Talk:Little Canada (term)

P.C./PoV content, might be totally spurious
The second paragraph contains value judgments and political rhetoric that, while citable as opinion (there's quite likely academic and journalistic items out there that go on about such stuff) are not encyclopedic. I almost deleted the whole paragraph but it's over half the article; I added it to the WP:s in order to get this page some attention; I'm not sure at all this is a "traditional name for where French-Canadians settled", maybe that's citable too but I've never heard it before. Brings to mind an old National Lampoon column, "Canadian Corner", which went on abut the Canadian ghetto in New York City, with people hanging out in mackinacs and smoking "cigarettes that taste like forest fires". Anyway, this whole article may be spurious.Skookum1 (talk) 14:53, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * About the PC part, the article isn't trying to sugarcoat or cover-up a historic period of blatant nativism was committed at French-Canadians in the USA fleeing from Canada's then-Anglo domination. Or is it previous negative stereotypes, repression of cultural lifestyles (PC talk, huh?) and open discrimination towards French-Canadian people more socially acceptable in the US among white/European Americans. But still to poke fun at the "strange French people from Canada" is rude and insulting, and may be less traumatic than to poke fun at a person of color (i.e. African-Americans or East Asians) due to stigmatization of people for having visible physical traits. We know not to poke fun of someone's religion, but French-Canadian jokes involved their Roman Catholicism and sexual orientation, again the "Queer-beck-er" skits about French-Canadian men as effeminate while they aggresively flirt with "white blonde American" women. + 71.102.11.193 (talk) 11:17, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

This is article is not 'spurious.'
See the link at the bottom of the page to the [Marianopolis College http://faculty.marianopolis.edu/c.belanger/QuebecHistory/readings/leaving.htm] site with its account of the Little Canadas, esp. in New England. To site just two among perhaps hundreds of articles and books about this topic, see: Quintal, Claire, editor. THE LITTLE CANADAS OF NEW ENGLAND. Worcester, MA:: French Institute, Assumption College, 1983. First edition Octavo, x, 119pp. Also Quebec to "Little Canada": The Coming of the French Canadians to New England in the Nineteenth Century, The New England Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Sep., 1950), pp. 365-380  (article consists of 16 pages).

Three of my grandparents lived in "Little Canadas" in Maine and my father was born in one. These neighborhoods were real and as described in the article. For a contemporary account of conditions in the housing a Little Canada in the later 19th century see this article http://www.francoamericanhistory.com/history/frenchpride.html and scroll down to the section called "The Case of the Cabot Mill."

The "I've never heard of it before" argument is, in fact, often "spurious" because there are many things that are beyond the "hearing" or knowledge of any single individual. The commentator's citation of a "National Lampooon" column I find to be demeaning and dismissive. No more strenuous effort to research the topic than a Google search would have revealed a not insignificant literature about these neighborhoods.Wikime1894qc (talk) 01:56, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually I knew some of this population personally, at McGill years ago and also in my travels in new England; I'd never heard the term as a formal name before and it sounded too much like a joke; as with the Nat'l Lampoon articles above (there were only about fix or six in the whole series, which was unfunnily drab; part of the point) Anyway my friends from Mtl and New England were all anglophones - was there a Little Canada in in Pittsfield, btw?  Think I might have been there, but again no one spoke French but all knew who they were -, what the quebeckers call [morts vivants], zombies, meaning anglo-assimilated francophones beyond Quebec; and also remaining francophone populations, but that's politics.  Are there any attrition - language attrition studies on the fate of Frech-speaking loss?  I don't think my friends parents' generations ahd spoken French; were Little Canadas just ethnically French, or did French hold out a long while; I know it has in Vermont, but it was there already, no?  My apologies; it was a question of tone and it really did sound too much liek Great White North or various lampoon shows up here; interesting sort of a French Canadian version of Chinatown.  BTW I'm tempted to add someting liek:
 * French Canadian families already in the Pacific Northwest from the fur trade oftne chose to settle south of the boundary, in Puget Sound and Oregon, afte the Oregon Treaty of 1846, but of these, as the descendants of those French Canadians (and European French) who had made it to California, few to none retained retain their language as American citizens ("so no Little Canadas resulted" is uncitable becaus that "so" makes it a claim and for all I know there's a Little Canada in Boise; cetainly Bellis Fair Mall in Bellingham, Washington is but in another way; anyway if there had been fur trade [francophone]] holdout towns/families, they would not really part of the French diaspora anyway; the Far West was part of [la francophonie]'' in its early days, it wasn't a migration; there were there before the rest of us, save the Indians and farther south the Mexicans/Spanish.  They didn't migrate to an anglo area; they were overwhelmed by in-migrating anglos and assimilating speakers of other langauges; teh transplanation of an Englis h milieu on top of them; different story, different times.Skookum1 (talk) 05:01, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

The French-Canadians in the USA aren't controversial enough, you know like the Black people or the Jews. An ethnic group known to kept a foreign language and defended it against the conformist Anglo-Protestant-"Nordic/Aryan" majority in the late 19th and early 20th century, doesn't deserve liberal media sympathy and trivial mentions in P.C. World history courses on "those poor victimized Quebecers"? Sorry for the snide comment comparing the French-Canadian experience with that of African-Americans and European Jews, then again the concept of race or anyone claim to be Jewish without being in Judaism, is transfluid like English Canadians would be mistaken for being stereotypical Americans. + 71.102.11.193 (talk) 11:06, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Quebecker vs quebecois
Because this isn't a Canadian culture article I'm not editing it to Canadian spelling, and likewise I wouldn't make this change without discussing it with US editors; what's the standard in U.S. English for the "Quebec ethnic group". Quebecker is downright old-fashioned now, or diehard anyway, and to me (as a descendant of anglo-Quebeckers, and with the other side of the family also there, Anglo but now bilingue in the new generation (below mine; I was raised in BC and my quebec side came via California in the '20s ). Nowadays if I saw the anglo form of the term I'd near-take it or assume it to be in reference to either an anglo viewpoint/quote, or in describing a "white Pointe Claire" anglo, the brood and stock of the West Island, not quebecois by any standard meaning of the term, though they're working on that....anyway up here in Canada we also use quebecois in English without the accents, but usually italicized.  Is there an American style preference?Skookum1 (talk) 04:56, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Archaic but not deragatory, Anglo-Quebecker is acceptable to apply an English-speaking (or bilingual) person from Quebec, and French "Quebecois" (they can also be proficient in English) is a self-identification term among those of "Francophone" descent. Canadians are also numerous in Florida, but little or no mention in the article on the "Quebec South" colonies (like an ethnic neighborhood) found in Broward County, Florida (Ft. Lauderdale area) and other "new Quebecs/Canadas" developed in retirement communities could made Florida a major hub of Francophones. + 71.102.11.193 (talk) 11:22, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

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