Customer Reviews

French Canadians in Michigan

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's really about time French-Americans with roots in Canada tell their stories and even toot their very historic trumpets. French history pre-dates the English settlements in colonial America. It's called "The French Fact". Thousands of French-Canadians can trace their family genealogies to the 1640s and even earlier. Many families even, rather easily, find their first ancestor's roots in medieval France because the history of the culture is so meticulously preserved through the accuracy of the Roman Catholic Church's directories of baptisms, marriages and deaths. Nevertheless, few Americans learn about French-Canadian culture. So, it's about time the descendents of French-Canadians tell their interesting and special stories. Thankfully, many French-Canadian families living in New England are telling their family stories; but now we learn the French-Canadian history and culture is proudly shared by others living in Michigan. Thanks to the research by John P. DuLong, a third generation French-Canadian whose family settled into the Michigan area, the stories of America's French-Canadians are literally tied together - Michigan's French-Americans are culturally similar to New England's "Franco-Americans". Moreover, it's not a parochial or regional history anymore. DuLong's history of Michigan's French-Canadians is a story New England's Franco-Americans will relate to. There's vintage photographs and even a tourtiere recipe (traditional pork pie, an icon of the French-Canadian culture). Furthermore, all French-Americans of Canadian descent will enjoy a well deserved sense of pride in reading French-Canadians in Michigan. As a side comment, it seems the writing of French history in North American suffered sort of an arrested state of development after Francis Parkman published his series in the late 1800s about the French in North America. A lot has happened since Parkman wrote his chronicles, largely transcribed from the Jesuit Relations documents written by French missionaries. DuLong's work on French-Canadians in Michigan might stir more interest in French-Canadian history. For the sake of a culture older than Plymouth, in Massachusetts, we need more of DuLong's writing to preserve the dwindling numbers of living memories of French-Canadians in America.

This is a very good, if very short, introduction to its topic. The work's brevity is the reason for granting only four stars, although the work's format is shared by other volumes in the "Discovering the Peoples of Michigan" series. The whole series is likely to be of interest to students of the history of the state, while individual volumes will whet the appetites of those interested in specific groups (likely because those groups are part of their own heritage).

The most valuable thing I learned from DuLong's book is that French Canadians came to Michigan in two waves. Not only did the French, spreading out from Canadian "New France", constitute the first European explorers and settlers of the state. There was also a wave of immigration from Quebec in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries drawn to the lumber and then automobile industries.

The compound "French Canadian" is used throughout to signify that those who started their North American adventure in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in French-speaking Canada quickly came to see themselves as distinct from the European French, including later (if few in number) immigrants who came directly from France. An interesting topic that DuLong just barely touches on is the relationship between the French Canadians in Michigan and those who remained in Quebec. The former found themselves in a different country following the French and Indian (or Seven Years) War and the War of American Independence. Those in Michigan were left to the three-fold contradiction of being true to their heritage, however conceived, being "good Americans", and maintaining contact, particularly with relatives, in Canada. A source of particular ambivalence has been the movement for Quebec's independence from Anglophone Canada.

This book is recommended to those primarily interested in history. For those whose interests are more directly genealogical, DuLong has written TRACING YOUR FRENCH ANCESTRY. I haven't read this, but given the author's role as president of the Detroit Chapter of the French Canadian Heritage Society of Michigan, and on the strength of the present book, I'm sure it's worth checking out.