May 1863-April 1864) and the Canadian Monthly and National Review (1872-1878), which later became Rose-Belford’s Canadian Monthly and National Review (1878-1882). Beginning in the late 1880s, Adam wrote a number of books on Canada, including The Canadian north-west, Canada, historical and descriptive, from sea to sea, Illustrated Quebec, and also contributed to Grant’s Picturesque Canada. Adam noted that the language spoken by the habitants around Rimouski was reminiscent of that spoken in the “old French Province.”

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Airvaux, Jules. See Fréchette, Louis.

Alexander, James Edward. (1803-1885) Scottish soldier and author. Major-General Alexander served in a number of wars during the 19th century, namely the Russo-Turkish War, the 6th Cape Frontier War, and the Crimean War. Alexander began serving in Canada in 1841, which led to him to write three books on his experiences. Alexander briefly mentioned that French Canadians spoke a patois.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Allard, Christophe. (1849-1912) French jurist. I have found little biographical information on Allard, a native of Rouen, save that he travelled in Canada in 1876, and published an account of this travel, Voyage au Canada et aux Etats-Unis. Allard emphatically stated that there was no patois spoken in Canada, though the CanFr was marked by archaisms.

Source: Voyage au Canada et aux États-Unis

Ampère, Jean-Jacques. (1800-1864) French historian, travel writer, and member of the Académie française (elected in 1848). Ampère was already well-travelled before he visited the

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Canadas in 1851, and was inspired to do so due to his appreciation of Alexis de Tocqueville, to whom he dedicated his Promenade en Amérique. Ampère was critical of Anglicisms on storefronts, and pointed out several similarities between NorFr and CanFr.

Source: Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle

Anburey, Thomas. (1759-1840) British military officer and writer. Anburey served under General Burgoyne in the Saratoga Campaign (June-October 1777), and allegedly witnessed the murder of Jane McCrea. Anburey, who travelled throughout Canada until 1781, is noteworthy for being the first Anglophone (after Jefferys, see below) to comment on CanFr.

Source: Travel through the interior parts of North America

Arfwedson, Carl David. (1806-1881) Swedish wholesaler, writer, and prolific traveller who published numerous accounts of his travels in Europe and North America, as well as several historical novels. From 1832-1834, Arfwedson travelled throughout North America, and found French Canadians to be a somewhat backward people who spoke a Norman patois.

Source: Svenskt biografiskt handlexikon

Aubertin, John James. (1818-1900) English astronomer, travel writer, and translator. Aubertin set out for North America in June of 1866, first visiting the Canadas, then west through the US to British Columbia, and eventually to Hawaii and Cuba, which took the author nearly a year. Aubertin made several negative comments about CanEn, and expressed outrage at being mistaken for a British Canadian.

Source: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Baudoncourt, Jacques de. (Dates unknown) French writer. De Baudoncourt claimed in the foreword of his Histoire populaire du Canada that he undertook this task because there were no comparable studies on Canada available in France at that time. De Baudoncourt expressed a desire to understand better “ce petit peuple que nous avons trop dédaigné”, and found CanFr to be of good quality, despite the presence of numerous archaisms and Anglicisms. There is no evidence that de Baudoncourt ever visited Canada.

Source: Histoire populaire du Canada

325

Beaufoy, Mark. (1764-1827) English soldier, astronomer, physicist, and mountaineer. Beaufoy stated in the preface that he wanted to “strengthen those bonds of mutual good-will between the two Nations [Great Britain and the United States], which are rapidly succeeding the animosities of the revolutionary struggle.” Beaufoy was the first Anglophone to describe CanFr as a patois.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Bellay, [Adolphe?]. French Jesuit priest. I have found little biographical information on Bellay, save that he was interested enough in two Montréal institutions – the Collège Sainte-Marie and the Hospice-St-Jean-de-Dieu (Longue-Pointe) – to write reports on each. In 1891, Bellay wrote an article for the Revue Canadienne entitled “Le Collège Sainte-Marie de Montréal”, in which he expressed surprise at the correct pronunciation of drama students.

Source: “Le Collège Sainte-Marie de Montréal”

Bentzon, Th. See Blanc, Marie-Thérèse.

Berry, C.B. (Dates unknown) Scottish traveller. I have found little biographical information on Berry, who travelled from Greenock, Scotland with his friend Davis to North America for six months. Berry had a negative opinion of both Americans and Canadians, and criticized both the English and French languages spoken in Canada, focusing particularly on the vocabulary.

Source: The Other Side, how it struck us

Bibaud, François-Maximilien. (1823-1887) French Canadian lawyer, professor of law, and chronicler. The son of Michel Bibaud, François-Maximilien began writing for L’Encyclopédie canadienne starting in 1842, was called to the bar (Montreal) in 1851, and immediately began teaching at the newly established French language law school at the Collège Sainte-Marie. Bibaud is known for Le Mémorial des vicissitudes et des progress de la Langue Française au Canada, an attempt at a history of CanFr which was strongly criticized by Louis Fréchette for its alleged errors.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Bibaud, Michel. (1782-1857) French Canadian journalist, author, and historian. Bibaud had a long career in journalism, beginning in 1813 with Le Spectateur, followed by L’Aurore in 1817.

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Bibaud is perhaps best known for La Bibliothèque canadienne (1825-1830), a scholarly journal which he edited and frequently contributed to. Bibaud wrote the earliest language chronicles under various pseudonyms in L’Aurore, which would make him the first French Canadian to discuss the problems with CanFr, i.e., barbarisms and Anglicisms. Bibaud also commented on Maguire and Demer’s grammatical quarrel in 1842, ultimately disagreeing with both authors. Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Bishop, Isabella Lucy (Bird). (1831-1904) English travel writer, explorer, and natural historian. Bishop went to visit relatives in North America in 1854, a trip which she detailed in The Englishwoman in America. Bishop wrote a number of critical remarks about American and Canadian speech, cultural habits, and society.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Bishop, Nathaniel Holmes. (1837-1902) American explorer, travel writer, and canoe enthusiast. Bishop travelled by canoe from Québec to the Gulf of Mexico (by way of Florida) in 1874-75, the details of which are described in his Voyage of the Paper Canoe. Bishop mentioned in passing that French Canadians spoke a patois “unintelligible to the Londoner or Parisian”, despite never having visited Europe.

Source: Voyage of the Paper Canoe

Blain de Saint-Aubin, Emmanuel. (1833-1883) French musician, songwriter, and translator for the Legislative Assembly. Blain de Saint-Aubin first arrived in North America in 1857, when he accidentally boarded a ship headed for Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon. He lived for a time in PEI, then in the Gaspé Peninsula, before settling in Québec City around 1859, where he met Benjamin Sulte and became French teacher to Lord Monck’s children in 1862. Blain de Saint-Aubin became a member of the Institut Canadien-français in 1867, and promoted French Canadian literature for the remainder of his life. Blain de Saint-Aubin had a positive view of French Canadians and the language they spoke, and refuted claims that it was in any way inferior.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Blanc, Marie-Thérèse (Thérèse or Théophile Bentzon). (1840-1907) French journalist, essayist, and novelist. Blanc wrote for the Revue des Deux Mondes from 1872-1906, and spent

327 several years in North America beginning in 1893, which was the subject of The American Women at Home. Blanc also wrote two accounts of her time spent in the United States in Canada: the article “Au Canada”, which appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and Nouvelle- France et Nouvelle-Angleterre. Blanc commented that CanFr had numerous Anglicisms and “patois” words.

Source: Dictionnaire universel des contemporains

Boardman, James. (Dates unknown) I have found little biographical information on Boardman, who wrote under the pseudonym “A Citizen of the World.” Boardman wrote that he initially travelled to the United States for “commercial views”, and briefly took up residence there. Boardman also spent some time in the Canadas, and he had a positive view of French Canadians. The book is dedicated to the Marquis LaFayette.

Source: America and the Americans

Bonnaud, Dominique. (1864-1943) French chansonnier, poet, goguettier, and chronicler (La France). Bonnaud travelled to North America around 1895, and published an account of his experiences, entitled D’océan à océan. Bonnaud ridiculed French Canadians and their language on numerous occasions, and in particular, their status as subjects of the British Crown.

Source: Montmartre et ses chansons

Bonnycastle, Richard Henry. (1791-1847) English army officer, engineer, artist, and author. Bonnycastle was sent to Upper Canada in 1826, where he served at Fort George and Kingston until 1832, and later in York (Toronto). An avid painter, Bonnycastle was elected president of the Society of Artists and Amateurs in 1834. During the Rebellion of 1837-38, Bonnycastle successfully defended Kingston from the rebels, and received a knighthood for his services in 1840. Bonnycastle wrote three books on Upper Canada, the last of which was published posthumously. In his first book, entitled The Canadas in 1841, Bonnycastle wrote that French Canadians spoke a patois that would be “unintelligible to the French scholar.”

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

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Bos, Charles. (Dates unknown) French publicist. I have found little biographical information on Bos, as his original article (published in le XIXe Siècle) is lost. Fragments of the text are repeated in a compte rendu by Paul Fabre (the director of Paris-Canada) in 1897. Bos noted that the French Canadians spoke the pure language of the 18th century.

Source: Chronique, in Le XIXe siècle

Boucher-Belleville, Jean-Baptiste. (1800-1874) French Canadian newspaper owner, editor, and civil servant. Boucher-Belleville first gained prominence for Les Principes de la langue française and Les Principes de la langue latine, and later became the owner and editor of L’Echo du Pays in 1836, a paper associated with the Patriotes. While serving as secretary of the Department of Education at Montréal, Boucher-Belleville anonymously published Dictionnaire des barbarismes et des solécismes, the second prescriptive work on CanFr.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Bouchette, Joseph. (1774-1841) French Canadian naval officer and land surveyor. Bouchette began his career serving under his father, Jean-Baptiste Bouchette (1736-1804), who served in the Provincial Marine on Lake Ontario, stationed in York (Toronto). Bouchette later performed several reconnaissance missions during the War of 1812 while stationed in Lower Canada. After the war, Bouchette spent several years surveying crown lands, and eventually published the two- volume work The British dominions in North America (1831). Bouchette remarked that having trials conducted in both English and French was difficult.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Bougainville, Louis-Antoine, Comte de. (1729-1811) French admiral and explorer. Bougainville accompanied the Marquis de Montcalm to New France in 1756, serving as his aide- de-camp. In his posthumously published Mémoire, Bougainville considered the French spoken by Canadians to be of excellent quality.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Bourassa, Henri. (1868-1952) French Canadian politician (MP for Labelle, 1896-1907; MLA for Montréal 1908-1909 and Saint-Hyacinthe 1908-1912), journalist, newspaper owner, editor,

329 publisher, and author. A strong proponent of French Canadian nationalism, Bourassa stressed the importance of the French language for French Canadian nationalism. In Le Patriotisme canadien-français, Bourassa discouraged abandoning the French language for English, which would “destroy” their nationality.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Bourbonnaud, Louise. (Dates unknown) French travel writer and philanthropist. The wife of Parisian businessman Étienne Bourbonnaud, a close friend of Baron Haussmann, Bourbonnaud began travelling the world in the 1880s, including North and South America, a trip which she described in her book Les Amériques. Bourbonnaud wrote that all the signs she saw in Québec were written in French.

Source: Dictionnaire biographique des grands négociants et industriels

Bouthillier-Chavigny, Charles Marie Claude, vicomte de. (Dates unknown) French nobleman, politician (député de Berry), and writer. Bouthillier-Chavigny wrote two books on Canada and the Canadians: À travers le nord-ouest canadien, and Justice aux Canadiens- Français!. Bouthillier-Chavigny reacted strongly Pierre de Coubertin’s negative assessment of French Canadians; specifically, the claim that Anglicisms were becoming more frequent, and accused British Canadians of making it “a point of honour” to remain ignorant of French.

Source: Justice aux Canadiens-Français

Brown, James Bryce. (Dates Unknown) Scottish businessman. I have found little biographical information on Brown, save what he wrote in Views of Canada and the colonists. Brown arrived in Upper Canada in 1839, living and working there for four years before returning to Scotland in 1843. Brown was fond of the province, and wrote his book with the express purpose of encouraging his fellow Scots to emigrate there, but warned against American influence in the classroom.

Source: Views of Canada and the colonists

Bryant, William Cullen. (1794-1878) American poet, journalist, and editor of the New York Evening Post. Cullen described several visits to Canada during the 1840s in Letters of Traveller

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(1850), making several references to the language spoken by French Canadians. Bryant wrote that French Canadians spoke “Canadian French”, which would imply it was distinct from Standard French.

Source: American National Biography

Buckingham, James Silk. (1786-1855) Cornish author, journalist, and politician (MP Sheffield, 1832-37). Buckingham was an early Orientalist, having published a number of newspapers and journals on the subject, one of which, the Calcutta Journal (1818-1823) led to his expulsion from India. Following his career as an MP, Buckingham travelled to North America for three years. He believed French Canadians had no desire to learn English, or make any social or cultural progress. This book was dedicated to Prince Albert.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Buies, Arthur. (1840-1901) French Canadian journalist, soldier, writer, and member of the Institut Canadien (vice-president in 1865, and corresponding secretary in 1868). Buies lived in Europe from 1856-1862, after which he returned to Canada and became a journalist, writing for a number of newspapers, including Le Pays, Le National, La Minerve, and L’Opinion publique. Buies is best known for the language chronicle, “Barbarismes canadiens” (Le Pays, 1865-66), and the prescriptive work Anglicismes et Canadianismes (1888), and argued for following the French linguistic norm.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Caine, William Sproston. (1842-1903) English politician (MP Scarborough 1880-1885, Barrow-in-Furness 1886-1890, Bradford East 1892-1895, and Camborne 1900-1903) and Temperance advocate. In the years 1887-1888, Caine travelled around the world, which he detailed in A Trip around the world. Caine was shocked by the prevalence of French in Canada, yet admired French Canadians’ loyalty to the Crown.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Campbell, John George Edward Henry Douglas Southerland, 9th Duke of Argyll. (1845- 1914) English nobleman and the fourth Governor General of Canada (1878-1883). Campbell was

331 appointed Governor General of Canada at the age of 33, and was a strong supporter of the arts, establishing the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and the National Gallery of Canada. Campbell remarked that the French spoken in Canada was “not the speech of the Paris of to-day.”

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Canniff, William. (1830-1910) British Canadian physician, author, civil servant, and school administrator. A descendant of Loyalist settlers, Canniff wrote History of the settlement of Upper Canada, the first study on the Province, which contained a number of early references to the American influence on the language.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Caron, Napoléon. (1846-1932) French Canadian priest, canon, instructor and director of the Grand séminaire at Trois-Rivières. In addition to his religious works, Caron is perhaps best known for his Petit vocabulaire à l’usage des Canadiens-français, in which he warned against the danger of Anglicisms. Caron was also among the first French Canadians to promote an endogenous linguistic norm.

Source: Petit vocabulaire à l’usage des Canadiens-français

Carruthers, John (James). (d. 1866) Scottish missionary and resident of Upper Canada. I have found little biographical information on Carruthers, save for what he wrote in the preface of his book, Retrospect of Thirty-Six Years’ Residence in Canada West. Carruthers travelled to Canada with Reverend James Harris of York to establish a strong Presbyterian base west of Toronto. Carruthers described the language spoken by Canadians living near Detroit as “unintelligible.”

Source: Retrospect of Thirty-Six Years’ Residence in Canada West

Caumont-Laporte, François-Louis Nompar de, comte de Castelnau. (1810-1880) French naturalist. Castelnau spent four years (1837-1841) in Canada on a scientific expedition, where he studied the animals in Upper and Lower Canada, in addition to making numerous observations on the political systems of both provinces. Castelnau dedicated Vues et souvenirs de l’Amérique du Nord to Ferdinand d’Orléans (1810-1842), then the prince of France. Castelnau remarked that

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French Canadian merchants gave preference to French-speaking customers, and often refused to speak English.

Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography

Cazes, Paul de. (1841-1913) French-born Canadian author, lawyer, civil servant (secretary of the Département de l’Instruction publique, 1885), and one of the 24 founding members of the SPFC. Cazes wrote a number of works on Canada, including the article “La langue que nous parlons”, wherein he examined the patois myth, the origins of the language, and Parisians’ affinity for English.

Source: The Encyclopedia of Canada

Chamberlain, Alexander Francis. (1865-1914) English-born Canadian anthropologist and linguist. Before dedicating himself fully to anthropological studies, Chamberlain wrote several articles on CanFr and CanEn, noting the need for comprehensive studies to be conducted on both, particularly the latter, which he believed had been almost entirely ignored by academics.

Source: American Anthropologist, Vol. 16, 2

Champion, Paul. (b. 1853) French historian and geographer. Champion’s Le Canada was one of several historical and political studies published in the 1880s with the aim of increasing French awareness of their Canadian cousins. Since Champion never visited Canada, he relied exclusively on earlier accounts of Canada for information.

Source: Le Canada

Chandonnet, Thomas-Aimé. (1834-1881) French Canadian priest, educator, and writer. In addition to serving as the principal of the École Normale Laval (1867-1871), Chandonnet was a priest for French Canadians living in Massachusetts. In 1877, Chandonnet founded the Revue de Montréal, a scholarly journal that published numerous articles on CanFr. In his popular sermon entitled La Saint-Jean-Baptiste à Québec, Chandonnet stressed the importance of maintaining the French language in Canada.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

333

Charlevoix, Pierre-François-Charles. (1682-1761) French Jesuit priest, educator, and procurator of the Jesuit missions and Ursuline convents in New France and Louisiana. Charlevoix was first sent to New France in 1805 to teach at a college in Québec, and travelled throughout the colony before returning to France in 1709. Charlevoix returned to New France in 1719 in order to establish a border for Acadia, and determine the location of a “Western Sea” between the New World and Asia. Charlevoix observation on the purity of CanFr was widely cited throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Charlton, William Henry. (b. 1814) English writer. I have found little biographical information on Charlton230, save that he visited North America in the fall of 1872 with some friends, and that he was retired, as he spoke of being “at a period beyond that of middle age”. Charlton was puzzled by the use of both English and French during court proceedings.

Source: Four months in North America

Chasles, Victor-Euphémien-Philarète. (1799-1873) French journalist and literary critc/scholar. Chasles travelled to North America in 1849 with the express purpose of tracing the progress of civilization in the New World. While travelling through Lower Canada, Chasles noted that an habitant he encountered spoke 17th century French.

Source: Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle

Chasseboeuf, Constantin-François de, comte de Volney. (1757-1820) French nobleman, politician, philosopher, and historian. Volney travelled throughout the United States from 1795- 1798, before being deported by President John Adams. In 1803, Volney published the results of his studies in North America, and remarked that the French inhabitants of the Louisiana Territory did not speak a patois.

Source: Biographie universelle, ancienne et moderne

230 There was an English artist named William Henry Charlton (1846-1918) who lived during this period, but there is no evidence that he travelled to Canada.

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Chauveau, Pierre-Joseph-Olivier. (1820-1890) French Canadian author, Premier of Québec (1867-73), and lawyer. Chauveau was keenly interested in literary and political developments in Canada, and wrote numerous articles for the US-based newspaper Le Courier des États-Unis. Chauveau wrote was criticized for his portrayal of the habitants’ speech in his novel Charles Guérin. Chauveau’s response to these criticisms is significant, as he was the first French Canadian to comment on what outsiders thought about CanFr.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Cheadle, Walter Butler. (1836-1910) English pediatrician and traveller. Cheadle undertook a long trip (1862-1864) through Western Canada with William Fitzwilliam, Viscount Milton (see below). The pair published a highly detailed account of their trip across Canada in 1865, The North-West Passage by Land, which was quickly translated into French. Cheadle wrote that his Métis guides spoke “Canadian French.”

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Clapin, Sylva. (1853-1928) French Canadian journalist, translator, and lexicographer. Clapin began his career as editor for the Courrier de Saint-Hyacinthe (1876-1879), then worked in Paris from 1880-1889, during which time he wrote Le Canada. Upon returning to Canada, he wrote several works on CanFr and CanEn, namely the Dictionnaire canadien-français and the Dictionary of Americanisms. The former work is noteworthy for the organization of Canadianisms into several distinct categories, and for supporting an endogenous linguistic norm.

Source: The Encyclopedia of Canada

Cockburn, James Seton. (Dates unknown) British traveller. I have found little biographical information on Cockburn, whose letters on Canada were published under the title Canada for gentlemen at the behest of his father, S. Cockburn, possibly noted Scottish homeopath Samuel Cockburn (1823-1915). Cockburn related that CanFr was quite different from the French he was accustomed to.

Source: Canada for gentlemen

335

Coke, Edward Thomas. (1807-1888) English soldier (lieutenant of the 45th regiment). Coke explained in the preface to A subaltern’s furlough that he travelled to North America in order to learn first-hand about the country and its people, as he was “dissatisfied” with contemporary accounts. Coke’s book is notable for containing an early reference to French Canadians’ belief in the purity and antiquity of CanFr. Coke’s book was dedicated to John Henry Manners, the 5th Duke of Rutland, a renowned breeder of Thoroughbred racehorses.

Source: A subaltern’s furlough

Colombier, Marie. (1844-1910) French theatre actress and writer. Colombier began her acting career in 1864, and was chosen by George Sand for her play L’Autre in 1870, where she met Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1932). The pair travelled to North America for a theatre tour in 1880, with Colombier publishing two works on their trip: Voyage de Sarah Bernhardt en Amérique and Les Mémoires de Sarah Barnum. Colombier noted that CanFr sounded nearly identical to NorFr.

Source: Dictionnaire des Comédiens français

Comettant, Jean-Pierre Oscar. (1819-1898) French musician and critic. Comettant travelled to North America in 1859, which he described in L’Amérique telle qu’elle est. Comettant mocked French Canadians on several occasions for their alleged ignorance, and expressed disdain for their “15th century patois.”

Source: Dictionnaire de la musique

Copleston, Mrs. Edward. (Dates unknown) Irish immigrant and writer. I have found little biographical information on Mrs. Copleston or her husband, save what she wrote in Canada: why we live in it. Copleston commented on the nasal twang of some British Canadian, and noted that she was familiar with earlier works on Canada, such as Traill’s The Backwoods of Canada.

Source: Canada: why we live in it

Cornwallis, Kinahan. (1839-1917) English civil servant, poet, and lawyer. Cornwallis was a prolific traveller, and wrote two books about Canada: The New El Dorado, in which he encouraged upper class Britons to emigrate to British Columbia, and Royalty in the New World, which detailed his trip to North America with the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII.

336

Cornwallis was disappointed by the preponderance of the French element in Canada, as he believed the colony should be wholly English.

Source: entry for Kinahan Cornwallis (son), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Cotteau, Edmond. (1833-1896) French explorer, travel writer, and member of the Société de géographie and Club Alpin. Cotteau, the brother of naturalist and lawyer Gustave Cotteau, travelled to the Americas in 1876-1877, and published an account of this trip in Promenades dans les deux Amériques, wherein he comments briefly on the Norman flavour of CanFr, and the “accent traînard”, which he believed to be a typical Canadian feature.

Source: Dictionnaire universel des contemporains

Cotton, L. de. (Dates unknown) French traveller. I have found little biographical information on Cotton, save what he wrote in his travel journal. Cotton travelled from London to Canada in June 1886, and made several comments on CanFr, primarily regarding Canadianisms like “correct”, “frète”, and “icitte”.

Source: À travers le Dominion et la Californie

Coubertin, Pierre Fredy de. (1863-1937) French baron, historian, educator, and founder of the modern Olympic Games. Coubertin wrote a number of books on pedagogy, and travelled to North America to study the educational system. Coubertin was critical of French Canadians – exaggerating their use of Anglicisms – which led to a direct response from the vicomte Bouthillier-Chavigny.

Source: Encyclopédie Larousse

Coursen, Charlotte H. 231 (Dates unknown) I have not found any biographical information on the author, who travelled through both Canadas for three months in winter of 1844. Coursen was struck by the use of both languages in the House of Assembly, and contrasted the “ancient French” and the “modern English” languages.

231 The author’s identity was suggested by Google Books. However, the dedication to the book would suggest that the author was in fact a man.

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Crémazie, Octave. (1827-1879) French Canadian poet, writer, founder and president (1857- 1858) of the Candian Institute. Due to financial difficulties and his forging of banknotes in an attempt to pay them off, Crémazie fled to France, where he resided from 1862 until his death. The posthumously published Œuvres complètes, contains a letter addressed to Crémazie that discussed the poor state of the French language in Canada.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Crosweller, William Thomas. (b. c. 1851) English writer, member of the British Association, and fellow of the Zoological Society. Crosweller and his wife Annie left for Canada in 1897 to attend the yearly meeting of the British Association, which took place in Toronto. Crosweller identifies the language spoken by British Canadians as being “Amurrcan”, not BrEn.

Source: Our visit to Toronto, the Niagara Falls and the United States of America

Cumberland, Robert Bakewell. (Dates unknown) British officer stationed in India and travel writer. I have found little biographical information on Cumberland, who declined to identify himself in the introduction to his two books: Stray Leaves from the Diary of an Indian Officer and How I spent my two years’ leave. Cumberland demonstrated his familiarity with various English accents and dialects (Australian, American, Canadian), and provided examples of typical phrases he encountered.

Source: How I spent my two years’ leave

Cumberland, Stuart C. (1857-1922) British mind-reader, magician, writer, and fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Cumberland travelled from Australia to North America, and rode the then recently finished Canadian Pacific railway from Vancouver to Halifax, a trip detailed in his book The Queen’s Highway. Cumberland had a low opinion of French Canadians, and dismissed their language as “unintelligible” and a “patois.”

Source: A thought-reader’s thoughts

Curzon, J., and A. Curzon. (Dates unknown) English travellers. I have found little biographical information on the Curzons, who individually visited North America in 1858, and then in 1861. The United States and Canada is written in a light, almost playful tone, and contains several

338 references to CanFr and CanEn; namely, that the former “would puzzle a Parisian to understand”, and that the latter was distinct from BrEn in terms of pronunciation (the “twang”).

Source: The United States and Canada

Darling, William Stewart. (1818-1886) British Canadian priest. I have found little biographical information on Darling, who served as the rector of Toronto’s Church of the Holy Trinity from 1853. Early in his career, Darling published Sketches of life, lay and ecclesiastical, which he wrote in an effort to depict a “typical” settlers experience in Upper Canada. Darling contrasted the British “core” of some Canadians with their Yankee manners and speech habits.

Source: entry for Frank Darling (son), Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Dawson, Samuel Edward. (1833-1916) British Canadian publisher, writer, and civil servant. Dawson ran the Montréal-based publishing firm Dawson brothers from 1847-1889, and was appointed the Queen’s printer in 1901, a position which he held until 1908. Dawson co-wrote the geographical study/travel guide North America with American geographer Henry Gannett. In the section on Québec, the authors refuted the claim that CanFr was a patois.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Day, Samuel Phillips. (1833-1916) English writer and journalist for the Morning Herald. I have found little biographical information on Day, save that he wrote two books on North America: Down South, which detailed his time in the American South during the Civil War, and English America. Day wrote at length about Canadian society and culture, and ridiculed the patois spoken by French Canadians, as well as the use of both languages for official purposes.

Source: English America

Demanche, Louis-Henri-Georges. (b. 1855) French travel writer. Demanche, the distant cousin of painter Georges Demanche (1870-1941), travelled to Canada in 1885 in order to understand the current state of French Canadians. Demanche was well-versed in previous studies on Canada, citing Chauveau and Sulte, and dedicated a long section to the legitimacy of CanFr.

Source: Au Canada et chez les Peaux-Rouges

339

Demers, Jérôme. (1774-1853) French Canadian priest, architect, and educator. Demers studied and taught at the Séminaire de Québec for the entirety of his career, where he taught philosophy, grammar, and the humanities. Demers is notable for his year-long quarrel with fellow clergyman Thomas Maguire in 1842, which was detailed in Narcisse-Eutrope Dionne’s work Une dispute grammaticale en 1842. Although Demers disagreed with Maguire on a number of issues, the correct pronunciation of the digraph oi was the main source of contention.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Desaché, Gaétan. (Dates Unknown) French traveller. I have found little biographical information on Desaché, save what he wrote in his Souvenir de mon voyage aux États-Unis et au Canada, which recounted his year-long trip (1877-78) in North America. Desaché noted in the preface that he admired the Canadians, for their “happy harmony” of English and French elements. Desaché believed that CanFr was a Norman patois.

Source: Souvenir de mon voyage aux États-Unis et au Canada

Doucet, Stanislas-Joseph. (1847-1925) Acadian priest, inventor, and author. Doucet was a strong proponent of Acadian nationalism, having organized five of the Conventions Nationales des Acadiens, and helped found the Courrier des provinces Maritimes in 1885, where he frequently espoused his views on language. In 1896, Doucet gave a lecture entitled Dual language in Canada at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, wherein he dismissed many of the arguments against a bilingual Canada.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Du Bled, Victor. (1848-1927) French historian, novelist, and editor of the Revue des deux mondes. Du Bled refuted the patois myth, yet acknowledged the strong influence of the English language. There is no evidence that du Bled ever set foot in Canada, and his information came from contemporary accounts of the language, both French (Lamothe, Gerbié, Réveillaud) and Canadian (Dunn, Clapin, Sulte).

Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France

340

Duclos de Celles, Alfred. (1843-1925) French Canadian journalist, historian, lawyer, and librarian. De Celles wrote for Le Journal de Québec from 1867-1872, served as assistant librarian of the Library of Parliament in Ottawa, and bought Montreal newspaper L’Opinion publique, which he ran and wrote for from 1881-1883. De Celles wrote a short piece for the Bulletin des recherches historiques, in which he criticized the French habit of saying “au Canada” instead of “en Canada.”

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Duncan, Francis. (1836-1888) British politician (MP House of Commons 1885-1888), Royal Artillery officer, and lawyer. Duncan was stationed in British North America from 1856-1862, primarily in Nova Scotia, and received an Honorary D.C.L. from King’s College in 1861. Duncan published two works on his time in Canada; the one discussed in this dissertation, Our Garrisons in the West (1864), and the speech Canada in 1871 (1872), read before the Russell Institution in London. Duncan was critical of the use of two languages in Parliament, which he found “indulgent.”

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Duncan, John Morison. (c. 1795-1825) Scottish student and traveller. Duncan explained in the preface to his Travels through parts of the United States and Canada that he wanted to shed some light on the “moral character” of Americans and Canadians, something he felt was misunderstood in Great Britain. Duncan expressed dissatisfaction at the prevalence of the French language and the Catholic faith in Montréal. The book was dedicated to American professor Benjamin Silliman.

Source: Travels through parts of the United States and Canada

Dunn, Oscar. (1845-1885) French Canadian journalist, public servant (secretariat of Département de l’Instruction publique), and lexicographer. Dunn wrote for a number of newspapers during his short career, beginning with Le Courrier de Saint-Hyacinthe, La Minerve, Le Courrier, as well as the journals Revue Canadienne and Journal de l’Instruction publique. Influenced by secular ideas he learned while working in France, Dunn had difficulty with the

341 more religiously-minded Canadian newspapers, namely Le Courrier. Dunn wrote a number of articles on CanFr, and published the influential Glossaire franco-canadien.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Duvergier de Hauranne, Ernest. (1843-1877) French journalist, travel writer and politician (deputy of Cher at the National Assembly, 1871-1877). With a desire to emulate Alexis de Tocqueville, Duvergier de Hauranne travelled to North America in June 1864. He first arrived in Upper Canada in August of that year, and then later moved on to Montréal in October. Duvergier de Hauranne noted that some French Canadians had begun to copy British manners and habits, as well as their speech.

Source: Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle

Dwight, Theodore. (1796-1866) American author, traveller, and amateur historian. Dwight was a member of the prominent New England Dwight family, who played a major role in early American law and politics; his father, Theodore Dwight, Sr. was leader of the Federalist Party, and a member of Congress (1806-1807), and his uncle, Timothy Dwight, served as the president of Yale College. Dwight made several trips to the Canadas in the early 19th century, and wrote two books on his experiences. Dwight was taken with the rustic, antique quality of French Canadian life, and found the language they spoke to be “a harsh and uncouth dialect.”

Source: American National Biography

Elliott, Aaron Marshall. (1844-1910) American romance linguist. A prominent early linguist, Elliott founded the Modern Language Association in 1884 (and the accompanying PMLA), and the academic journal Modern Language Notes in 1886. Before becoming full professor at John Hopkins University in 1892, Elliott wrote a number of articles on CanFr, and proposed that it was a compromise between the French spoken by the clergy, the working class, and the habitants.

Source: A. Marshall Elliott in PMLA, Vol. 26, No. 1

Elliott, Charles. (Dates unknown) English agriculturalist. I have found little biographical information on Elliott, save what he wrote in his book A trip to Canada and the far North-West.,

342

Elliott noted in the preface that Canada was highly suitable for emigration, yet stated that he had no interest in the country itself. Elliott mentioned the nasal twang that Scottish and Irish immigrants in Guelph quickly adopted.

Source: A trip to Canada and the far North-West

Faucher de Saint-Maurice, Narcisse-Édouard. (1844-1897) French Canadian author, army officer (Franco-Mexican War), politician (MLA Bellechasse, 1881-1890), and journalist. Faucher de Saint-Maurice was a prolific traveller, and several of his travel journals and memoirs were very popular during his lifetime. At the behest of Governor General Campbell, Faucher de Saint-Maurice assisted in the foundation of the Royal Society of Canada in 1881. Faucher de Saint-Maurice refuted the claim that French Canadians and Acadians spoke a patois.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Ferguson, William. (1823-1904) English scholar and Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London. I have found little biographical information on Ferguson, who travelled to North America in February 1855232. In the introduction to America by river and rail, Ferguson noted that most travel writers comment on only one kind of American – the loud, obnoxious one – although there are many well-mannered, conscientious and intelligent people living in North America; Ferguson hoped to shed more light on the latter. Ferguson believed CanFr was a patois.

Source: America by river and rail

Fergusson, Adam. (1783-1862) Scottish-born agriculturalist and member of the Legislative Council for Upper and United Canada (1839-1862). Fergusson initially settled in Waterdown, Upper Canada in 1833, and established the village of Fergus the following year. Fergusson dedicated his book to the Highland Society of Scotland, and strongly encouraged emigration from Scotland to the Canadas. Fergusson was struck by the usage of French and English in the courts.

232 The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography contains an entry for another William Ferguson (1820-1887), a surveyor and naturalist who spent most of his working life in Ceylon. Although this Ferguson was also a Fellow of the Linnean Society, he was not elected until 1862, and there is no evidence that he ever travelled to North America.

343

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Féval, Paul Auguste Jean Nicolas. (1860-1933) French novelist and dramaturge, son of Paul Féval (1816-1887). The younger Féval was a prolific writer, and continued several of his father’s stories in his early years. There is no evidence that Féval ever visited Canada, though he makes a passing reference to the purity and antiquity (citing Bossuet and Corneille) of CanFr in Le Régiment des géants, suivi de Force et Faiblesse.

Source: Le Petit Robert 2, dictionnaire universel des noms propres

Feyrol, Jacques. See Hue, Fernand.

Fidler, Isaac. (Dates unknown) British reverend and writer. I have found little biographical information on Fidler, who served for a short time as a missionary at Thornhill, Ontario. Fidler compared his observations to those made by Frances Trollope in her Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832) and “Mr. [James] Stuart”, who published Three Years in North America in 1833. Fidler noted the numerous English dialects spoken in the Canadas, and predicted they would eventually merge like they had done in the United States.

Source: Observations on Professions, literature, manners, and emigration, in the United States and Canada

Fitzgerald, Robert Allan. (1834-1881) English cricketer and manager of the Marylebone Cricket Club. Fitzgerald travelled to North America in the summer of 1871 to play a series of matches in Canada and the United States, with the aim of bolstering interest for the sport among Canadians. Fitzgerald was among the first writers after Geikie to comment on differences between BrEn and AmEn, namely the “tone”. Fitzgerald dedicated Wickets in the West to the Earl of Dufferin.

Source: Alumni Cantabrigiensis

Fitzwilliam, William Wentworth, Viscount Milton. (1839-1877) British politician (MP House of Commons for the West Riding of Yorkshire South, 1865-1872) and explorer. Fitzwilliam travelled across Canada with Walter Butler Cheadle from 1862-1864, and they have the distinction of being the first so-called tourists through the Yellowhead Pass, on the border

344 between Alberta and British Columbia. Fitzwilliam noted that his Métis guides spoke “Canadian French.”

Source: entry for William Butler Cheadle in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Florimond, Jacques, vicomte de Basterot. (Dates unknown) French nobleman and chess player. I have found little biographical information on Florimond, who travelled throughout North and South America from 1858-59. Florimond explained in the preface to De Québec à Lima that he wanted to increase awareness of the Americas in France. Florimond remarked that the signs in Lower Canada were written in a “patois franco-anglais.”

Source: De Québec à Lima

Foncin, Pierre. (1841-1916) French professor, geographer, and secretary and president of L’Alliance française (1883-1914). Foncin wrote a brief article for Revue Bleue in 1890 entitled “À travers la presse canadienne”, in which he commented on the “antique” sound of CanFr, but lauded French Canadians for preserving their language.

Source: Dictionnaire universel des contemporains

Foubert, Auguste. (b. c. 1840) French traveller, soldier, and writer. I have found little biographical information on Foubert, apart from what he wrote in La vie d’émigrant en Amérique, which detailed his trip through Argentina, the United States, and Canada. Foubert’s work is notable for several pages dedicated to characteristics CanFr, and significantly, the implication that French Canadians were insecure about their speech.

Source: “A Franc-Tireur in New York”, in New York History

Franquet, Louis. (1697-1768) Army officer and engineer. Following a series of military campaigns in Europe, Franquet was sent to Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) in 1750 where he was tasked with fortifying Louisbourg. Franquet spent several years travelling throughout New France, and wrote a number of journals about his travels. Like his contemporaries, Franquet noted that Canadians spoke excellent French.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

345

Frary, Raoul. (1842-1892) French academic, journalist, and editor-in-chief of La France (1885). In his article “Le Canada français et sa littérature”233, which originally appeared in the Journal official de la République française, Frary commented on the influence of Anglicisms CanFr, as well as the problem of mixing literary styles. Frary conceded, however, that French Canadians had their own literature.

Source: Dictionnaire universel des contemporains

Fraser, Donald. (1826-1892) Scottish clergyman and author. Fraser was ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church in 1851, and served as minister of the Coté St. Presbyterian Church in Montréal, before returning to Scotland a year later. Fraser wrote two books on his time in Canada, Leaves from a minister’s portfolio, and Canada, as I remember it, and as it was, the latter of which described the “indiscriminate” use of French and English in Parliament.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Fréchette, Louis. (Jules Airvaux) (1839-1908) French Canadian journalist, writer, lawyer, politician (MP Lévis 1874-78), recipient of the Monyton Prize (1879). Fréchette founded two newspapers early in his career, Le Drapeau de Lévis, and Le Journal de Lévis, both of which he abandoned within less than a year, moving to Chicago, where he continued his journalistic career. In terms of his linguistic efforts, Fréchette wrote the language chronicle “Corrigeons- nous!” (1893-1903) which appeared in La Presse, and popularized the term Canayen to describe CanFr.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Gagnon, Ernest. (1834-1915) French Canadian musician, teacher, historian, editor, and author. Gagnon made several trips to France in his career, which he wrote about in two separate accounts: “De retour à Québec” and “Petite causerie”, which both appeared in the Revue Canadienne, a magazine to which he contributed (and edited) frequently. Gagnon criticized the French and French Canadians for adopting English words and phrases so readily.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

233 Inexplicably, Frary signed his name as “Fary”.

346

Gailly de Taurines, Charles. (1857-1941) French historian and writer. Gailly de Taurines was sent to Canada in 1889 on the orders of the ministère de l’Instruction publique et des Beaux-Arts, and returned in 1891, which led him to write La Nation Canadienne. Gailly de Taurines had a positive of CanFr, and briefly commented on its regional and antique quality.

Source: Le Canada français vu de France

Gannett, Henry. (1846-1914) American geographer, father of US Government mapmaking, and founding member and president (1909) of the National Geographic Society. In collaboration with Samuel Edward Dawson, Gannett co-wrote and supplied the topographical information for the monumental work North America. Gannett and Dawson dismissed the notion that French Canadians spoke a patois.

Source: American National Biography

Gauldrée-Boileau, Charles-Henri-Philippe. (b. 1823) French consul at Turin (1848), Québec (1859, consul général in 1862), New York (1863), and Lima (1868). Follwing a three-year long prison sentence in New York, Gauldrée-Boileau published Le paysan de Saint-Irénée in Ouvriers des Deux Mondes. Gauldrée-Boileau compared CanFr to the French spoken in Normandy.

Source: Paysans et ouvriers québécois d’autrefois

Geddes, James, Jr. (1858-1948) American linguist, professor of Romance Languages at Boston University (1887-1937). Much of Geddes’ early work focused on CanFr and AcFr, which makes him one of the first (after Elliott) American linguists to do so. Geddes’ Canadian French was a summary of studies done on the subject from 1890-1900, and he later collaborated with Adjutor Rivard Geddes to write the Bibliographie du parler français au Canada.

Source: Italica, Vol. 25, No. 4

Geikie, Archibald Constable. (1821-1898) Scottish-born Presbyterian minister, journalist, and antiquarian. Geikie immigrated to Upper Canada with his father in 1843, and began preaching and writing for the Toronto Globe in 1845. Geikie served briefly as a minister in St. Petersburg (1852-54), before settling in Berlin (Kitchener) in 1855, where he preached at St. Andrew’s

347

Church. Geikie is noteworthy for coining the term “Canadian English” in a speech read before the Canadian Institute, and was harshly critical of British Canadians’ speech.

Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography

Gélinas, (Louis-)Aimé. (Dates unknown) French Canadian journalist. I have found little biographical information on Gélinas, apart from the series of articles he wrote on CanFr, which appeared in L’Opinion publique from 1879-1880. Gélinas was critical of Tardivel, whom he accused of “helping the enemy”, i.e., British Canadians, by publishing works that pointed out “problems” with CanFr.

Source: entries for Joseph Tassé and Alexandre Lacoste, Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Gerbié, Frédéric. (Dates unknown) French writer and traveller. I have found little biographical information on Gerbié, who travelled across Canada over the course of four years, which led him to write Le Canada et l’émigration française and France et Canada. Gerbié had a positive view of CanFr, stating it was the equivalent of what was spoken in France, and applauded French Canadians’ efforts to preserve the language in the face of constant English influence.

Source: Le Canada et l’émigration française, France et Canada

Gingras, Jules-Fabien. (1829-1884) French Canadian typographer and translator for Parliament and the House of Commons. I have found little biographical information on Gingras, save what he wrote about himself. Gingras is best known for publishing the third prescriptive work on CanFr, the anonymously published Recueil des expressions vicieuses et des anglicismes les plus fréquents, which was followed by two later editions. Gingras was concerned primarily with the threat posed by Anglicisms.

Source: Recueils des expressions vicieuses et des anglicismes les plus fréquents

Glazier, Willard. (1841-1905) American soldier, explorer, and travel writer. Following the Civil War, Glazier travelled across North America several times, and wrote a number of books about his experiences, including Peculiarities of American Cities. Glazier had a negative opinion of French Canadians, describing them as having “degenerated into an illiterate, unenterprising people.”

348

Source: Appleton’s cyclopaedia of American Biography

Godley, John Robert. (1814-1861) Irish statesman and co-founder of the Canterbury Association (1848). Godley travelled to the United States and Canada in 1842, and acquired an appreciation for the “systematic colonisation” of Upper Canada. His notes on the trip were published as Letters from America. Godley stereotyped the various residents of the Canadas, characterizing the “Yankees” by their nasal drawl, and French Canadians by their patois.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Gourmont, Remy de. (1858-1915) French writer, journalist, and art critic. A prolific writer, Gourmont wrote in great detail about CanFr in Les Canadiens de France, claiming that the language spoken by French Canadians was marked by “provincialisms, archaisms, and anglicisms.” According to de Gourmont, this meant CanFr was no longer the language of Racine.

Source: Bibliomonde

Grant, George Monro. (1835-1902) British Canadian minister, writer, and principal of Queen’s College (1877-1902). Grant first travelled across Canada in 1872 with prominent Scottish- Canadian Sandford Fleming (1827-1915), a trip which he described in Ocean to Ocean. Grant later wrote Picturesque Canada and Picturesque Quebec, in which he described French Canadians as somewhat behind the times, yet possessing a major advantage for being bilingual.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Gray, Hugh. (Dates unknown) British businessman. I have found not found any biographical information on this author, save that he spent three years living and working in the Canadas. Gray remarked in the preface to his Letters from Canada (1806-1808) that the British ought to direct more of their attention to develop the colony, as it was rich in resources. Gray strongly believed that the Canadas should be English

Source: Letters from Canada (1806-1808)

Guénard, J. See Lefaivre, Albert.

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Hall, Basil. (1788-1844) Scottish naval officer and travel writer. The son of Sir James Hall, 4th Baronet (1761-1832), Hall was well-travelled, and wrote a number of books of his travels in the Americas and the Korean Peninsula. Hall claimed to have not read any earlier travel journals, to avoid colouring his perceptions, and commented on the Englishness of Canada, and the “corrupted, or perhaps antiquated” speech of the voyageurs.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Hamilton, Thomas. (1789-1842) Scottish philosopher, author, and soldier. After the Pennisular and Napoleonic Wars, Hamilton began a literary career, writing various pieces for Blackwood’s Magazine, including his military-themed novel Cyril Thornton (1827). Hamilton accused the British government of committing “a great error” by not Anglicizing Canadians from the beginning. Hamilton dedicated his work to Whig politician William Wolryche-Whitmore (MP House of Commons for Bridgnorth and Wolverhampton 1820-1835).

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Hardy, Mary Anne Duffus, Lady. (1825-1891) English novelist and travel writer. Hardy travelled to North America with an unnamed companion, the account of which she published under the title Through Cities and Prairie. Hardy was dismissive of French Canadians, whom she believed refused to speak English, and that stated that they – and the language they spoke – were stuck in the past.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Harriott, John. (1745-1817) English police officer and co-founder of the Thames Police. Harriott visited North America in the early 1790s, a trip which featured prominently in his memoirs. Harriott observed that by the 1790’s, the English language spoken throughout North America was remarkably homogeneous.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Head, George, Sir. (1782-1855) English military officer, brother to Francis Bond Head (1793- 1875), the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada (1836-1838). Head was stationed in Nova Scotia, Québec and Lake Huron from 1814-1815, then spent five years in Halifax before

350 returning to Great Britain. Head commented on the “bad French” spoken by the voyageurs on several occasions.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Helliwell, M. MacLean. (Dates unknown) I have not found any biographical information on Helliwell, who wrote an article entitled “Womans [sic] Sphere” for The Canadian Magazine of politics, science, art and literature. Helliwell harshly criticized CanEn for its close resemblance to AmEn, particularly in terms of pronunciation.

Source: “Womans Sphere”

Hempl, George. (1859-1921) American linguist and professor of Germanic Philology at Stanford. Hempl wrote numerous books and articles on the German, English, and Etruscan languages. In 1896, Hempl wrote a brief article for Dialect Notes entitled “Grease and Greasy”, in which he briefly discussed the similarities and differences between CanEn and AmEn in terms of pronunciation.

Source: Modern Philology, Vol. 19, No. 2

Herbette, Louis. (1843-1921) French politician, political and historical writer, and prison administrator. Herbette was sent to North America in late 1899 in order to “facilitate scientific, literary and artistic relations” with France, and spent three months in the US and Canada to this end. Upon his return, Herbette gave a speech entitled Des deux cotés de l’eau, in which he noted similarities between CanFr and French regional accents.

Source: Notice d’autorité personne, Bibliothèque nationale de France

Heriot, George. (1759-1839) Scottish-born civil servant, author, and artist. Heriot first travelled to the Canadas in 1792, and briefly served as assistant shopkeeper general (1797-1799), and then as deputy postmaster general (1799-1816), and also published two books on his time in the Canadas. Heriot described French Canadians as free from “Rusticity, either in manners or in language”, though somewhat stuck in the past.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

351

Home, Rudyard. (Dates unknown) Irish writer and traveller. I have not found any biographical information on Home, which may be a pseudonym. Home wrote in the preface to Columbian Sketches that the book was originally published in the Belfast newspaper Irish Times, and that he travelled to North America for the adventure. Home remarked that French Canadians spoke “Canadian French.”

Source: Columbian Sketches

Howison, John. (1797-1859) Scottish doctor and author. Howison first arrived in Lower Canada in 1818, and spent over two years travelling throughout the provinces, briefly setting up a medical practice in St. Catharines, Upper Canada. Howison claimed to have written Sketches of Upper Canada in order to increase awareness of the “obscure” North American colony. Howison briefly commented on the voyageurs’ French, which he found “barbarous.”

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Hudson, T.S. (Dates unknown) English traveller. I have not found any biographical information on Hudson. Hudson dedicated A Scamper through America 1882, in which he recounted a sixty- day long trip through North America, to a H. Byron Reed234. Hudson had a negative opinion of CanFr, labeling it alternately patois and “garbage.”

Source: A Scamper through America

Hue, Fernand (pseud. Jacques Feyrol, Paul Blaise). (1846-1895) French soldier, writer, and novelist. Hue wrote numerous adventure novels, short story collections, and several popular historical, geographical, and cultural accounts of various countries. In his Les Français en Amérique, Hue wrote that he did not believe that French Canadians spoke a patois, and he accused British Canadians of refusing to learn or speak French.

Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France

Hulot, Étienne, baron. (1857-1918) French nobleman and geographer (secretary to the Société de géographie de Paris). Hulot travelled to North America with some friends, and wrote an

234 This might be Henry Byron Reed (1855-1896), MP for Bradford East (1886-92, 1896-96).

352 account of this trip, entitled De l’Atlantique au Pacifique à travers le Canada et les Etats-Unis. The book is dedicated to Emile Boutmy, the founder of l’Ecole libre des sciences politiques. Hulot, who admitted to having borrowed from earlier French commentators (such as Réveillaud and Lamothe), ridiculed lawyers who “juggled” from French to English in court.

Source: Dictionnaire national des contemporains

Irving, Washington. (1783-1859) American author and diplomat. Aside from a brief stint serving in the New York militia during the War of 1812, Irving had little interaction with Canadians, as he immediately left for Europe for nearly twenty years starting in 1815. Irving was contracted by John Jacob Astor to write a more sensational account of the Astor Expedition (1810-12), which was published under the name Astoria (1836). Irving briefly commented on the language spoken by the voyageurs, which he considered a patois.

Source: American National Biography

Jackson, Moses. (d. 1922) English teacher, traveller, and writer. Jackson is perhaps best known for being the object of English poet A.E. Housman’s affections, which he did not reciprocate. Jackson travelled to North America in 1884 in order to attend the British Association’s meeting in Montréal, where he noted that the French Canadians spoke a patois.

Source: entry for A.E. Housman, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

James, Henry. (1843-1916) American author and literary critic. James first travelled to Québec in 1871, a trip which he detailed in his Portraits of places. James found that the habitants possessed “a much livelier vitality”, but ignorant, naïve, simple, and speaking a “narrow patois.”

Source: American National Biography

Jameson, Anna Brownell. (1794-1860) Irish-born author and traveller. Jameson was married to Robert Simpson Jameson (1796-1854), who was named Chief Justice of Upper Canada in 1833. Jameson wrote numerous essays, novels, and travel journals throughout her career. In 1836, Jameson travelled to Toronto to visit her husband, and published an account of her time there as Winter Studies and Summer Rambles (1838). Jameson noted that the French Canadians she encountered spoke a patois.

353

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Jefferys, Thomas. (c. 1719-1771) English cartographer, the “Geographer to King George III.” Jefferys published numerous maps of England and British North America, many of which were popular for years after his death. There is little evidence to suggeset that Jefferys ever visited Canada; his comments on CanFr seem to be a translation of Charlevoix’s earlier statements. Jefferys’ The natural and civil History of the French Dominions in North and South America was dedicated to George Townshend, 1st Marquess Townshend (1724-1807).

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Jephson, Harriet Julia Campbell, Lady. (1854-1930) Canadian-born British writer and artist. Jephson wrote a number of articles and books on Canada, including A Canadian Scrap-book, which contains much commentary on French Canadians. According to the preface, some of her comments were ill-received by the Canadian press, which Jephson attributes to lack of context in the printing of her article “Canadian Society, Past and Present”. Jephson ridiculed the pronunciation of both French and British Canadians.

Source: The Canadian Men and Women of the Time

Kaïser, Georges. (Dates unknown) Belgian engineer, geographer (president of the Belgian Society of Geography), and professor (industrial geography at the Université de Louvain). In his travel journal Au Canada, Kaïser made numerous comments on CanFr, primarily criticizing the pronunciation and Anglicisms. Kaïser drew upon Buies, Dunn, and Tardivel to support his claim that Anglicisms were the real problem with the language.

Source: Au Canada

Kane, Paul. (1810-1871) Irish-born painter and traveller. Kane is perhaps best known for his travels in the Canadian West, and the many paintings he did of First Nations tribes. Kane recorded some of his travels in the book Wanderings of an artist among the Indians of North America. Kane described the language spoken by his Métis guides as a “Lower Canadian patois.”

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

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Kelland, Philip. (1808-1879) English mathematician, minister, and educator. Kelland was appointed professor of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh in 1838, and gained renown as an education reformer for Scotland. Kelland published two lectures on his time spent in North America, entitled Transatlantic Sketches. Kelland felt that the British had not done enough to Anglicize the French Canadians.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Kingston, William Henry Giles. (1814-1880) English author, writer of boys’ adventure novels. Kingston became interested in the emigration movement in the 1840s, and wrote an account of his time in the Canadas, Western Wanderings. Or, a pleasure tour in the Canadas. Kingston was critical of French Canadians, whom he found lazy, ignorant, and speaking an “execrable patois.”

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Kirkwood, John. (Dates unknown) Scottish reverend. I have found little biographical information on Kirkwood, who travelled to North America in the fall of 1886, and published an account of this trip as An autumn holiday in the United States and Canada. The book is dedicated to a H.B. Hammond, Esq., a prominent racehorse breeder from New York. Kirkwood was shocked by the multilingual nature of Québec City.

Source: An autumn holiday in the United States and Canada

Kohl, Johann Georg. (1808-1878) German historian, geographer, and travel writer. Kohl was a prolific traveler, and wrote several accounts of his travels in Europe. Kohl first visited North America in 1854, and published an account of the trip as Reisen in Canada und durch die Staaten von New-York und Pennsylvanien, which was translated in English in 1861. This work is valuable for the detailed commentary on CanFr – or “Canadian” – and Pennsylvania Dutch.

Source: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie

Kowalski, Henri. (1841-1916) French composer and world traveller. Kowalski first travelled to North America in 1869-70, which led him to publish À travers l’Amérique, impressions d’un musicien. Kowalski had an overall positive view of CanFr, which he characterized as old (dating to Malherbe), and characterized by numerous provincialisms.

355

Source: Biographie universelle des musiciens et biographie générale de la musique

Labelle, François-Xavier-Antoine. (1833-1891) French Canadian priest, writer, civil servant, and proponent of colonization. Perhaps best known for his role in colonizing the Laurentides in South-western Québec, Labelle was a prominent public figure in his time. In a posthumously published speech entitled “Discours de Mgr Labelle”, Labelle stressed the alleged Norman origin of CanFr, and the strong connection between French Canadians and France.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Lacasse, Zacharie. (1845-1921) French Canadian priest, missionary, colonizer, and author. After spending much of the 1870s in northern Quebec and Labrador, Lacasse was involved in the colonization of the Lac-Saint-Jean region and the Beauce in the early 1880s. During this time, Lacasse published his first book, Une mine produisant l’or et l’argent, in which he strongly discouraged emigration to the United States, and expressed a concern that French Canadians would eventually speak a patois unless efforts were made to check Anglicisms.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

La Brière, Léon de. (1845-1899) French political writer, soldier (one of the zouaves pontificaux), and journalist. La Brière travelled to Canada in 1885, a trip which he detailed in L’autre France. Voyage au Canada. The book is dedicated to General Athanase Charles Marie de Charette, under whom La Brière served during the Battle of Mentana (1867). La Brière lauded the French Canadians’ efforts to maintain their language.

Source: Contes d’autrefois et d’aujourd’hui

Lagacé, Pierre. (1830-1884) French Canadian priest, musician, writer, and educator (principal of the École Normale Laval, 1871-1884) In addition to his influential works on liturgical music, Lagacé wrote two books on elocution: Traité de prononciation française, and Cours de lecture à haute voix. In the latter, Lagacé provided a succinct description of the “defects” of French Canadian pronunciation.

Source: The Canadian Encyclopedia

356

Lambert, John. (b. c. 1775) English traveller and author. Lambert first arrived in Lower Canada in 1806, to help his uncle promote the growth of hemp in the Canadas, though that project evidently did not have much success. Over the following three years, Lambert travelled throughout the Canadas and the United States, and returned to London in 1809. Lambert has long been considered the first Anglophone to comment on the differences between Standard French and CanFr, the latter of which he described as a “jargon”, and strongly influenced by Anglicisms.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Lambton, John George, 1st Earl of Durham. (1792-1840) English nobleman and Governor General of British North America (1838). Durham is perhaps best known as the author of the infamous Reports on the affairs of British North America, in which he recommended the union of the two Canadas into one province. Lambton had a low opinion of both French and British Canadians, writing that the former were “a people with no history, and no literature.”

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Lamothe, Henri-Félix de. (1843-1926) French military officer, journalist, and colonial administrator. Prior to his appointment at Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon from 1886-89, Lamothe spent some time among the French Canadians, which he detailed in the book Cinq mois chez les Français d’Amérique. Lamothe rejected the belief that French Canadians spoke a patois.

Source: Dictionnaire national des contemporains

Lamy, Georges. (Dates unknown) French teacher, traveller, and writer. Lamy travelled to North America in 1882, a trip which he fictionalized as Voyage du novice Jean-Paul à travers la France d’Amérique. Lamy implied that CanFr was largely incomprehensible for most outsiders (i.e. non-Francophones).

Source: Voyage du novice Jean-Paul à travers la France d’Amérique

La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, François-Alexandre-Frédéric de. (1747-1827) French nobleman and author. La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt served a term as president of the National Constituent Assembly, before fleeing to England in 1792. He then spent the next several years traveling throughout the United States, with a short stay in Upper Canada as a guest of Lord

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Simcoe. La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt attempted to visit Lower Canada, but was barred from doing so by Governor Lord Dorchester’s policy. Despite this setback, he wrote extensively on French Canadians, suggesting that few of them spoke English.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

LaRue, François-Alexandre-Hubert. (1833-1881) French Canadian chemist, doctor, and writer. Educated at the Petit Séminaire de Québec, LaRue was the first doctoral student to defend his thesis in medicine at the Université Laval in 1859, where he subsequently taught. In 1861, LaRue co-founded Les Soirées canadiennes with Antoine Gérin-Lajoie, Joseph-Charles Taché, and Abbé Casgrain. LaRue’s essay “Nos qualities et nos défauts: la langue française au Canada”, discussed CanFr in detail, and the responsibility of the learned classes for maintaining the language. The essay was also plagiarized by French academic Francisque Michel.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Lebrun, Isidore. (b. 1786) French teacher and academic. I have found little biographical information on Lebrun, who claimed to be a member of “plusieurs sociétés savantes.” Lebrun claimed a Norman origin for the French spoken in Canada, and stressed the importance of the purity of the language for French Canadian nationalism. Lebrun’s Tableau was not well-received by Thomas Maguire (see below), who wrote a lengthy critique/rebuttal of his work, entitled Le clergé canadien vengé (1833).

Source: Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle

Le Clercq, Chrestien. (b. 1641) French priest, Recollect, and missionary. Le Clercq arrived in Québec in 1675, and spent much of his time among the Micmacs of the Gaspé Peninsula, about whom he Le Clercq wrote the two-volume work Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie, detailing their way of life, language, history, religion, etc. Le Clercq’s was the first published book that described CanFr.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Leclercq, Jules-Joseph. (1848-1928) Belgian travel writer. Leclercq was a prolific traveller, and wrote several books on his experiences in Africa, Europe, and South Asia. In Un été en

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Amérique, which described a short trip in 1876, Leclercq remarked that British Canadians spoke AmEn, and that French Canadians spoke an old (17th century) form of French.

Source: Un été en Amérique

Lefaivre, Albert (pseud. J. Guénard). (b. 1830) French consul at Quebec (1875-1881). In La France Canadienne, Lefaivre discussed the tendency among some members of the French Canadian upper class who adopt British habits and speech. Lefaivre claimed that this would lead to CanFr degenerating into a patois.

Source: Le Choc des langues au Québec

Legendre, Napoléon. (1841-1907) French Canadian lawyer, journalist, writer, and French language recorder for the Legislative Council at Québec (1876). Legendre was keenly interested in language, and wrote several articles defending CanFr. Along with Caron and Sulte, Legendre was among the first French Canadians to voice support for an endogenous linguistic norm.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

LeMay, George. (Dates unknown) I have found no biographical information on LeMay, who wrote an editorial in the New York Times criticizing Reginald William’s views of French Canadians. Both LeMay and William’s articles were reprinted in the Anglo-American Magazine. LeMay took issue with William’s criticism of the French Canadians’ accent and allegedly poor command of the written language.

Source: “The Present-day French Canadian”

Le Roy de la Potherie, Claude-Charles. (1663-1736) French historian. La Potherie first travelled to Canada in 1697 under Pierre le Moyne d’Iberville, the latter of whom was tasked with driving the English out of Hudson Bay. La Potherie returned to Canada a year later, and served as the comptroller of the Marine, but left less than three years later for Guadeloupe, where he resided until his death in 1736. La Potherie began work on his Histoire de l’Amérique septentrionale as early as 1716, but it was not published until well after his death, in 1753. Potherie noted that the French spoken in Canada was “sans mauvais accent.”

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

359

Lévis-Mirepoix, Gaston Gustave, marquis de. (b. 1844) French nobleman and writer. In 1895, Lévis-Mirepoix embarked on a tour across Canada to the Pacific Ocean, a trip which he described in Visite au Canada. Lévis-Mirepoix had a positive opinion of French Canadians in general, and believed that they spoke an antiquated form of French strongly influenced by NorFr.

Source: Dictionnaire national des contemporains

Lighthall, William Douw. (1857-1954) British Canadian lawyer, historian, author, and editor. Although born in Hamilton, Lighthall was raised and spent his entire life in Montréal. Lighthall’s groundbreaking article “Canadian English”, which appeared in The Week (Toronto) in 1889, pointed to the existence of not one, but several varieties of CanEn.

Source: The Canadian Men and Women of the Time

Lusignan, Jean-Baptiste-Alphonse. (1843-1893) French Canadian writer, journalist, editor (Le Pays, 1865-68), and member of the Royal Society of Canada (elected in 1885). Lusignan was well-known for his language chronicle “Fautes à corriger” (La Patrie, 1884-85), which he published in book format in 1890. Lusignan singled out the press for spreading what he considered bad French, highlighted the “patriotic act” of writing and speaking good French

Source: A la mémoire de Alphonse Lusignan

Lyell, Sir Charles, first baronet. (1797-1875) Scottish lawyer, geologist, and close friend to Charles Darwin. Lyell travelled to North America in the 1840s, and published two books on his experiences there: Travels in North America and A Second Visit to the United States. The books are divided between geological observations and political and social commentary. Lyell found CanFr to be of better quality than that spoken in France, but believed that Canada should be wholly English.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Macgregor, John. (1797-1857) Scottish-born civil servant, politician, and writer. MacGregor immigrated with his family to Pictou, Nova Scotia in 1803, and as a young man, began his business in Charlottetown. MacGregor was appointed High Sheriff of Prince Edward Island in 1822, a position from which he was dismissed less than a year later. Despite this setback,

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MacGregor was elected a member of the House of Assembly for Georgetown in 1824. Macgregor noted that upper class French Canadians spoke excellent French and English.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Mackay, Charles. (1812-1889) Scottish poet, journalist, and novelist. Perhaps best known for his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Mackay spent much of his career working as a journalist both in London and Scotland, and published numerous poems and other literary works throughout his lifetime. Mackay first travelled to North America in 1857, noting that Lower Canada strongly reminded him of Normandy or Brittany.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Mackenzie, Eneas. (1778-1832) Scottish historian and geographer. Mackenzie spent much of his time in North America among the Americans, whom he admired for their growing economic and military power. Regarding the Canadas, Mackenzie believed that the English language should completely replace the French.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Mactaggart, John. (1791-1830) Scottish civil engineer and writer. Mactaggart travelled to Canada in 1826 to work on the Rideau Canal, but contracted malaria, and was dismissed two years later for drunkenness. Mactaggart noted the prevalence of slang among English speakers in North America.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Maguire, Thomas. (1776-1854) American-born Catholic priest and educator. Maguire was a prominent supporter of clerical education in Québec; having written the constitution for the Québec Education Society, and co-founded the Société pour Encourager l’Éducation Ecclésiastique in 1822. Maguire achieved notoriety for his Manuel des difficulties les plus communes de la langue française, the first prescriptive work published on CanFr. Maguire was in favour of adhering to the French linguistic norm.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

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Mandat-Grancey, Edmond, baron de. (1842-1911) French journalist, writer, and naval officer. Mandat-Grancey was a prolific traveller, and wrote several books on his experiences in Africa, Greece, Great Britain, and North America. In his book Dans les montagnes rocheuses, Mandat- Grancey derisively compared the French spoken by French Canadians to: “un acteur anglais jouant le role d’un paysan de Molière.”

Source: Notices de la BNF

Manseau, Joseph-Amable. (1837-1887) French Canadian photographer, publisher, and co- founder of the Numismatic Society of Montréal. I have found little biographical information on Manseau, who is best known for his Dictionnaire des locutions vicieuses du Canada. This prescriptive work was to be the first in a long series, but Manseau only published one volume. This may have been due to its poor reception; a scathing review of this work “N’exagérons pas” appeared in L’Opinion Publique.

Source: entry for Adélard-Joseph Boucher, Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Marceau, Ernest. (1852-1919) French Canadian civil engineer, educational administrator, author, and president of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers (1905). In 1882, Marceau wrote an article entitled “Notre prononciation” for Nouvelles soirées canadiennes, in which he predicted that French Canadians could speak as well as educated Parisians in thirty years, provided they put in the effort.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Marmier, Xavier. (1808-1892) French scholar, translator, travel writer, and member of the Académie française (elected in 1870). Marmier made several trips to North America during his lifetime, detailed in Lettres sur l’Amérique, En Amérique et en Europe, and En pays lointain. Marmier noted the correctness and antiquity of the French spoken in Canada, and emphatically stated that there was no patois.

Source: Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle

Marryat, Frederick. (1792-1848) English naval officer, novelist, and creator of Marryat’s Code, a once widely-used system of maritime flag signaling. Marryat travelled to Canada in

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1837, and became involved with the Rebellions of 1837-1838. Marryat detailed his negative experiences in his three-volume A Diary in America, which contains numerous disparaging remarks about French Canadians, “who can neither read nor write,” a comment which echoed Lord Durham’s views on the same.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Meilleur, Jean-Baptiste. (1796-1878) French Canadian doctor, educator, and first superintendent of education in Lower Canada. Meilleur first published A treatise on the pronunciation of the French language in 1825, written during his time as a graduate student at Dartmouth College. Meilleur believed that English would become the dominant commercial language in Canada, but would not replace French in matters of science or literature.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Molinari, Gustave de. (1819-1912) Belgian political economist, writer, and the father of anarcho-capitalism. De Molinari was a prolific traveller, and wrote four accounts of his time spent in North America, two of which are discussed in this dissertation. De Molinari first visited North America in 1876, and praised French Canadians for their command of both French and English, and criticized British Canadians for allegedly refusing to learn French.

Source: Dictionnaire universel des contemporains

Monck, Frances Elizabeth Owen (Cole), Lady. (1835-1919) Irish writer, daughter of Charles Monck, 4th Viscount Monck, the last Governor General of British America and the Province of Canada (1861-1867), and the first Governor General of Canada (1867-1868). As stated in My Canadian Leaves, Lady Monck visited Canada from 1864-65 to visit her father. Monck made a number of references to Yankee slang spoken in Canada.

Source: entry for Charles Stanley Monck, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Montcalm, Louis-Joseph, Marquis de. (1712-1759) French nobleman and Lieutenant General. Montcalm was sent to New France at the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War, where he served until his death at the Plains of Abraham in 1759. Despite his poor opinion of Canadians and Canada in general, Montcalm found that the French they spoke was of excellent quality.

363

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Montpetit, André-Napoléon. (1840-1898) French Canadian lawyer, scholar, editor of the Journal de l’Instruction publique (1870-1873). Montpetit was a regular contributor to the Bulletin des recherches historiques, and wrote a short article entitled “Ouananiche et Huananiche”, where he made a passing reference to the “patois du coureur du bois.”

Source: The Encyclopedia of Canada

Moodie, Susanna (Strickland). (1803-1885) English author and settler, sister to Catherine Parr Traill and Samuel Strickland. Moodie emigrated to Canada with her husband John Wedderburn Moodie in 1832, first settling near Cobourg, then Douro Township in 1834, and finally in Belleville in 1839. Moodie wrote a popular account of her life as a settler in Upper Canada, and made several important observations regarding the pronunciation and vocabulary of CanEn.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Moore, Thomas. (1779-1852) Irish poet, songwriter, and singer. Moore first arrived in North America in 1803, working briefly as registrar to the Admiralty in Bermuda, and then travelled throughout North America. His travels in Lower Canada led him to compose the famous “Canadian Boat Song”. In the 1854 edition of his Collected Works, Moore commented on the “barbarous pronunciation” of the Canadian boatmen.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Murray, Amelia Matilda. (1794-1884) English writer and maid of honour to Queen Victoria (1837-1856). Murray travelled to North America in 1854, visiting Cuba, the United States, and Canada, and published a politically charged account of her voyage, entitled Letters from the United States, Cuba, and Canada. The publication of this work led Murray to resign from her post in 1856. Murray qualified the language spoken by French Canadians as “Canadian French.”

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Myers, J.C. (Dates unknown) American traveller. I have found little biographical information on Myers, save what he wrote in his book Sketches on a tour through the northern and eastern states, the Canadas, and Nova Scotia. Myers took a three-month trip from Virginia in May of

364

1848, and had a somewhat positive view of French Canadians, and was among the first believers that CanFr was in some ways superior to the French spoken by French farmers and peasants.

Source: Sketches on a tour through the northern and eastern states

Nevers, Edmond de. (1862-1906) French Canadian economist, writer, lawyer, publicist and lecturer for the National Assembly of Québec. De Nevers wrote the important work L’avenir du peuple canadien-françai, in which he stressed the importance of the maintaining the language’s “health” for the purposes of French Canadian nationalism.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Nicholson, Byron235. (1857-1916) British Canadian essayist. I have found little biographical information on Nicholson, who wrote two works on French Canadians: The French-Canadian: a sketch of his more prominent characteristics, and In old Quebec. In the preface of the former, Nicholson wrote that his intention was to “correct some misapprehensions and to soften, if not remove, some prejudices…concerning the French-speaking people of the Province of Quebec.” The book is dedicated to Sir Henri Joly de Lotbinière, who was then Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia.

Source: The French-Canadians: a sketch of his more prominent characteristics

O’Brien, Godfrey. (Dates unknown) British Canadian land surveyor, and writer. I have found little biographical information on this author, save that he was a professional land surveyor, and collected much of the information in The Tourist’s Guide to Quebec (1864) from earlier historical and geographical studies on the city. O’Brien noted that French and English were spoken “indifferently” by the people.

Source: The Tourist’s Guide to Quebec

O’Hagan, Thomas. (1855-1939) British Canadian poet, essayist, and editor (New World 1910- 1913). O’Hagan was familiar with near contemporary works on CanFr, citing Sulte and Gagnon,

235 The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography contains a reference to Edward Williams Byron Nicholson (1849- 1912), a librarian at the Bodleian Library at Oxford, but who never travelled to Canada.

365 among others. In Canadian Essays, O’Hagan dismissed the belief that French Canadians spoke a patois, despite the numerous “provincialisms, localisms and corruptions”.

Source: Canadian Poets

Oliphant, Laurence. (1829-1888) British author, diplomat, politician (MP for Stirling Burgh, 1865-1868), and traveller. Oliphant went on a worldwide tour in 1853, visiting Russia, China, Japan, and North America, his time in the latter being detailed in his book Minnesota and the far West. Oliphant’s commentary is noteworthy for the distinction he makes between voyageur patois and CanFr.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Orléans, Louis-Philippe-Albert de, comte de Paris. (1838-1894) French nobleman, military officer, and writer. Robert visited North America in 1890 with his brother Robert d’Orléans, duc de Chartres (1840-1910), the notes from which trip were published in 1891. The comte de Paris made a passing reference to the antiquity of CanFr.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Parkin, George Robert. (1846-1922) British Canadian educator, imperialist, and author. Parkin had just begn his tenure as headmaster of Upper Canada College (1895-1902) when he published The Great Dominion, in which he referred to French Canadian efforts to “fix” their language, and criticized British Canadians for not learning French.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Pavie, Théodore Marie. (1811-1896) French traveller, Orientalist, and writer. Pavie first travelled to North America in 1829, which formed the basis for his Souvenirs Atlantiques, and then later in 1850. Pavie wrote a shorter account of his second trip in the Revue des deux mondes, entitled “L’Amérique anglaise en 1850.” Pavie remarked that the habitants living between Gaspé and Québec were more civilized than their Acadian counterparts, but spoke “un vieux français peu élégant,” which he compared to the French spoken in Lower Normandy.

Source: Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle

366

Picken, Andrew. (1788-1833) Scottish author and businessman. Although there is no evidence that he ever travelled to Canada, Picken compiled The Canadas (1832) with information gathered from fellow writer and secretary of the Canada Company, John Galt (1779-1839), who founded Guelph in 1827. Picken described CanFr as a provincialism.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Polydore, Cyprien. (Dates unknown) French clergyman (honorary canon) and traveller. I have found little biographical information on Polydore, who published an account of his travels in 1884 as Voyages en France, en Belgique et en Amérique. Polydore mentioned CanFr in passing, seemingly surprised that a French Canadian he encountered spoke French – “sa langue d’origine” – so well.

Source: Voyages en France, en Belgique et en Amérique

Pope, Joseph, Sir. (1854-1926) British Canadian civil servant, author, and private secretary to John A. MacDonald. In 1894, Pope published the two-volume memoirs of MacDonald, in which he briefly described the latter’s disdain for American orthography, and the Minutes of Council he passed in favour of employing British spelling in all official documents.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Un Québécois. See Bibaud, Michel.

Rameau de Saint-Père, François-Edme. (1820-1899) French historian and sociologist. Rameau wrote a number of historical and cultural studies on French Canadians and Acadians, including La France aux colonies, Les Français en Amérique: Acadiens et Canadiens, and La littérature canadienne. Rameau wished to assure his French readers that the French language had not “degenerated” in Canada.

Source: Répertoire du patrimoine culturel du Québec

Réveillaud, Eugène. (1851-1935) French politician (MP Deputy 1902-1912, Senator 1912- 1921), historian, and writer. Although there is no evidence that he ever visited Canada, Réveillaud wrote the influential Histoire du Canada et des Canadiens-Français. This work was

367 based entirely on other contemporary accounts, and Réveillaud discussed the negative and positive opinions of CanFr;

Source: Le Petit Robert 2, dictionnaire universel des noms propres

Rinfret, Raoul. (1856-1926) French Canadian writer and civil engineer. I have found little biographical information on Rinfret, who published only two books in his lifetime: Le Yukon et son or and Dictionnaire de nos fautes contre la langue française. Rinfret was strongly in favour of an exogenous linguistic norm, stating: “Il nous faut apprendre le français tel qu’il existe en France.”

Source: Dictionnaire de nos fautes contre la langue française

Rivard, Adjutor. (1868-1945) French Canadian lawyer, judge, writer, educator, and linguist. Rivard is perhaps best-known for being one of the 24 co-founders of the SPFC, of which he would serve as president twice (1912-14, 1926-1927). Rivard wrote a number of books and articles on CanFr, including two articles entitled “De la prononciation dans la lecture à haute voix”, the Bibliographie du parler français au Canada, and the Glossaire du parler français au Canada.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Rolph, Thomas. (1801/2-1858) English author, surgeon, and emigration agent. Rolph arrived in Upper Canada in 1833, and set up a medical practice in Ancaster, though he was not recognized by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Upper Canada. Rolph was a proponent of assisted immigration, and was the first Briton to complain about the use of American books in schools.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Roper, Edward. (1854-1891) English artist, naturalist, and writer. Roper made a number of visits to Canada during his lifetime, and published an account of these travels in 1891, entitled By Track and Trail through Canada. Roper briefly commented on the lack of communication between British and French Canadians in Montréal.

Source: By Track and Trail through Canada

368

Rose, A.W.H. (Dates Unknown) British clergyman, and immigrant. I have found little biographical information on this author, save that his book Pictures of Canadian Life was edited and published by English clergyman and scholar Henry Christmas (1811-1868). Rose complained of the “continual jabbering of Canadian French” by the habitants.

Source: Pictures of Canadian Life; or, the Emigrant Churchman

Rose, George (pseud. Arthur Sketchley). (1817-1882) English dramatist and novelist. Rose is perhaps best known for a series of books about Mrs. Brown. As Sketchley, Rose published The Great Country, or, Impressions of America, in which he described CanFr as “unintelligible.” The book was dedicated to the Duke of Norfolk, his former pupil.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Roy, James. (1834-1922) British Canadian writer, lawyer, and reverend. Roy is best known for his influential article “The French language in Canada”, which appeared in Canadian Illustrated News. Roy proposed that ParFr had degenerated due to the increasing influence of the lower classes after the French Revolution, whereas CanFr, the language spoken by members of the upper class in the 17th century, was not subject to the same influences, and was therefore “purer” as a result.

Source: The Canadian Men and Women of the Time

Roy, Joseph-Edmond. (1858-1913) French Canadian editor, notary, Councillor for Saint- Laurent 1896-1903, and mayor 1896-1900, historian, and member of the Royal Society of Canada (elected in 1891). Older brother to Pierre-Georges, Roy regularly contributed to the Bulletin des recherches historiques, including a short article entitled “La calèche canadienne”, in which he accused French Canadians of committing many “péchés de langue”.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Roy, Pierre-Georges. (1870-1953) French Canadian historian, writer, and archivist. A prominent archivist, Roy created the National Archives of Québec (BAnQ) in 1920, and founded the historical revue Bulletin des recherches historiques in 1895, to which he regularly

369 contributed. In 1898, Roy wrote the brief article “Les termes glaciaires anglais”, in which he expressed dismay at the alleged poverty of CanFr vocabulary.

Source: Répertoire du patrimoine culturel du Québec

Russell, William Howard. (1820-1907) Irish soldier and war correspondent. After serving in the Crimean War, Russell travelled to North America to cover the American Civil War, and spent some time in the Canadas. Russell wrote that the habitants spoke “Old World French,” which is presumably a reference to the language spoken as it was spoken in pre-Revolutionary France.

Source: Dictionary of Irish Biography

Sand, Maurice. (Jean-François-Maurice-Arnauld, baron Dudevant). (1823-1889) French illustrator, writer, and son of George Sand. Sand traveled around the world with Prince Napoléon, and published letters of his travels as Six mille lieues à toute vapeur, in which he noted in particular the antique quality of CanFr, which he found agreeable.

Source: Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle

Sansom, Joseph. (1765/6-1826) American lawyer and travel writer. I have found little biographical information on Sansom, save that he was a member of the American Philosophical Society (elected in 1806), and that he wrote two travel journals. Sansom insisted that French Canadians did not speak a patois, but rather “very tolerable French.”

Source: Travels in Lower Canada

Saunière, Paul. (1827-1894) French novelist, journalist, and secretary to Alexandre Dumas. Saunière sailed to North America in 1884 aboard the Nubienne, a luxury yacht owned by French politician and newspaper owner Edmond Blanc. Saunière remarked that CanFr sounded very similar to NorFr.

Source: Dictionnaire universel des contemporains

Shaw, John. (Dates Unknown) English doctor and travel writer. I have found little biographical information on Shaw, other than what is presented in his two books, A Tramp to the Diggings, and A Ramble through the United States, Canada, and the West Indies. The latter book is notable

370 for the detailed account of CanFr, which suggests Shaw was highly proficient in the language, unlike many of his contemporaries.

Source: A Ramble through the United States, Canada, and the West Indies

Silliman, Benjamin. (1779-1864) American chemist, geologist, and professor at Yale University. Silliman took a brief trip to Lower Canada in the fall of 1819, and recorded a number of observations on geological features, Canadian history and the French Canadian people. Silliman was the first Anglophone to discuss – and refute – contemporary beliefs about CanFr, namely that it was “spurious and corrupted French.”

Source: American National Biography

Sketchley, Arthur. See Rose, George.

Skinner, John Edwin Hilary. (1839-1894) English lawyer, journalist, and writer. Skinner explained in the preface of After the Storm that he travelled to North America in order to understand his “cousins”. Skinner criticized a French Canadian MP for “deliberately” responding in French to a question asked in English.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Small, Henry Beaumont. (1831-1919) English-born Canadian naturalist, civil servant (Department of Agriculture), and writer. After finishing his degree at Oxford in 1853, Small moved to Canada (and later the United States) to begin his career. In The Canadian Handbook and Tourist’s Guide, Small remarked that many English tourists spoke poor French, and dismissed the belief that French Canadians were ignorant of English.

Source: A Cyclopedia of Canadian Biography

Smith, William. (Dates unknown) English writer, traveller, and editor. I have found little biographical information on Smith, who founded and edited the journal Old Yorkshire, and wrote two travel books: Trip to Rome and A Yorkshireman’s trip to the United States and Canada. Smith was particularly impressed by how “English” Toronto was.

Source: A Yorkshireman’s trip to the United States and Canada

371

Squair, John. (1850-1928) British Canadian academic (Chair of Romance Languages at the University of Toronto) and educator. Squair was a co-founder of the Bonne Entente, and wrote the important An open letter to the people of Ontario on the teaching of French, in which he criticized Ontarians for their “stupid prejudice” against the French Canadians (and their language). Squair’s article “A contribution to the study of the Franco-Canadian Dialect” was harshly criticized for exaggerating CanFr pronunciation.

Source: The Autobiography of a Teacher of French

Stansbury, Philip. (1802?-1870) American traveller and writer. I have found little biographical information on Stansbury, save the few details contained in A Pedestrian Tour 1822. Stansbury took the trip to understand and appreciate the North American continent. Stansbury found French Canadians to be stuck in the past, and repressed by the Church.

Source: A pedestrian tour of two thousand three hundred miles

Strickland, Samuel. (1804-1867) English-born writer, settler, and Canada Company official. Brother to Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Traill, Strickland emigrated to Upper Canada in 1825, first settling briefly at Darlington, and later near Peterborough. In his memoirs entitled Twenty-Seven years in Canada west, Strickland asserted that French Canadians spoke “a patois as old as the time of Henry IV of France.”

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Sullivan, Edward Robert. (1826-1899) English traveller, son of Rear Admiral, Sir Charles Sullivan Bart (1789-1862). I have found little biographical information on Sullivan, who wrote in the preface to his Rambles and Scrambles in North America that he had a strong, unfounded prejudice against Americans. Sullivan had a negative opinion of CanFr, which he described variably as a patois, “broken French,” or “demi-semi-intelligible French.”

Source: Rambles and Scrambles in North America

Sulte, Benjamin. (1841-1923) French Canadian journalist, writer, and historian. Sulte was a strong defender of Canadian French, having written numerous popular and scholarly articles, books, and given speeches on the issue. Sulte strongly refuted claims that French Canadian was a

372 patois, and expressed early support – along with Legendre – for an endogenous linguistic norm; however, Sulte was in favour of “cleaning up” the language first, by eliminating anglicisms.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Taché, Joseph-Charles. (1820-1894) French Canadian politician (MLA for Rimouski 1848-57), physician, journalist, and writer. A strong proponent of Confederation, Taché was also in favour of French Canadians settling in Upper Canada, rather than in New England. In his Notice historiographique, which commemorated François de Laval’s arrival in Nouvelle France, Taché rejected the notion that French Canadians ought to give up their language.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Talbot, Edward Allen. (1796-1839) Irish-born inventor, author, and journalist. The son of colonizer Richard Talbot (1772-1853), Talbot immigrated to London, Upper Canada in 1818, though he did not find settler life appealing, though he encouraged other Irish to settle there. Talbot noted that some Upper Canadians ridiculed British dialects.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Tardivel, Jules-Paul. (1851-1905) American-born French Canadian journalist, newspaper owner, and writer. Like Sulte, Tardivel was a staunch supporter of French Canadian interests, particularly the trinity of language, religion, and nation. Tardivel’s first linguistic endeavour was the prescriptive work L’anglicisme, voilà l’ennemi, followed by the highly informative “La langue française au Canada”. Tardivel rejected the belief that CanFr was a patois, and called on French Canadians to direct their efforts at eliminating Anglicisms.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Taylor, James. (Dates Unknown) English traveller. I have found little biographical information on Taylor236, save what he wrote in his Narrative of a voyage to, and travels in Upper Canada. Taylor wrote that he spent two years in Canada (1844-1846) before returning to England, and

236 The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography contains references to two James Taylors who lived during this time, but there is no evidence that either travelled to Canada.

373 that he strove to write about North American without prejudice. Taylor was among the first commentators to distinguish the English spoken in Canada from BrEn.

Source: Narrative of a voyage to, and travels in Upper Canada

Thoreau, Henry David. (1817-1862) American philosopher, poet, author, abolitionist. Thoreau made a short trip to Canada East with some friends in the fall of 1850, the notes from which were published posthumously as A Yankee in Canada. Despite not speaking much French, Thoreau made a number of comments on the French spoken by his various hosts, evidently relying on earlier writers’ opinions on the language.

Source: American National Biography

Thoulier d’Olivet, Pierre-Joseph. (1682-1768) French abbot, grammarian, and translator. Elected a member of the Académie française in 1723, Thoulier d’Olivet played an active role in editing the DAF, and achieved notoriety for his Traité de prosodie française (1736), in which he favourably compared the French spoken in Canada (or sung, rather) with Parisian French. There is no evidence that Thoulier d’Olivet visited Canada.

Source: Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle

Todd, Henry Cook. (d. 1862) English traveller. I have not found any biographical information on this author, who wrote under the pseudonym “A Traveller.” Todd did not explain his motivations for visiting North America. Like several of his contemporaries, Todd believed that the British government had made a mistake in not eliminating the French language from Canada.

Source: Notes upon Canada and the United States

Tolfrey, Frederic. (b. 1795) English soldier, sportsman, and writer. In the 1840s, Tolfrey achieved some notoriety for writing a series of travel guides for outdoors enthusiasts, including the popular The Sportsman in Canada. Tolfrey consistently referred to CanFr as being a patois, which he found charming, and recorded several conversations with French Canadians, including notable dialectal features.

Source: The Sportsman in Canada

374

Traill, Catherine Parr (Strickland). (1802-1889) English-born author and naturalist. Traill settled near Peterborough in Upper Canada with her husband in 1832, and moved to Belleville after the Rebellion. Traill noted in the introduction that she wrote The Backwoods of Canada to give a better idea of the settler’s life in Canada, which had been rarely depicted at that point. Although Traill had a negative view of the so-called “Yankees”, she found that the English they spoke was better than that spoken in Great Britain.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Turenne d’Aynac, Gabriel-Louis, Comte de. (1843-1907) French nobleman, diplomat, and consul général for Canada (1890-93). Turenne d’Aynac first visited North America in 1875-76, and published an account of his trip as Quatorze mois dans l’Amérique du Nord. Turenne d’Aynac found French Canadians to be lazy, especially during the winter months, and that they spoke with a strong Norman accent.

Source: Mythe et reflet de la France

Verbrugghe, Louis and Georges Verbrugghe. (Dates unknown) Belgian travellers. I have found little biographical information on these brothers, whose travels in North America (Georges) and South America (Louis) led them to write two books: Promenades et chasses dans l’Amérique du Nord and Voyage en Amérique du Sud.237 The brothers noted that CanFr had an antique, provincial flavour.

Source: Promenades et chasses dans l’Amérique du Nord

Vigne, Godfrey Thomas. (1801-1863) English amateur cricketer and world traveler. In the preface to the American edition of his book Six Months in America, the anonymous writer noted that Vigne is among the few “intelligent” British visitors to the United States. Vigne disdained the “indiscriminate” use of French and English in the courts.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

237 I have not found any evidence to suggest this latter volume was ever published.

375

Vigneron, Lucien. (b. 1848) French clergyman (bishop of Tarentais and Savoie) and travel writer. A well-established travel writer, Vigneron noted that he found it difficult to write De Montréal à Washington, due to the tremendous advances North Americans had made in recent years. Vigneron was critical of the numerous Anglicisms he encountered while in Canada.

Source: De Montréal à Washington

Visinet, Tony. (Dates unknown) French rail engineer. I have found little biographical information on Visinet, save that he was the British Engineering and Commercial Agent of the Western Railway of France. Visinet travelled to North America with some friends in May 1886, and was impressed by French Canadians’ efforts to maintain their language.

Source: Un mois aux États-Unis et au Canada

Vivian, Henry Hussey, 1st Baron Swansea. (1821-1894) Welsh industrialist and politician (MP Truro 1852-57, Glamorganshire 1857-85, and Swansea District 1885-93). Vivian inherited his grandfather’s copper-smelting business (Vivian & Sons) in 1841, and got involved with mining, coal, and promoted the Rhondda and Swansea Bay Railway. Vivian visited North America in the fall of 1877, and remarked that the French and English languages were used “indiscriminately.”

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Weld, Charles Richard. (1813-1869) English writer and historian. The younger half-brother of Isaac, Weld was a prolific traveller, and wrote many accounts of his travels. In his A Vacation Tour in the United States and Canada, which he dedicated to Isaac, Weld criticized Upper Canadians for not speaking French, a fact which led to communication problems in Parliament.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Weld, Isaac. (1774-1856) Irish traveller and author. Weld travelled to North America in 1795 to determine whether the United States or Canada would be suitable places for his countrymen to emigrate. His Travels through the United States was very popular, and was translated almost immediately into French, German, Italian, and Dutch. Weld had a low opinion of French Canadians, whom he found ignorant, uneducated, and unwilling to learn English.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

376

White, John. (1839-1912) Irish scholar (fellow at Queen’s College, Oxford). I have found little biographical information on White. In the preface to Sketches from America, White wrote that English visitors tended to generalize about North America, and it was his goal to discuss the differences between Americans, Canadians, and Britons. White was the first to comment specifically on British Canadian linguistic insecurity.

Source: Sketches from America

Williams, Reginald. (Dates unknown) British Canadian writer. I have not found any biographical information on Williams, who wrote a short editorial on French Canadians in the New York Times, which was reprinted in The Anglo-American Magazine. Williams wrote critically of CanFr, noting in particular the accent.

Source: “The Present-Day French-Canadian”

Wilson, Charles Henry. (Dates unknown) English traveller. I have found little biographical information on Wilson, save that he wrote The Wanderer in America to refute claims made about the Canadas by earlier travellers, such as (Francis) Hall, Weld, and La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. Wilson remarked that the voyageurs spoke corrupt French. He dedicated his work to George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie, the Governor General of British North America (1820-1828).

Source: The Wanderer in America

Withrow, William Henry. (1839-1908) British Canadian minister, journalist, and author. A prominent member of the Methodist Church of Canada, Withrow edited and contributed regularly to the Canadian Methodist Magazine. In Our own Country, Withrow noted the resilience of the French language in Canada, which would never be replaced by English.

Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Wright, Frances. (1795-1852) Scottish feminist, abolitionist, and social reformer. Wright first visited the United States and the Canadas with her sister from 1818-1820. Wright had a low opinion of French Canadians, and believed they were kept ignorant by their priests. Wright later accompanied the Marquis de Lafayette on his journey to the United States (1824-1825).

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography