Quebec emigration
From Free net encyclopedia
The Quebec diaspora consists of hundreds of thousands of people who left the Province of Quebec in Canada for the United States, Ontario and the Canadian prairies between 1840 and through the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Brought on by overpopulation in rural areas that could not sustain a under the seigneurial system of land tenure and industrialisation in New England, approximately 900,000 French Canadian residents left for the United States seeking work. About half of those are reported to have eventually returned to Quebec. Often those who stayed organized themselves in communities sometimes known as Little Canadas. A great proportion of Americans with French ancestry trace it through Quebec. Certain early American centers of textile manufacturing and other industries attracted significant French-Canadian populations, like Fall River, Holyoke, and Lowell in Massachusetts; Woonsocket in Rhode Island; and the bordering counties in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. There are also sizeable populations of French-Canadian descent in Michigan and Minnesota - who began migrating there when the region was still part of New France.
The largest proportion of French-Canadians outside of Quebec trace their ancestry to Quebec (except in the Canadian Maritimes, which were settled by the Acadians.)
Noteworthy among those whose parents settled in the United States are Jack Kerouac, Robert Goulet and Will Durant.