Conspicuous by Their Absence: French Canadians and the Settlement of the Canadian West

Abstract

The failure of French Canadians to settle the Canadian west before 1900, when substantial numbers of anglophones and Europeans were migrating, is a long-standing puzzle. Historians have relied mainly on cultural explanations. Using new data, we demonstrate that anglophones and francophones had very different personal characteristics, so that movement to the west was rarely economically attractive for francophones. However, large-scale migration into New England fitted French Canadians' demographic and human capital profile. Even if the United States had imposed immigration restrictions by the 1880s, this would not likely have diverted many French Canadians westward. he almost complete absence of French Canadians among settlers of Western Canada at the end of the nineteenth century is striking. Had there been a substantial flow of francophone internal migrants to the Prairies and the Pacific coast, there would have been a significant francophone presence in 1914, instead of a proportionately shrinking minority in Manitoba, and only scattered pockets of French-speaking settlers elsewhere. This is one of the great might-have-beens of Canadian history. Without much of a base established by the beginning of the twentieth century, there was little possibility for later chain migration of French Canadians to the West. By contrast, migrants from anglophone Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and parts of continental Europe, had put networks into place by 1900. At the time of Confederation (1867), virtually all of Canada's population was located between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Erie. By the early 1870s, control of all British territory west to the Pacific Ocean had passed

Intergenerational Mobility in a Mid-Atlantic Economy: Canada, 1871–1901

“…Ontario also saw more rapid urbanization after 1871 than the other regions, had more industry in 1871, and experienced faster industrial growth between 1871 and 1901. 12 Quebec is distinctive in that the majority of the population were primarily French-speaking Canadians, who had lower rates of outmigration to other parts of Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Green, MacKinnon, and Minns 2005). While Quebec was less urban and industrial than Ontario, Montreal was the largest city in Canada at this time and the economic center of the country.…”