On Tuesday, Claire and I attended a screening of the 1979 short film, Le P’tit Canada, a film in a series of films, called Le Son des Français d’Amerique, which captured the various songs and traditions of Francophone communities throughout North America. This particular installment was filmed on location in Lowell, Massachusetts in the late-1970s and featured interviews with local inhabitants. The primary focus of the film was the Franco-American community within Lowell, known as Le P’tit Canada, and its culture, with an emphasis on its folk songs. Throughout the film, the majority of which was in Québecois / Nouvelle-Angleterre French with English subtitles, the people interviewed sang their songs in the style known as chanson-et-réponse, “song and response” being the literal translation. This style is characterized by a main singer singing the storytelling verses with the listeners singing the chorus sections. It’s a very interactive, communal type of singing which hearkens back to the 1600s and earlier.
One cannot discuss Lowell, Massachusetts and its Franco-American community without mentioning the brick textile mills which provided the jobs for this immigrant community. Even in the 70s, with the majority of mills shut down and the Franco-Americans dispersing to surrounding neighborhoods and towns, there was still a remnant living and operating within the old borders. However, due to social and economic pressures, and a ghastly, heavy-handed urban renewal project undertaken in 1965-1967, by the time of the filming of this movie, Lowell’s P’tit Canada was already dying. But in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Lowell’s Franco-American community was a vibrant one, with lots of singing and party-making. The Lowellians in the movie spoke of how they would be singing and dancing well into the wee hours of Sunday morning, only to go to church later with hardly any sleep in between. Different homes in different tenement blocks would host. Families would empty bedrooms or living rooms of furniture, carrying it all to either the basement or a neighbor’s apartment, and prepare their homes for the evening’s festivities, filled with food and wine and beer and song and dance. If one walked down Moody Street, as the stories told, one could hear music and song and laughter emanating from one tenement block after another. These were the days before radio and television and the Internet. These were the days of community.
At the height of the immigration, Lowell was receiving approximately 1000 French-Canadians per month, 12,000 per year over the course of decades. In the film, the estimate was given that one-third to one-half of the French population of Québec migrated to the United States, mainly New England and mainly the textile cities of Lowell, Lawrence, Woonsocket, Providence and Manchester. It was a migration epic in scale and it tore the greater Québecois family nearly in half. At the time, the Canadian governmental response was a sorry one: “Let the rabble go.”
As I detailed in my previous blog post, “Emigration Stories”, if my own history is indicative of the general state of things, most of the folks who did emigrate to the United States were trying to find economic security. In short, they were poor. The farms which were productive were already owned and operating, passed down from father to eldest son per inheritance laws of the times. That left the remainder of large families with little to no prospects. My own ancestry is riddled with journaliers, “day laborers”. As with contemporary immigrants, there was a large pool of people who could work, who wanted to work, but with little opportunity where they lived. And so, they moved to where the work was, the textile mills of New England. While the shift from rural, bucolic life to an industrial one shared with people speaking different languages and religious customs was difficult, the community did what immigration communities often do. They banded together. They worked together. They sang together. They held on to what traditions they could as strangers in a strange land.
But, to those who remained in Québec, particularly those with voices to be heard, it was a lesser half who left. They were poor, who cares? They’ll be someone else’s problem. As it was then, as it is today. It is a stance that did not age well, thanks to the hard-working folks who toiled in those mills, quite often in very difficult conditions. And due to those hard-working ancestors, the following generations, such as myself, reaped the benefits.
My father, who worked as an electronics technician at Western Electric in North Andover can tell you of a conversation he had with his boss, a man named Al Savoy. One day, the two were talking in Al’s office. My father asked him where he’d been all day and Al’s reply was, “I’ve been talking with upper management. They’re accusing me again of only hiring French Canadians.” My dad asked him, “Do you?” The answer, “Well, yes, but I’m not going to admit it to them.” Why only French Canadians? “Because they don’t complain about the work they’re assigned and they get the job done.” Voila. The rabble had worth after all.
Tears of the Past
There was a discussion panel and Q&A session after the film was presented. Most of the people in the audience hailed from Le P’tit Canada and three of the members of the panel were relatives of the people interviewed in the film. The fourth was a professor of history with a specialty of Lowell history.
While the discussion led with the songs and music and neighborhood memories, it didn’t take long to bring up the Northern Canal Zone project, one of the worst examples of eminent domain, urban renewal and a particularly dark moment in Lowell history. An excellent account and be found here, but, to summarize: in 1965, ninety-six acres of tenement neighborhoods, containing 325 buildings and 2500 inhabitants in Le P’tit Canada were claimed as part of eminent domain and leveled, earmarked for a redevelopment that never materialized. As a child, I only remember endless parking lots and pavement and emptiness. During the claiming of the land, the inhabitants were given token payments, barely enough to afford housing elsewhere, and given short notice to move. In the meantime, until such time as their block was slated for destruction, they had to witness the destruction coming for them, street by street. Buildings which were the beating heart of those early communities, containing echoes of chanson-et-réponse, were collapsed one by one by the wrecking ball and set aflame. You could hear the bitterness from the audience during the Q&A, most of whom were young adults or children during those times.
My family was not in Le P’tit Canada during that time. The Guerins and Roberts had already moved across the Merrimack in the years prior. We were already being assimilated into the greater American culture.
One topic that came up, both in the film and discussion, was the lack of French spoken by the younger generation. One of the older gentlemen in the audience chalked it up to parental laziness, blaming the younger generation as one does as one gets older. An elderly woman, however, expressed a painful truth. Many households stopped speaking French so that the children could learn English and get better jobs, to not be tied to the textile mills. In a broken voice, she described how her mother’s expression would light up when she was able to speak French with visitors, but, apart from that, maintained an English-speaking household for the children and their future. It was a major cultural sacrifice that bore bittersweet fruit.
As my extended family had left Le P’tit Canada, the transition to English was made not out of dedicated sacrifice but out of circumstance. The social circles that my parents worked and lived in were not Franco-centric. The shift to English was inevitable. However, when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts removed the language exemption from French parochial schools, forcing them to teach in English, many Franco-Americans stopped speaking French in the home in order to help their children with their education. For some, it was a gradual change. For others, it was more abrupt. Given my mother’s difficulty in switching to an English education when she transferred to Lowell High School, a difficulty which led to her dropping out of high school to take a job in her aunt’s beauty salon, it was an easier decision for her. She knew the language difficulties; she experienced them and she was not going to have her sons suffer the same way.
All told, I took ten years of French classes in school. I never really used it, except for one conversation with an elderly gentleman in a lobby of Le Château Frontenac in 1980. As I was embarking on a career in computer software and its series of languages, I gave up on French. I didn’t need it and it was the class I struggled the most with. Knowing what I know now, it’s a decision I regret at this stage of my life. However, with my newfound genealogy hobby and trips up to the “old country”, my interest is rekindled.
Tout n’est pas perdu. Il y a demain toujours.