Canada by Sir John George Bourinot (e ink ebook reader TXT) 📖

however, France has left behind her what seem likely to be more permanent memorials of her occupation. The picturesque banks of the St. Lawrence, from the Atlantic to the great lakes of the West, are the home of a large and rapidly increasing population whose language and customs are so many memorials of the old regime whose history has taken up so many pages of this story.

The tourist who travels through the province of Quebec sees on all sides the evidence that he is passing through a country of French origin. Here and there in Quebec and Montreal, or in some quiet village sequestered in a valley or elevated on the Laurentian Hills, he sees houses and churches which remind him of many a hamlet or town he has visited in Brittany or Normandy. The language is French from the Saguenay to the Ottawa, and in some remote communities even now English is never spoken, and is understood only by the cure or notary. Nor is the language so impure or degenerated as many persons may naturally suppose. On {438} the contrary, it is spoken by the educated classes with a purity not excelled in France itself. The better class of French Canadians take pride in studying the language of the country of their ancestors, and are rarely guilty of Anglicisms, though these have necessarily crept into the common parlance of mixed communities, where people are forced to speak both French and English. In some rural districts, isolated from large towns, the people retain the language as it was spoken two centuries ago--though without the accent of the old provinces of their origin--and consequently many words and phrases which are rarely now heard in France, still exist among the peasantry of French Canada, just as we find in New England many expressions which are not pure Americanisms but really memorials of old English times. In French Canada the Anglicisms are such as occur under the natural condition of things. The native of old France has no words for "clearing" the forest, making maple sugar, "blazing" a way through the woods or over the ice and snow of the rivers and lakes, and consequently the vocabulary of the French Canadian has been considerably enlarged by local circumstances. In the summer resorts of the lower St. Lawrence the influence of the English visitors, now very numerous, is becoming more evident every year, and French habits are becoming modified and the young folks commence to speak English fairly well. Away from the St. Lawrence, however, and the path of the tourists, the French Canadians remain, relatively speaking, untouched by English customs.

_Nos institutions, notre langue, et nos lois_ has been the key-note of French Canadian politics for over a century. At the present time the records and statutes of the Dominion are always given in the two languages, and the same is true of all motions put by the Speaker. Though the reports of the debates appear daily in French, English prevails in the House of Commons and in the Senate. The French Canadians are forced to speak the language of the majority, and it is some evidence of the culture of their leading public men, that many among them--notably Sir Wilfrid, the eloquent leader of the Liberals, and first French Canadian premier since 1867--are able to express themselves in English with a freedom and elegance which no English-speaking member can pretend to equal in French. In the legislature of the province of Quebec, French has almost excluded English, though the records are given in the two languages. In the supreme court of the Dominion the arguments may be in French, and the two Quebec judges give their decisions in their own tongue.

The people of French Canada are very devout Roman Catholics. The numerous churches, colleges, and convents of the country attest the power and wealth of the Church, and the desire of the French Canadians to glorify and perpetuate it by every means in their power. The whole land is practically parcelled out among the saints, as far as the nomenclature of the settlements and villages is concerned. The favourite saint appears to be Ste. Anne, whose name appears constantly on the banks {440} of the St. Lawrence. We have Ste. Anne de la Perade, Ste. Anne de la Pocatiere, and many others. We all remember the verse of Moore's boat song:


"Faintly as tolls the evening chime,
Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time,
Soon as the woods on shore look dim,
We 'll sing at St. Anne's our parting hymn."


This village, situated at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, is generally known as Ste. Anne de Bellevue, and still retains some of the characteristics of a French Canadian village, notwithstanding its close neighbourhood to the English-speaking settlements of Ontario. Jesuits, Sulpicians, and Recollets have done much to mould the thought and control the political destiny of the people under their spiritual care. The universities, colleges, and schools are mainly directed by the religious orders. The priests, as this story has shown, have been very active and conscientious workers from the earliest days of Canadian history.

Canada, too, has her Notre Dame de Lourdes, to whose shrine the faithful flock by thousands. Some twenty miles east of Quebec, on the banks of the St. Lawrence, is the church of Ste. Anne de Beaupre, or, as the Saint is more particularly known, La bonne Ste. Anne, who has won fame in Canada for miraculous cures for two centuries at least.

This historic place rests under the shelter of a lofty mountain of the Laurentides, on a little plateau which has given it the name of the "beautiful meadow." The village itself consists of a {442} straggling street of wooden houses, with steep roofs and projecting eaves, nearly all devoted to the entertainment of the large assemblage that annually resorts to this Canadian Mecca, probably some sixty thousand in the course of the summer. Here you will see on the fete of Ste. Anne, and at other fixed times, a mass of people in every variety of costume, Micmacs, Hurons, and Iroquois--representatives of the old Indian tribes of Canada--French Canadians, men, women, and children, from the valleys of the Ottawa, and the St. Maurice, and all parts of Quebec, as well as tourists from the United States. The handsome grey stone church--now dignified as a "basilica"--which has been built of late years, attests the faith of many thousands who have offered their supplications at the shrine of La bonne Ste. Anne for centuries.[1] Piles of crutches of every description, of oak, of ash, of pine, are deposited in every available corner as so many votive offerings from the countless cripples that claim to have been cured or relieved. The relic through which all the wonderful cures are said to be effected, consists of a part of the finger bone of Ste. Anne, which was sent in 1668 by the Chapter of Carcassonne to Monseigneur de Laval. The church also possesses several pictures of merit, one of them by Le Brun, presented by the Viceroy Tracy in 1666. The situation of many of the French Canadian {443} villages is exceedingly picturesque, when they nestle in some quiet nook by the side of a river or bay, or overlook from some prominent hill a noble panorama of land and water. The spire of the stone church rises generally from the midst of the houses, and the priest's residence or presbytere is always the most comfortable in size and appearance. The houses are for the most part built of wood. The roofs are frequently curved, with projecting eaves, which afford a sort of verandah under which the family sit in summer evenings. Some of the most pretentious structures, especially the inns, have balconies running directly across the upper story. Many of the barns and outhouses have thatched roofs, which are never seen in any other part of Canada. The interiors are very plainly furnished, in many cases with chairs and tables of native manufacture. A high iron stove is the most important feature of every dwelling in a country where the cold of winter is so extreme. Whitewash is freely used inside and outside, and there is on the whole an air of cleanliness and comfort in the humblest cottage.

The loom is still kept busy in some villages, and a coarse, warm homespun is even yet made for everyday use. The _habitant_ also wears in winter moccasins and a _tuque bleue_, or woollen cap, in which he is always depicted by the painter of Canadian scenes. But with the growth of towns and the development of the railway system a steady change is occurring year by year in the dress of the inhabitants, and it is only in the very remote settlements that we can find the homely stuffs of former times. Old dresses {444} and old customs are gradually disappearing with the old-fashioned caleche, in which tourists once struggled to admire French Canadian scenes. As a rule, however, the people live very economically, and extravagance in dress is rather the exception. On gala days the young wear many ribbons and colours, though arranged with little of the taste characteristic of the French people. Both old and young are very sociable in their habits, and love music and dancing. The violin is constantly played in the smallest village, and the young people dance old-fashioned cotillons or _danses rondos_. The priests, however, do not encourage reckless gaieties or extravagance in dress. Now and then the bishop issues a Pastoral in which the waltz and other fast dances, and certain fashionable modes of dress, are expressly forbidden, and though his mandates are no doubt soon forgotten in the cities and towns, they are, on the whole, religiously observed in the rural communities. The feasts of the Church are kept with great zeal,--especially the _fetes d'obligation_--and consequently the French Canadian has holidays without number.

No class of the population of Canada is more orderly or less disposed to crime than the French Canadians. The standard of the morality of the people is high. Early marriages have been always encouraged by the priests, and large families--fifteen children being very common--are the rule in the villages. The _habitant_ is naturally litigious, and the amount in dispute is, in his opinion, trifling compared with the honour of having a case in court, {446} which demands the attendance of the whole village. The temperate habits of the French Canadian make them necessarily valuable employes in mills and manufactories of all kinds. Indeed, they prefer this life to that of the farm, and until very recently there was a steady exodus of this class to the manufacturing towns of Lowell, Holyoke, and other places in New England. A large proportion of the men employed in the lumbering industry of Canada is drawn from the province of Quebec. As their forefathers were _coureurs de bois_ in the days of the French regime, and hunted the beaver in the wilderness, even venturing into the illimitable Northwest region, so in these modern times the French Canadians seek the vast pine woods which, despite axe and fire, still stretch over a large area watered by the Ottawa and other rivers.

In commercial and financial enterprise, the French Canadians cannot compete with their fellow-citizens of British origin, who practically control the great commercial undertakings and banking institutions of Lower Canada, especially in Montreal. Generally speaking, the French Canadians cannot compare with the English population as