Quebec emigration
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The Quebec diaspora consists of hundreds of thousands of people who left the Province of Quebec in Canada for the United States, Ontario and the Canadian prairies between 1840 and through the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Brought on by overpopulation living in rurual areas that could not be sustained under the seigneurial system of land tenance and exacerbated by any economic downturns, approximately 900,000 French Canadian residents left for the United States seeking work. About half of those are reported to have eventually returned to Quebec. 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. Some American towns and cities, notably the textile centers, are heavily Franco-Canadians, like Fall River, Somerset, and Lowell in Massachussets; Woonsocket in Rhode Island; and the border counties of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Also there is a sizeable Quebecois community in Minnesota and Michigan who began migrating there when this area was still part of New France.
The largest proportion of French-Canadians outside of Quebec trace their ancestry to Quebec (except in the Canadian Maritimes, which were settled by the Acadians.)
External link
- Franco-American history at Marianopolis College (http://www2.marianopolis.edu/quebechistory/frncdns/default.htm)