French Canadians
French Canadians (referred to as Canadiens mainly before the nineteenth century; French: Canadiens français, pronounced [kanadjɛ̃ fʁɑ̃sɛ]; feminine form: Canadiennes françaises, pronounced [kanadjɛn fʁɑ̃sɛːz]), or Franco-Canadians (French: Franco-Canadiens),[4][5][6][7] are an ethnic group who trace their ancestry to French colonists who settled in France's colony of Canada beginning in the 17th century.
"Canadiens" redirects here. For the hockey team, see Montreal Canadiens. For the French-speaking population of Canada, see Francophone Canadians. For other uses, see Canadien (disambiguation) and French Canadian (disambiguation).During the 17th century, French settlers originating mainly from the west and north of France settled Canada.[8] It is from them that the French Canadian ethnicity was born. During the 17th to 18th centuries, French Canadians expanded across North America and colonized various regions, cities, and towns.[9] As a result, people of French Canadian descent can be found across North America. Between 1840 and 1930, many French Canadians immigrated to New England, an event known as the Grande Hémorragie.[10]
Etymology[edit]
French Canadians get their name from the French colony of Canada, the most developed and densely populated region of New France during the period of French colonization in the 17th and 18th centuries. The original use of the term Canada referred to the area of present-day Quebec along the St. Lawrence River, divided in three districts (Québec, Trois-Rivières, and Montréal), as well as to the Pays d'en Haut (Upper Countries), a vast and thinly settled territorial dependence north and west of Montreal which covered the whole of the Great Lakes area.
From 1535 to the 1690s, the French word Canadien had referred to the First Nations the French had encountered in the St. Lawrence River valley at Stadacona and Hochelaga.[11] At the end of the 17th century, Canadien became an ethnonym distinguishing the inhabitants of Canada from those of France. To distinguish between the English-speaking population and the French-speaking population, the terms English Canadian and French Canadian emerged.[12] During the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s to 1980s, inhabitants of Quebec began to identify as Québécois instead of simply French Canadian.[13]
Religion[edit]
Roman Catholicism is the chief denomination. The kingdom of France forbade non-Catholic settlement in New France from 1629 onward and thus, almost all French settlers of Canada were Catholic. In the United States, some families of French-Canadian origin have converted to Protestantism. Until the 1960s, religion was a central component of French-Canadian national identity. The Church parish was the focal point of civic life in French-Canadian society, and religious orders ran French-Canadian schools, hospitals and orphanages and were very influential in everyday life in general. During the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, however, the practice of Catholicism dropped drastically.[20] Church attendance in Quebec currently remains low. Rates of religious observance among French Canadians outside Quebec tend to vary by region, and by age. In general, however, those in Quebec are the least observant, while those in the United States of America and other places away from Quebec tend to be the most observant.
Royal pavilion of 1534 to 1599.
Royal pavilion of 1663 to 1763.
