APPENDIX 1 – ’s Francophones

Introduction of the book Alberta’s Francophones Dr. Nathalie Kermoal

The first Europeans to visit Western were the French, who explored and settled throughout North America during the 17th century. According to historian Jacques Mathieu, the St. Lawrence was of course the pre-eminent thoroughfare of the nascent colony but the far reaches of the waterway also made it possible to penetrate into the heart of the continent. Fanning out from one watershed to the next, the French empire in North America came to cover – by 1760 – three quarters of the continent. In this continual spreading of French military and colonial presence, the played a key role, binding together a range of political, economic and diplomatic interests and considerations. Beginning in 1667, following pacification of Iroquois, the French decided to courir en derouine - in other words, travel directly to the fur-supplying Aboriginals rather than wait for these nations to carry furs to them. To support this approach, the French embarked upon an ambitious program of fort-building, which they also viewed as giving them an edge other their rivals and competitors to the north, the Hudson’s Bay Company. A trading expedition now no longer lasted a few days but indeed several weeks or even months. This strategy of occupying the territory would intensify throughout the 18th century, particularly under the Regency of Louis XV (1710-1728), when journeys deep into the North American interior were resumed with official blessing and backing. During this era, Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Vérendrye rose to a position of prominence in the implementation of this policy. In 1727-28, while serving as the commandant of a trading post situated on the Nipigon River, La Vérendrye received accounts of a great river flowing to the West, thus refuelling speculation, widespread among contemporary French explorers, cartographers and colonial administrators, about a mythical Western Sea jutting in to the continent and affording a quick route to the Pacific Ocean. Since locating this interior waterway would obviously further the expansion of their hegemony in North America, the French decided to penetrate yet further into the continent. La Vérendrye and his sons thereupon established a chain of fur-trading posts extending from Lake Superior north and west into Manitoba. In his article “La Mer de l’Ouest: Outpost of Empire,” the historian William Eccles speculates that in 1751, Le Gardeur de Saint-Pierre (La Vérendrye’s successor) and his men has advanced westward as far as the foothills of the , where they built a fort by the name of La Jonquière. That, at least, is what the Saint-Pierre noted in his journal, but according to some experts this was a pure fabrication, designed to impress the Governor General of the time. Yet logically, according to Eccles, the French would have taken the route north to the areas inhabited by their allies, the fur-trading , rather than the route south into the areas inhabited by the Blackfoot, who had made it quite clear that the fur trade held no interest for them. Some believe that Fort La Jonquière was located near the future site of the trading post known as the , while others hold that it was likely to have been sited outside of .

Whatever the case may be, there is no doubting an early French presence in Alberta, and yet it is the voyage of that has impressed itself on the collective memory of Albertans. In 1754, Henday travelled as far as the site of the future city of to persuade the Aboriginal peoples to trade their furs with the Hudson’s Bay Company. Surely one of the reasons that Henday’s voyage has succeeded in capturing the attention of numerous historians is because there are few corroborating written records. This being said, neither La Vérendrye’s nor Henday’s journeys offer any further clues about the men and women who spoke French, or a mix of French and Cree, and who regularly visited the territory of today’s Alberta. The people were very often the offspring of French Canadian men and Aboriginal women.

Whatever dreams the French had for North America were shattered with their defeat on the Plains of Abraham in 1759. And yet, over the succeeding eras, Francophones have continued to leave their stamp of Western Canada and on the history of APPENDIX 1 – Alberta’s Francophones

Alberta in particular. The fur trade

Traditional histography has often highlighted the feats of the renowned French Canadian coureurs des bois and voyageurs, all as part of evoking the romanticism of a bygone era. While undeniably it took good doses of daring, courage and strength to take part in the fur trade, it is important to recall that a considerable portion of the work was performed by the Aboriginal peoples and the Métis, men and women alike, and that the success of the colonial power’s ventures hinged on maintaining good relations with the native suppliers and middlemen. Without the knowledge and understanding that the Aboriginal peoples held of their land, the famous “discoveries” mentioned in the history books would have never materialized. And had it not been for their assistance or their encouragement of “country marriages” (an equivalent of common law marriage, with few restrictions on divorce but nevertheless with permanent obligations towards the wife and her family), the French would have found surviving in their new surroundings to be a very complicated matter indeed. Furthermore, it was largely from such “country marriages” that the Métis nation came into being.

Benefiting from their access to network of Aboriginal alliances, the French and Métis involved in the fur trade were able to cover a vast territory. And, owing to their adaptability and knowledge of Indian languages, they were sought after by the and the Hudson’s Bay Company to serve in the capacity of “wintering partners” - that is, as inland traders and shareholders who spent the winter engaging in the fur trade among the Aboriginal peoples. Not all these men were enlisted in the service of the NWC or the HBC. Some trappers considered themselves to be gens libres or hommes libres - freemen who carried on business with the trading company willing to pay the highest price for their furs. However they labelled themselves, these men nevertheless operated in a fierce competitive environment.

The North West Company and Hudson’s Bay Company oversaw the construction of numerous forts across the territory of the future province of Alberta, and these, with time, gave rise to settlements. And though they were engaged in the ruthless battle to the finish, they unhesitatingly built forts within a stone’s throw – or musket range of each other – the case, most notably, with , established in 1795 by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and Fort Augustus, founded by the North West Company several months earlier. Following the merger of these fur trade titans in 1821, all activities were centralized at Fort Edmonton and the name of Fort Augustus disappeared from the map. Other the course of its history, Fort Edmonton was moved several different times to escape flooding. It was last sited on the current grounds of the Legislature Building and was demolished in 1915.

Fort Edmonton possesses a very rich past, embracing a range of famous historical characters, including Jean-Baptiste Lagimodière and his wife, Marie-Anne Gaboury in 1807-08, as well as Father in 1852. According to Donald Smith in “A history of French-speaking Albertans”: “Prior to 1885, the majority of Edmontonians were of French origin, and until 1916, they remained the second largest linguistic group with a total population of 2 600 in a city of 53 850.”

Thus, for nearly three centuries, the fur trade was a mainstay of Canada’s development – even as recently as the early 20th century. According to the historian Arthur Ray in his book entitled The Canadian Fur Trade in the Industrial Age, at the end APPENDIX 1 – Alberta’s Francophones

of the World War I, Edmonton ranked second after Montreal as a fur centre, posting sales of $4 to 5 million dollars annually. The tactics – and successes – of the Hudson’s Bay Company would continue to serve as an example to other private concerns, the most famous being Revillon Frères, the Alberta branch of the Paris fur company. In 1899, Revillon Frères opened a fur warehouse in Edmonton. Initially established in Northern Canada, they entered the northern Alberta market in 1906, purchasing trading posts from local traders and eliminating middlemen.

The role of the Clergy

The perpetuation of the fur trade also had significant social and cultural ramifications for the areas of Alberta and Western Canada where such activities were pursued. According to E.J. Hart in his Ambition and Reality. The French community of Edmonton 1795-1935, “Once the French-speaking Catholic missionaries arrived on the scene, they visited all these posts and helped maintain a French and Catholic identity in the West.”

There can be no doubting the decisive role played by the Catholic clergy in the development of Western Canada. Initially, the missionaries and prelates were animated by the desire to create a model of Christian faith and community à l’européenne in the portion of Canada. Later their hopes would centre on creating institutions serving not only to spread the Christian faith but also to establish French-speaking settlers on Western lands. Among all the missionary groups, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate have clearly left the most traces on the Alberta landscape, having worked unceasingly to establish missions and institutions. However, they were not the only community to be labouring in the Lord’s regional vineyard, as they were assisted by such women’s religious communities as the Grey Nuns (Sœurs Grises), the Sisters of Mercy (Sœurs de la miséricorde) the Sisters of Assumption of Holy Mary (Sœurs de l’Assomption de Nicolet), the sisters of Holy Cross (Sœurs de la Sainte- Croix), the sisters of the Charity of Our Lady of Evron (Sœurs de la Charité de Notre-Dame d’Evron, France), the Daughters of Jesus (Filles de Jésus) ant the Filles de la Providence de Saint-Brieuc, who established hospitals, residence schools and public schools.

As was noted by Raymond Huel in proclaiming the gospel to Indians and the Métis, in the clergy’s view, their primary mission was to evangelize the Aboriginal peoples. They were firmly convinced, moreover, that in the process of being Christianized, the Aboriginals would be assimilated. Such an apparently straightforward program ended up being considerably more complicated than the Church had reckoned on. And, particularly in light of the educational, cultural and public health debacle surrounding the residential schools, it is safe to say by and large, the missionary orders failed to accomplish their declared mandate.

In 1842, the first missionaries arrived in Fort Edmonton, where the Oblate Father Jean-Baptiste Thibault opened a Catholic mission. In 1843, he established a permanent mission at Lac Ste. Anne among the Métis, who lived primarily from hunting, fishing and growing a few crops. As the lands were ill-suited to farming, in 1861 Father Albert Lacombe and the Grey Nuns decided to move to Saint-Albert, with a number of Métis families followed them to this new site too. Saint-Albert quickly grew into a main gathering point for an ever rising Métis population, becoming in 1871 the seat of the first bishopric of the Catholic Church in Alberta. By the 1890s, Saint-Albert numbered approximately 1000 inhabitants.

Further to the north, in 1847, Bishop Alexandre Taché decided to establish a mission at Fort . His efforts were implemented as of 1851 by Father Henri Faraud, who supervised work draining a lake and planting gardens. In 1853, APPENDIX 1 – Alberta’s Francophones

missionaries established the Notre-Dame-des Victoires mission at Lac La Biche. It is worth recalling, however, that numerous Métis, such as a certain Ladéroute, and French Canadians, such as a certain Ladouceur, had been present in the area as long ago as 1798. The mission was particularly well located, as it provides access to the watersheds of the Mackenzie and Churchill Rivers and thus facilitated the circulation of goods. The lands were fertile and particularly well suited to farming and livestock-raising. In 1874, the population hovered at about 600, including 200 French-Cree Métis and 100 Déné and/ or French-Déné Métis. For his part, Father Lacombe attempted to establish not only a mission among the Cree – at Saint- Paul-des-Cris (in Brosseau) in 1865 – but also a colony among the Métis - at Saint-Paul-des-Métis (today’s St Paul) in 1896. For a variety of reasons, both initiatives ended in failure, however.

In the southern Alberta throughout this same time, a number of major missions were founded, among the Blackfoot in particular. The government also turned to the missionaries for support in its efforts to persuade Indian chiefs and Métis representatives to sign a series of treaties – Treaties 6, 7 and 8 in the case of Alberta – and again during the proceedings of the Scrip Commission, which travelled across the province in 1899 disturbing “scrip” to the Métis for the purchase of homesteads or conversion into cash. In these rather complex dealings, the government viewed the missionaries as valuable interlocutors owing to their knowledge of Aboriginal languages and their long-nurtured relations with various Indian and Métis groups.

Notre-Dame-de-la Paix, another important mission located in southern Alberta, was founded in 1872 by Father Léon Doucet. Three years later, the North West Mounted Police established Fort Brisebois, later to become . The majority of the town’s first parishioners were Francophones, split amongst Métis and French Canadians arriving directly from Quebec in the 1880s to take part in building the railway. These settlers were quickly, overrun by Anglophone homesteaders. In 1889, the parish of Notre-Dame-de-la Paix had already changed names, becoming St Mary’s. In response to Father Lacombe’s desire to develop Francophone settlement in Alberta, the federal government granted him two quarter-sections of land for establishing a new village by the name of Rouleauville, in honour of brothers Charles and Édouard Rouleau. The village, known today as the Mission district, was annexed by the city of Calgary in 1907.

All in all, the influence of these men extended beyond the founding of missions, as their services were also critical to efforts promoting the emigration of French Canadians to Alberta.

Francophone emigration

The survival of the French-speaking nation in Alberta figured prominently among the concerns of the clergy. Beginning in the 1870s, Mgr. Taché, by then Bishop for the diocese of St. Boniface, launched a movement to stimulate Francophone settlement in Western Canada as a means of preserving a semblance of demolinguistic and religious parity with the anticipated waves of predominantly Protestant English-speaking homesteaders originating in Ontario and the British Isles. To this end, “colonization missioners” - i.e., priests whose work considerably resembled that of land agents – were sent east on a different kind of mission, that of recruiting Francophone settlers and bringing them back to Alberta. In the promotional brochures distributed among potential candidates, the West was depicted as nothing short of an earthly paradise. Some diseases, it was claimed, could even be cured through contact with ideal climate reigning in the . Despite such powerful selling points, the missioners nevertheless ran up against several formidable obstacles. To begin with, secular and church authorities in Quebec took a very dim view of these efforts to prompt emigration towards the West. They remained APPENDIX 1 – Alberta’s Francophones

deeply unsettled by the draining of thousands of French Canadians from Quebec to the small industrial towns of New England (between 1840 and 1930, more than 900 000 emigrated from Quebec to the , an estimated half million of them during the main exodus years between 1861 and 1901) and they were by no means eager to witness another wave of out-migration.

The colonizing priests then trained their sights on the United States, only to encounter once again a degree resistance among the Franco-Americans, who were rather dubious about the possibility of being swallowed up in the vastness of Western Canada. Not only New England but also the Americans Midwest had succeeded in attracting a number of French Canadian expatiates, particularly to Missouri and Michigan. For example, though originally from Montreal, the brothers Joseph and François Lamoureux crisscrossed North America before settling in Lamoureux, Alberta, in 1872. There, the two brothers were, by turns, gold prospectors, , breeders, homesteaders, farmers and businessmen, running both a sawmill and a ferry service.

Failing to recruit large numbers from among the inhabitants of Québec and the United States, the missionary-colonizers decided, as of 1885, to look to Europe in hopes of tapping the immigration potential of France, Belgium and Switzerland. Once again, the results proved disappointing, as these Europeans preferred emigrating to bordering countries or to their colonies abroad, in the case of France and Belgium. There were several who nevertheless ventured westward, either at the urging of the missionaries or as part of a quest for adventure.

The celebrated writer and horticulturist Georges Bugnet is certainly the best known, settling on a in Rich Valley, north of Edmonton, in 1905. The noted entrepreneur René Lemarchand, at the urging of his missionary brother, also came to Edmonton in search of opportunity. Other pioneers headed for southern Alberta, setting up such as those spearheaded in Trochu in 1905 by Armand Trochu and Count Paul de Beaudrap. Finally, other European immigrants, motivated by utopian experimentation, established a short-lived Fourierist commune at Sylvan Lake in 1906. Led by Dr. Adalbert Tanche, this colony met with numerous setbacks, leading to the gradual desertion of the community by its members. In contrast, the mining towns of Lille and Bellevue, both located in southwestern Alberta, near the border with , benefited from substantial reserves of French capital, technical know-how and manpower.

During this same period, the federal government’s immigration promotion campaigns abroad – shaped in large measure by , Immigration Minister under and an outspoken opponent of bilingualism in the West – produced the combined result of swamping Western Canada’s Francophones enclaves and stifling the Church’s hopes of developing a homogenous critical mass of Francophone in the Prairies. From 112 458 in 1882, the number of immigrants surged to 400 870 in 1913. Between 1910 and 1920, 1 612 000 immigrants were landed in Canada and between 1921 and 1941, a further 1 203 000.

Despite the disappointments and frustrations suffered by the recruiting missionaries, 620 families nevertheless rallied to their appeals during the wave of Francophone migration occurring in the 1890s. Half of the families settling in Alberta arrived directly from the United States whereas only a fifth hailed from Quebec. The first missionary to arrive with his recruits was Father Jean-Baptiste Morin, in 1891. These homesteaders settled 12 miles north of Saint-Albert and in 1892 christened their soon thriving village Morinville in honour to their founding pastor. In 1907, under the guidance of the Oblate Fathers Joseph Adéobat Thérien and Jean Baptiste Ouellette, the first settlers arrived in Bonnyville. In 1909, the Métis APPENDIX 1 – Alberta’s Francophones

reserve at Saint-Paul-des-Métis was officially opened up to French Canadian settlers. Upon the conclusion of World War I, other homesteaders followed, this time heading for the Peace River country. The last wave of emigrants arrived directly from the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean area, settling at St. Isidore in the 1950s. Francophone settlement in Alberta was fairly compact on the whole, with the main population clusters being located in and around Edmonton (Saint-Albert, Legal and Morinville), the region of Saint-Paul, Bonnyville, Cold Lake and Lac La Biche, and the Peace River country. In southern Alberta, settlement proceeded according to a more scattershot pattern, with a few enclaves in the Red Deer and Pincher Creek areas, along with a more prominent presence in Calgary. At the time of the 1931 census, Alberta numbered 38 377 Francophones, accounting for 5.2% of the population. In 1941, the total Francophone population stood at 45 898, with the city of Edmonton home to 4 997 French speakers (or 5 % of its 94 000 inhabitants) and the city of Calgary, 2 279.

In the rural areas, farming was the cornerstone of most people’s livelihoods, while the parish was the focal point of their social lives. Daily life was structured according to the flow of the seasons, the life cycle and, in some regions, conditions of isolation. To get around with one’s family or vehicle, it took a certain capacity for planning, along with ample time for travelling, particularly prior to the construction of railways lines and roadways. In the settlement days, carts rather frequently got stuck in the sticky mud that Albertans refer to as “gumbo”. Later, automobiles suffered a similar fate on roads little improved. The cities of Edmonton and Calgary developed specifically Francophone neighbourhoods and a Francophone upper middle class having a certain degree of political influence. There also, the parish was a hub of the Francophones’ social existence and, in this capacity, its fortunes intertwined with those of its parishioners. For example, in 1859, Edmonton’s first Catholic church was raised in the Francophone parish of St. Joachim and in 1876 was relocated to a new 13-acre lot. By 1886, these quarters had become too close for comfort, so the construction of a third and bigger church was lunched, with completion occurring in 1899. According to André Lalonde in his article “Les Canadiens français de l’Ouest: espoirs, tragédies, incertitudes” [the French Canadians of Western Canada: hopes, tragedies, uncertainty], “The parish constituted an island of Quebec, a mini- Quebec landed in a new environment”.

Francophones very quickly rose to positions of prominence in the province’s governmental spheres, earning election or appointment as ministers, members of the legislative assembly or school board commissioners. They were also represented among numerous trades and professions, earning livelihoods and recognition as farmers, doctors, lawyers, schoolteachers, storeowners, businessmen, financiers, and so on. The wealth of some members of the greater Francophone family was conspicuous in the architecture of their homes or certain commercial buildings. In 1894, Edmonton became home to the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste, a French-Canadian patriotic association, and in 1898, to a French-language newspaper, L’Ouest Canadien. In succeeding years, other newspapers would be started up, some by prominent community leaders, others by the church, which recognized the value of this means of communication. The clergy unstintingly supplied these outlets with funding and manpower, as in the case of La Survivance (a forerunner of the present-day weekly called Le Franco), in 1928. Other key institutions were established at this time – most notably, the Association Canadienne-française de l’Alberta, founded in 1926.

Supported by a representative association, French Canadian began to defend their rights. From 1918 to 1935, the French Canadian elite focused on education, seen as critically important to the preservation of the French presence in Alberta. Flouting official restrictions on the use of French in schools, they elected French-speaking school commissioners and hired Francophone schoolteachers. They also set up a number of associations, including the Association des instituteurs bilingues APPENDIX 1 – Alberta’s Francophones

de l’Alberta, a province-wide association of bilingual schoolteachers, 1926. Despite the Francophone clergy’s best efforts, the infrastructure they had founded and developed began gradually to crumble from 1930 on, under the combined impacts of the Great Depression and a fall-off in the representation and influence of French speakers in the church hierarchy of western Canada. In a parallel development, though Francophones had traditionally voted liberal, their political allegiances began to diversify as of the 1920s, particularly as the United Farmers of Alberta (Fermiers unis de l’Alberta), founded in 1909, successfully converted into a governing provincial party from 1921 until 1934, and the Alberta social Credit Party took off to meteoric success from the mid-1930s.

The 1940s were inauspicious politically for the province’s French Canadian population. In reaction to the ravages of the Great Depression during the previous decade, , a radio evangelist converted to the cause of monetary reform as a solution to economic problems, and the Social Credit Party were swept to power in 1934; when Aberhart died in office in 1943, he was succeeded by , who led the party to nine successive election victories. During the war years, longstanding prejudices were heightened by suspicions toward immigrant groups whose home countries were at war with Canada or toward non-mainstream groups for their reluctance or refusal to join the war effort (in the case of French Canadians, opposition to conscription had fuelled among them a widespread but by no means universal resistance to shouldering the Allied cause. As explicated by Howard Palmer in his article “Ethnic Relations and the Paranoid style: Nativism, Nationalism and Populism in Alberta, 1945-50, “ in the aftermath of the war years, significant currents of Alberta politics and society continued to manifest a kind of paranoia, directed at French Canadians, Hutterites and Jews, among others. However, 1945, taking confidence in their economic and social power, the French Canadian decided to establish their own radio station. To do so, they had to officially incorporate and obtain, through a law enacted by the Legislative Assembly, a charter for their company. At the time, this initiative was viewed as the outcome of some Catholic/French Canadian plot and triggered a controversy among Alberta politicians. It was not the first time that anti-Francophone sentiment had surfaced; indeed the phenomenon has regularly accompanied periods of economic or political uncertainty.

Since the 1960s

The French-speaking communities of Canada outside Quebec have been engaged in a far-reaching process of transformation since the 1960s. Significantly, in Quebec itself, the appellation of “French Canadian” was supplanted by that of “Québécois” in keeping with broader phenomenon of resurgent nationalism in that province. By the same token, the Francophone communities elsewhere in Canada had also to redefine themselves in response to widely varying local situations. In addition, the development of the welfare state meant that government would play an increasingly greater role in the daily lives of citizens. In the Francophone communities, religious institutions, which previously had been the provider of a broad range of services and a cementing factor in terms of norms and aspirations was gradually replaced by secular institutions. Now, as the provincial government has become, to a very great extent, the product and reflection of its generally unilingual Anglophone majority, Francophones have adopted the status of members of a minority group and today perceive themselves as Franco- Albertans.

Over the last 20 years, the province’s Francophone community has, as their means have allowed, taken up the challenges of modernity. Due to the enshrinement of language rights in the 1982 Constitution Act of Canada, they have made some substantial legal gains, leading in 1993 to the authorization of full-fledged Francophone school boards. In the time since, five school boards have been created and the community now numbers 28 French-language schools. APPENDIX 1 – Alberta’s Francophones

As was noted by Edmund Aunger in “Les communautés francophones de l’Ouest: la survivance d’une minorité dispersée” [the Francophones communities of Western Canada: the survival of a dispersed minority], Francophones today represent only 2.6% of the population of Western Canada. Despite a certain degree of fragility and vulnerability that comes from living in a predominantly Anglophone environment, Francophones show few or any visible signs, in purely economic terms, of leading an existence different from that of Anglophones. Today, the great majority of Alberta’s Francophones live in or near urban centres and are bilingual.

As a result of Canadian immigration policies, the future of Alberta’s Francophonie has, over the last several years, been decisively shaped by the framework of multiculturalism. Recent immigrants, landing primarily from African countries – particularly French-speaking Rwanda and Democratic Republic of the Congo – struggle with a variety of experiences that prompted their original departure and must confront the many challenges associated with integration in their new society. In view of this changing situation, it has become critical de develop a multicultural Francophone space and the existing community has no choice but to re-examine its historic boundaries in order to embrace this expanding cultural heterogeneity.

In 2001, Alberta’s Francophone population stood at 62 259, an increase of 12.6% since 1996. This growth stems from the arrival of new emigrants from Quebec and elsewhere. Furthermore, over several generations, an energetic and determined community has succeeded in developing for itself dynamic institutions such as the Faculté Saint-Jean, a Francophone campus within an Anglophone university that serves the needs of both Francophone and Anglophone students from Alberta and elsewhere. As many Franco-Albertans will attest, it is increasingly possible to live in French in the Wild Rose Province. By assembly this collection of photographs culled from various archival holdings throughout the province – many of them previously unpublished – it has been my desire to pay homage to the French-speaking men and women who have left their imprint on the . And through my research, I have strived to contribute to the necessary, ongoing restoration of Franco-Albertan memory.

Source : Kermoal, N. J., & Association canadienne-française de l’Alberta. (2005). Alberta’s Francophones, pp. 15-27.