Little Canada

Little Canada (French: le petit Canada) is a name for any of the various communities where French Canadians congregated upon emigrating to the United States, in particular New England, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A variant of Canadian French known as New England French is still spoken in parts of New England.

Some early emigrants relocated to the United States because they had chosen to side with the Americans during the American Revolution. Parish archives of Old St. Joseph's Church in Philadelphia record trips made by Jesuit Father Ferdinand Steinmeyer (Father Farmer) to the Revolutionary War depot near Fishkill, New York, where he baptized over a dozen children of French-Canadian and Acadian parents. Most of the men were members of the 1st Canadian Regiment of the Continental Army, recruited in 1775 by James Livingston in anticipation of an invasion of Quebec. As the expedition failed, they, their families, and the American militias were driven out of Canada.

Approximately 900,000 French-Canadians emigrated to the United States in the period of 1840-1930 during the first wave of the Quebec diaspora. The vast majority of these francophones settled in the six New England states: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont, as well as northern New York State.

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