Concise History of Canada (9781139767033) by Conrad Margaret

Author:Conrad, Margaret
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr
Published: 2012-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Image 7.3. British immigrant children from Dr. Barnardo’s Homes arriving at the port of Saint John, New Brunswick. (By permission of Library and Archives Canada/Online MIKAN no. 3193366)

Most Canadian-born citizens eyed the newcomers with suspicion. For English-speaking Canadians, the tide of foreigners threatened the dominance of British culture and socially accepted behaviour. Reformers complained about the political values and drinking habits of immigrants, their treatment of women, and even wedding celebrations that seemed excessively exuberant. When a radical branch of the Doukhobors, known as Sons of Freedom, destroyed their property and conducted nude protest marches, shocked government officials tried to break up their community by demanding that the strict letter of the homestead law be observed. Schools were perceived as the most likely vehicle for inculcating Anglo-conformity, and successive waves of immigrant children endured the strict tutelage of teachers, most of them young women, who believed it was their duty to Canadianize their charges.

Francophones, meanwhile, were anxious about a changing demography that made them a smaller minority in the country. Instead of moving to the Prairies, which were increasingly dominated by English-speaking Protestants, francophones in Quebec either established new farms on the rocky settlement frontier of their province or slipped across the border to New England, where factory jobs were plentiful and a Franco-American community was in place to receive them. Nationalist spokesman Henri Bourassa, the grandson of Louis-Joseph Papineau, argued for a policy of bilingualism and biculturalism to ensure the survival of French culture in Canada, but this view was rejected by English- and French-speaking Canadians alike. Both sides of the linguistic divide, however, shared Bourassa’s concerns about the impact of the new industrial order on Canadian society.

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