Honoré Beaugrand was a soldier in the French Army, volunteering at seventeen years of age to help in the conquest of Mexico, a colonial war. He was a world traveler, journalist, novelist, author of folk tales, editor, and publisher of several newspapers. He was mayor of Montreal from 1885 to 1887. As mayor, he faced two major problems—floods in spring and a smallpox epidemic in the summer. In both, he was widely praised for his strong leadership. He was subjected to a litany of calumny about his membership in the Freemasons, his anti-clericalism, his republicanism (advocating the American form of government), his francophilia. However, the truth is that Beaugrand was not a radical in politics in spite of his protestations otherwise. There is some controversy about his religious beliefs, but probably, on balance, he was not a believer in the church. He wanted to be buried as Papineau and Doutre, without final rites and ceremony. Beaugrand was a great traveler, visiting the world over. He reported his travels in his newspaper that demonstrated his wide interest in the history, the cultural, and the economic development of the countries visited. Early on, he began a literary career, recounting his experience in Mexico and in Fall River. His novel, Jeanne la fileuse, was the first social novel of French America. He wrote about native as well as French Canadian folklore, Indian-written sign languages, industry, sociology, pottery, and anthropology of the numerous places he visited.

In the decade beginning with the hanging of Louis Riel in 1885, a series of radical and religious conflicts shook Canada, culminating in the Manitoba school crisis of the 1890s. By 1896, the focal point of the controversy was remedialism, the attempt to have Roman Catholic school privileges in Manitoba restored by federal action against the provincial government. The struggle over remedialism involved nearly every aspect of Canada's internal history – Conservative-Liberal, federal-provincial, east-west, French-English, Catholic-Protestant, church-state. But, illustrating as it does the complexity and sensitivity of the ground where politics and religion meet, the election of 1896 has remained particularly fascinating for the degree to which Roman Catholic church authorities, above all in Quebec, entered the political process and were involved in the struggle to power of Wilfrid Laurier. The school question and the struggle over remedialism present an illuminating case study of complex relations at a formative period in Canadian history. This book focuses on the scene behind the scene, seeking in particular to discover how Quebeckers, civil and ecclesiastical, were reacting to a key problem of French and Catholic rights outside Quebec. There is a strong emphasis on personal correspondence, rather than on published statements, and the author has marshalled a wide range of material that has never been fully exploited. The story is told chronologically in order to assess the impact of major events as it developed. Many of the classic questions of church-state relations are brought into focus. This is a story often of fear, prejudice, and ignorance, but it is also a story of strength and resilience, principle and faith. Uniquely Canadian, it tells us something important about the shift from the Canada of Macdonald to the Canada of Laurier.

This second of three volumes in theHistory of the Book in Canada demonstrates the same research and editorial standards established with Volume One by book history specialists from across the nation.

During the last third of the nineteenth century a fierce rivalry among party 'organs, ' sectarian dailies, upstart 'people's journals, ' and revamped 'quality' papers fashioned a popular journalism for a large, chiefly urban audience in Canada. By the end of the 1890s, the number of daily and weekly editions of these newspapers exceeded the count of Canadian families. The country's first mass medium has arrived. Professor Rutherford charts the growth of the daily press, describing personalities and events. He surveys the cultural prerequisites for mass communication -- the growth of the city, of urban publics, and of mass literacy -- and looks at the personnel, business routines, and worries of the new industry, showing how the news and views, ads and entertainment of the press changed as publishers competed for increased circulation. He also analyses the mythologies purveyed by the popular press across Canada, defines the press's connection with the 'establishment, ' and shows how daily papers suited the libertarian model of a 'free press.' This volume is a novel addition to our literature on nation building, revealing the significant role played by the popular press in the making of Victorian society and the shaping of the twentieth century.

Quebec Since 1800: Selected Readings brings together recent and classic scholarship on the evolution of Quebec society in the past two hundred years. Articles deal not just with political history but also illuminate issues related to religion, education, economics, labour concerns, linguistics, and the role of women. A number of articles appear in translation for the first time in this book and represent recent scholarship by the new generation of Quebec historians.Editor Michael Behiels has done a masterful job of collecting diverse but linked articles and has tied them together in his unit introductions and his overall introduction. Reading lists point the way to accessible related books and articles.For anyone interested in the evolution of Quebec, and, indeed the future of Canada, Quebec Since 1800 is a must reading.

French Connections examines how the movement of people, ideas, and social practices contributed to the complex processes and negotiations involved in being and becoming French in North America and the Atlantic World between the years 1600 and 1875. Engaging a wide range of topics, from religious and diplomatic performance to labor migration, racialization, and both imagined and real conceptualizations of “Frenchness” and “Frenchification,” this volume argues that cultural mobility was fundamental to the development of French colonial societies and the collective identities they housed. Cases of cultural formation and dislocation in places as diverse as Quebec, the Illinois Country, Detroit, Haiti, Acadia, New England, and France itself demonstrate the broad variability of French cultural mobility that took place throughout this massive geographical space. Nevertheless, these communities shared the same cultural root in the midst of socially and politically fluid landscapes, where cultural mobility came to define, and indeed sustain, communal and individual identities in French North America and the Atlantic World. Drawing on innovative new scholarship on Louisiana and New Orleans, the editors and contributors to French Connections look to refocus the conversation surrounding French colonial interconnectivity by thinking about mobility as a constitutive condition of culture; from this perspective, separate “spheres” of French colonial culture merge to reveal a broader, more cohesive cultural world. The comprehensive scope of this collection will attract scholars of French North America, early American history, Atlantic World history, Caribbean studies, Canadian studies, and frontier studies. With essays from established, award-winning scholars such as Brett Rushforth, Leslie Choquette, Jay Gitlin, and Christopher Hodson as well as from new, progressive thinkers such as Mairi Cowan, William Brown, Karen L. Marrero, and Robert D. Taber, French Connections promises to generate interest and value across an extensive and diverse range of concentrations.

In considering the pattern of emigration in the context of migration history, Choquette shows that, in many ways, the movement toward Canada occurred as a by-product of other, perennial movements, such as the rural exodus or interurban labor migrations. Overall, emigrants to Canada belonged to an outwardly turned and mobile sector of French society, and their migration took place during a phase of vigorous Atlantic expansion. They crossed the ocean to establish a subsistence economy and peasant society, traces of which lingered on into the twentieth century.