Quebec diaspora

The Quebec diaspora consists of Quebec emigrants and their descendants dispersed over the North American continent and historically concentrated in the New England region of the United States, Ontario, and the Canadian Prairies. The mass emigration out of Quebec occurred in the period between 1840 and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Approximately 900,000 Quebec residents (French Canadian for the great majority) left for the United States between 1840 and 1930. They were pushed to emigrate by overpopulation in rural areas that could not sustain themselves under the seigneurial system of land tenure, but also because the expansion of this system was in effect blocked by the "Château Clique" that ruled Quebec under the British administration, who reserved new land developments for the English and the English system of colonization (see Eastern Townships). New England was the preferred destination due to its growing industrialization. About half of the emigrants are reported to have eventually returned to Canada. Often those who stayed organized themselves in communities sometimes known as Little Canadas. A great proportion of Americans of French ancestry trace it through Quebec. Others, particularly in the South, were from Acadia - the Cajuns - and from France directly. Until 1849, the Catholic Church was not allowed to purchase any land or establish any parishes in the Eastern Townships due to English Protestant laws and control At the initiative of Father Bernard O'Reilley, an Association des Townships was set up in 1848 to promote settlement in the area. In the 1850s, the association purchased lands which it gave to young families of farmers to prevent them from leaving for the United States where it was believed they would ultimately be assimilated.

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