What's in a name?

"What's an Ontarian?" is a fairly easy question. "What's a Pennsylvanian", similarly, is easy. They're people who live (or at least, grew up) there. There may be some difficulties in how people react, but that's, basically the general view.

Not everywhere is like that, of course. There are - in North America - places that, for one reason or another, have developed a very strong cultural identity. Québec is, unsurprisingly, one such place. "What's a Québécois?" is probably one of the most complex questions having to do with Quebec.

I'm going to write a few posts on that topic, starting here with a brief history and explanation of how the current conception of the Québécois arose.

In theory (and by the dictionary), the term Québécois is the french equivalent of English "Quebecer". That is, the basic meaning is "A native or inhabitant of the province of Quebec".

That's the theory. In practice, Québécois, in French but especially in English, has a understood "French" (in the sense of French-speaking) added to the Quebecer part, and has largely replaced "French-Canadian" as the identity of French-Canadians from Quebec. The historical roots for that are complex, but I'll try to explain them here.

Now, originally, the French-Speaking, Catholic settlers along the Saint-Lawrence-Great-Lakes valley referred to themselves as Canadians. Their homeland, the French heartland in North America (far more so than Acadia or Louisiana) was Canada, a Iroquois name meaning "village" that the French wound up applying to the entire region of the Saint Lawrence valley. Note that this Canada did not include Acadia.

Now, with the conquest of Canada by the British in 1759, things changed. In 1763, the central part of what had been Canada became the province of Quebec; in 1774, this was extended to cover all of old Canada and then some. The French people of the region, however, remained the Canadiens or Canadians. The English-speaking inhabitants, on the other hand, were by and large simply British.

In 1792, for various reason, the Province of Quebec was reorganized as two political entities: mostly french Lower Canada (along the Saint-Lawrence), and mostly English upper Canada (along the Great Lakes). This is when the term "Canadian" began to be also applied to English-Canadians, and that French-Canadian begin to appear (in English). In French, for the most part, a "Canadiens" remained a descendant of French Canada. Hence, the "Canadiens" in the French version of the Canadian anthem are a deeply Catholic people growing up on the shores of the Saint-Lawrence; the Montreal Canadiens are named in reference to the French-Canadian people (as with their nicnkname, the "Habs", derived from les Habitants, the agrarian part of French-Canadian society)

Over the nineteenth and early twentieth century, particularly with the growth of Canada into an expanding and eventually independant country that reached three oceans (Pacific, Arctic, Atlantic), the distinction between Canadiens (someone from Canada) and Canadien-Français (French Canadian) passed into the French language, however.

At the same time, Quebec French-Canadians, became increasingly disappointed at the French-Canadian role and place in Canada. The hanging of Louis Riel as a traitor, where he was seen as defending the (French) Metis people in Quebec; the two cases where English Canada voted the draft for wars the French Canadian hardly wanted any part in, the decision to go to war in support of London in the Boer Wars, all contributed to a growing sentiment that Canada, instead of being the French-Canadian homeland it originally had been, was an English political entity, where they were sidelined.

The province of Quebec, on the other hand, was largely French-Canadian in population. It also largely corresponded, geographically, to the original Canada, or at least the heartland of it, with all the major cities of the first Canada: Montréal, Québec, Trois-Rivières.

As a direct result, Quebec French-Canadians largely started thinking of themselves as Québécois, and started rejecting French-Canadian for use with regard to themselves; Canadian, for its part, became a term refering exclusively to the country. Which means that Canada, a country created and named by the French, is now largely an English reality, whereas Quebec, a province created and named by the British, is now largely a French reality.

Of course, because reclaiming a homeland of our own ties directly into this, the concept of using Québécois-Français (French-Quebecer) instead of Québécois is unacceptable: it essentially amount to recreating in Québec the situation that was in Canada, with two nations claiming the same geographic entity as their homeland.

It would be wrong, however, to think of Québécois as "French-Canadian from Quebec". At the same time that they were redefining their homeland, the French-Canadian from Quebec were heavily redefining themselves.

This was the era called the Quiet Revolution. Over the course of a decade or two, they went from being strongly parochial and deeply attached to the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church, to breaking away with that establishment, opening to the world (hosted the World Fair in 1967, and the Olympic Games nine years later), completely rewriting the code of law along the way. Immigration also vastly increased, and that, too, was part of the redefinition.

As such, where French-Canadian had been a very parochial and ethnic term, Québécois instead became much more cultural and national. Canadien-Français (French-Canadian) hardly even had room (for most people) to new immigrants from France, and was strictly for people descended from the settlers of New France. Québécois, on the other hand, was to many Québécois based on language spoken: someone who spoke French, or was willing to learn it well enough to speak with the Québécois, and wanted to be a Québécois, was a Québécois. This is not a universal statement - there are people for whom "Québécois" has the same connotation as "French Canadian" did of old, and people for whom "Québécois" means "everyone living in Quebec, but in my experience, it's the general feeling.

(Even, as I noted yesterday, among the nationalist movement).

Tomorrow, or sometime this week, I'll delve into the complexities of Quebec and the many hats it must wear, and the complexities of the Majority-Minority relations for Quebec (since Québécois get to play both roles).