Quebec Emigration - United States

United States

Brought on by the "push" of 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 the Province of Quebec under the new British governors, who reserved new land developments for the English and the English system of colonization (see Eastern Townships) and the "pull" of industrialization in New England, approximately 900,000 residents of Quebec (French Canadian for the great majority) left for the United States seeking work. About half of those 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 with 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.

Certain early American centers of textile manufacturing and other industries attracted significant French-Canadian populations, like Lewiston and other bordering counties in Maine; Fall River, Holyoke and Lowell in Massachusetts; Woonsocket in Rhode Island; Manchester in New Hampshire and the bordering counties in Vermont. There was a significant number of French Canadians who moved to the Kankakee, IL area from the 1830s through the 1870s, including religious missionaries, establishing communities such as Bourbonnais, St. Anne, St. Georges, Papineau, and L'Erable. There are also sizeable populations of French-Canadian descent in Michigan and Minnesota — who began migrating there when the region was still part of New France.

The Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, details New England's Quebec diaspora which developed in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Noteworthy among those whose parents settled in the United States are writer Jack Kerouac, politician Mike Gravel, singers Rudy Vallée and Robert Goulet, Emil Beaulieau, historian Will Durant and many more.