French Canada’s Quiet Obsession with China

Abstract

Missionaries played a significant role in presenting China to a French Canadian audience. Whatever the "heritage" missionaries in French Canada left before i960, China was undoubtedly their greatest effort and it did leave a historical legacy. Despite the cultural gap, French Canadian literature focused on China because of the historic Jesuit links, the Sainte-Enfance [Holy Childhood], and missionaries who brought two distant cultures into contact. Even though Québec secularized during the 1960s, the China endeavor maintained avid French Canadian interest in China to the present day.