(Edward McQuarrie wrote this review): Don’t be fooled by the surname—on my mother’s side, it’s Daniau and Beaudoin, Forget and Magnan, origins in Montreal and Three Rivers. These Canadien grandparents of mine were born in New England from great grandparents immigrating in the 1880s. I grew up in the Lowell area.
I’ve given David Vermette’s book five stars because if you have French Canadian ancestors in New England, and if you have some tolerance for archival history, then you can certainly benefit from reading this book.
Now I’ll proceed to add credibility to my review by also touching on flaws and imperfections in Vermette’s book, considered as a book—that (today) increasingly peculiar form of intellectual endeavor. I write as a retired academic in the social sciences, and as the author of several books of my own.
Vermette is neither a professional journalist nor an academic—the source of most non-fiction books of this ilk. He is a practicing genealogist, a smart and knowledgeable man, conversant with the scholarly literature, immersed in the census archives, and passionate in his pursuit of ancestry and origins. He also knows how to do archival research with original sources. If you are researching your own family’s French-Canadian origins his footnotes will be invaluable. You should definitely buy this book.
If you are only half French-Canadian, as me, or have only a more general interest in ethnic history, or in New England history, then the book is less successful. A stronger editorial hand would have benefitted Mr. Vermette. The book goes on a long vendetta against Yankee capitalists (the Cabots), when these are simply the upper class of their day, uniformly oppressive against all non-WASPs. No news there.
In later chapters, detailed descriptions of the WASP ancestry of subsequent factory owners also do not advance the narrative. Yah, the well-off, bolstered by family position, have always exploited those lacking social position who could in some way be Othered, because of religion or language. And the well-off of that era in that region (New England) were WASPs. Again, not news. Capital oppresses Labor. Yah, knew that. But the fact that French Canadians could so readily be Othered in the New England of a century ago—that is interesting.
Had Mr. Vermette been trained as a journalist, there would be much stronger narratives of the individual suffering endured by mill workers, barely sampled here. Had he been trained as an economic or social historian, there would be more sustained arguments from the data (he makes an important start on such analyses in his discussion of French Canadian socio-economic status, but does not bring this discussion to the fruition expected of a practicing historian or social scientist).
But then again: did you know the Ku Klux Klan had tens of thousands of members in New England in the early 1920s? Me neither. And who did they go after, in the absence of much of an African-American or Jewish population in New England? Yah, French Canadians. That was powerful for me to learn. It helped me understand some of my mother’s stories.
Do you apprehend how tightly “American” was tied to “Protestant” in the educated discourse of the last few decades of the 19th century? I’m a long lapsed Catholic, brought up in the French and Irish rites; but it was quite horrifying to read Vermette’s transcription of New York Times editorials, inveighing against Papist conspiracies and supposed Quebecois schemes for unifying New England with French Canada. The quotes he unearthed are as fevered and unfounded as the paranoia about Sharia law you can find on Fox News today.
Bonus: after reading Vermette, you’ll be able to use the word ultramontane in a sentence, and better appreciate the ground for Protestant accusations of papist conspiracy, and the widespread American dread of popery. Quite helpful in understanding the ideological sub-texts of 19th century American discourse.
Another great benefit of David Vermette’s book: you will never be able to read an account of today’s Hispanic immigration in the same light after reading his account of the treatment of French-Canadian immigrants a century ago. He takes a very light touch on the parallels, but they scream out from page after page.
Last, did you know that an American book by a founder of the Eugenics movement provided a key inspiration to Hitler? Me neither. It was alternately horrifying and amusing to discover from Vermette’s gloss that there was, in the America of the 1920s, a hierarchy within the “white race.” No surprise, French Canadians were judged not to be of the highest, Nordic-Anglo-Saxon rank. And, thundered the racists, if it were true that there was more than a little Native-American adulteration of these Canadiens, then maybe sterilization, or a disbarment of breeding, was in order.
That woke me up! I had been slumbering as a first-born male with a Scots-Irish surname, growing up in the idyllic suburbs of eastern Massachusetts in the 1950s, baby boomer heaven. I hadn’t realized that the Ku Klux Klan might have been burning crosses in front of my great-grandparents’ houses in the next town over …
So, Vermette’s book was an eye-opener, even to this well-educated New Englander, half French Canadian, long since departed for California. But I fear his desire to claim the mantle of victimhood for his ethnic group—that exalted 21st century status—leads him somewhat astray.
I remember, in the 1960s, how oppressive I perceived the Catholic upbringing of my French-Canadian forebears to be. I learned only later the woeful fate that befell one of my mother’s sisters, who got pregnant out of wedlock. The resulting family ostracism, and the forced adoption, blighted her life.
Vermette does a good job of rebutting WASP propaganda that French-Canadian immigrants were an atavistic survival of ancient-regime peasant culture. But in that defense, he misses how oppressive—by current baby boomer standards—their traditional Catholic culture could be. My grandmother was told she’d go blind if she attempted to read the bible for herself—a transparent effort by her Canadien priest to defend against that most Protestant of habits. I surmise the Catholicism of those French-Canadian immigrants did them no favors.
But the mantle of victimhood, to be claimed, requires that immigrants and their culture be blameless. There are too many false aspersions that continue to circulate about Canadiens; batting these away becomes the first priority once the path of advocacy is taken. And on that path, the benighted nature of some of the culture that French-Canadians brought with them cannot be seen. In short: more nuance on the ups and downs of the French-Canadian cultural heritage might have strengthened Vermette’s book.
Nonetheless, despite the book’s flaws, I stand by my five stars review. Read it and learn.
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