The French term pure laine (lit.'pure wool' or 'genuine', often translated as 'old stock' or 'dyed-in-the-wool'), refers to Québécois people of full French Canadian ancestry, meaning those descended from the original settlers of New France who arrived during the 17th and 18th centuries.[1][2] Terms with a similar meaning include de souche (of the base of the tree, or root)[3] and old stock as in "Old Stock Canadians".[4]
Samuel de Champlain was a French explorer who established the earliest French settlements in what is now Quebec.
Many French-Canadians are able to trace their ancestry back to the original settlers from France— a number are descended from mixed marriages between the French, Scottish and Irish settlers.[5] Unions sharing Roman Catholic faith were approved by the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec. Many English emigrants in the region, especially after 1763 when Quebec was ceded to Britain, were ultimately assimilated into Francophone culture.
The term is associated with nativism and ethnic nationalism in Quebec, and its usage has been criticized for excluding immigrants from Québécois identity and culture.[6][7]
The King's Daughters (les filles du roi) were among the first French women to settle in New France, becoming the ancestors of many claiming pure laine ancestry.
The genealogy of the pure laine – dating back to original settlers of New France in the seventeenth century – has been the subject of detailed research.[8][9] Prior to 1663 the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal recruited women to come to Montreal, then known as Ville-Marie.[10]: 8 King Louis XIV – following the advice of Jean Talon, Intendant of New France – sponsored about 800 female immigrants the King's Daughters or les filles du Roi to increase the number of marriages and therefore the population of New France.[11][12] The Sisters of Notre-Dame facilitated their settling in Ville-Marie. In his 1992 PhD dissertation Yves Landry listed 770 of the approximately 800 by name.[8]
From the seventeenth century into the twentieth century, French Canadians lived in relative geographic and linguistic isolation.[13] Their "settlements, internal migrations, and natural population increase" were well-documented[13] with "3 million records covering the whole province of Quebec over four centuries."[14] By 2015 "extended pedigrees of up to 17 generations" were constructed from "a sample of present-day individuals."[14] In an article published in 2001 in the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, McGill University professor Charles R. Scriver, observed there is "important evidence of social transmission of demographic behavior [sic] that contributed to effective family size and population structure."[13] Founder populations, like the descendants of the early French immigrants, have an important role in the study of genetic diseases.[14][15] With an unusually high prevalence of genetic disorders in the subpopulations of Quebec, they became the subject of human genetics research.[13] Clusters of hereditary disorders in eastern Quebec in the twentieth century were traced to immigrants from Perche, France who arrived in the seventeenth century.
Catholic priest and historian Lionel Groulx (1878–1967) was the key figure behind the rise of Quebec nationalism which stressed "territoriality and the use of the Quebec state" in the first half of the twentieth century. Jean Éthier-Blais claimed that among Quebec nationalist intellectuals the twentieth century was Groulx century — "le siècle de l'abbé Groulx."[16] Groulx's best-known novel L'Appel de la race, challenged the narrative surrounding French-English relationships in Quebec and revisited the history of Canada from a French Canadian perspective.[17] In the 1920s following the publication of this novel, French Canadian nationalism "espoused the thought of Lionel Groulx", retained Catholicism and abandoned Henri Bourassa's pan-Canadian perspective.[16] In 1998, Xavier Gélinas, then-Curator at the Canadian Museum of History (French: Musée canadien de l’histoire), then known as the Canadian Museum of Civilization, presented a talk at a conference on Quebec history in which he argued that even in the 1980s Groulxism remained as an important ideology among Quebecois.[16] Groulx's work is considered to be a contributing factor to the Quiet Revolution in 1960 even though the Quebec nationalism of the révolution tranquille was "a-religious and ethnically pluralistic."[16] Expressions such as Canadiens français pure laine, Québécois pure laine or révolution tranquille became powerful evocative symbols charged with ideology and identity.[18]: 18 Gélinas challenged the thesis of French Canadian historian Esther Delisle whom he described as pure laine. Delisle's controversial PhD political science dissertation and the book entitled The Traitor and the Jew based on her thesis,[19][20] argued that Groulx and the newspaper Le Devoir were antisemitic and supported fascism.[16]
Controversy and DebateEdit
The use of pure laine was brought to the forefront following its controversial usage in the front-page article by Jan Wong in Canada's nationally distributed newspaper, The Globe and Mail on September 16, 2006, three days after the shooting at Dawson College in Montreal.[21] In her article entitled "Get under the desk," Wong argued that the frequent and historic use of the term pure laine revealed a uniquely Québécois brand of racism. "Elsewhere, to talk of racial 'purity' is repugnant. Not in Quebec." Furthermore, she suggested that the school shootings might have been related to the fact that the perpetrators were not old-stock French Québécois and they had been alienated by a Quebec society concerned with "racial purity."[22][23][24][25]
Wong's accusations were denounced by National Post journalist, Barbara Kay, then-Premier Jean Charest and the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste (SSJB). SSJB President Jean Dorion declared "There is no obsession for racial purity in Quebec, definitely not. The expression 'pure laine' is absolutely obsolete."[25]
However the term was still frequently used in both English and French media.[26][27][28] And in 2007, the Taylor-Bouchard Commission included the recommendation that the use of the expression "Québécois de souche" be ended and replaced with the term "Quebecers of French-Canadian origin."[29] The Commission investigated reasonable accommodation of immigrants into Quebec society.
According to David Austin, author of Fear of a Black Nation (2013), which was based on Austin's two decades of inquiry including interviews and international archival research,[3]
Québecois has conventionally been used to signify the descendants of Québec settlers from France, the majority habitants of the province, who are otherwise referred to as pure laine (pure wool) or Québécois de souche (of the base of the tree, or root). However, the changing face of Québec's increasingly diverse population challenges the privileged place of those French descendants and calls for a more inclusive notion of what it means to be Québécois or a Quebecer.
The English-Canadian equivalent to pure laine is "old stock", referring to the descendants of those original settlers of British Canada and French Canada who immigrated in the 17th and 18th centuries. Liberal MP Stéphane Dion used the term in 2014: "If I'm fishing with a friend on a magnificent lake in the Laurentians ... and I see a small boat in the distance ... usually it's two middle-aged old-stock French-Canadians or English-Canadians."[30]
^Hopper, Tristin (20 September 2015). "Taking stock of 'old stock Canadians': Stephen Harper called a 'racist' after remark during debate". National Post. Toronto. Retrieved 28 January 2017. "pure laine" (pure wool), a term to describe someone whose lineage is 100 per cent derived from New France settlers.
^ abFear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal. Toronto: Between the Lines. 2013. p. 255. ISBN9781771130103.
^Tu Thanh Ha (13 March 2015). "Of wool and old stocks: When is a Québécois not a Québécois?". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2 December 2015.
^"Québec History". Québec City Tourism. Retrieved 2 December 2015.
^Agnew, Vijay (2005-01-01). Diaspora, Memory and Identity: A Search for Home. University of Toronto Press. p. 129. ISBN978-0-8020-9374-5. The term pure laine ('old stock', literally 'pure wool') is sometimes taken to be synonymous with Québécois, a term ... and belonging in recent years in Quebec; many find the idea and its linking with Québécois identity and culture to be racist
^Kelly, Jennifer (1998). Under the Gaze: Learning to be Black in White Society. Fernwood Pub. p. 51. ISBN978-1-895686-21-0. So we find that this new racism is produced as part of a general political move that aligns "race" with national and cultural ... a challenge that posits "ethnic groups" as interlopers—not the "pure laine"—who have no right to participate.
^ abLandry, Yves (1992). Orphelines en France, pionnieres au Canada, les filles du Roi au XVIIe siecle (Thesis). Montreal.
^Haines, Michael R.; Steckel, Richard H. (15 August 2000). A Population History of North America. Cambridge University Press. p. 736. ISBN0521496667.
^Beaudoin, Marie-Louise; Sévigny, Jeannine (1996). "Les premières et les filles du roi à Ville-Marie". Montreal: Maison Saint-Gabriel. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Lanctot, Gustave (1952). "Filles de joie ou filles du roi". Montreal: Les Éditions Chantecler Ltée. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Landry, Yves (1992). "Orphelines en France pionnières au Canada: Les filles du roi au XVIIe siècle". Montreal: Leméac Éditeur Inc. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^ abcdScriver, Charles R. (September 2001). "Human Genetics: Lessons from Quebec Populations". Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics. 2: 69–101. doi:10.1146/annurev.genom.2.1.69. PMID 11701644.
^ abcGauvin, H.; Lefebvre, J. F.; Moreau, C.; Lavoie, E. M.; Labuda, D.; Vézina, H.; Roy-Gagnon, M. (May 2015). "GENLIB: an R package for the analysis of genealogical data". BMC Bioinformatics. 16 (160): 160. doi:10.1186/s12859-015-0581-5. PMC4431039. PMID 25971991.
^de Braekeleer, Marc; Dao, To-Nga (April 1994). "Hereditary Disorders in the French Canadian Population of Québec. II. Contribution of Perche". Human Biology. Wayne State University Press. 66 (2): 225–249. JSTOR 41464974. PMID 8194845.
^ abcdeGélinas, Xavier (8 October 1998). Notes on Anti-Semitism Among Quebec Nationalists, 1920-1970: Methodological Failings, Distorted Conclusions. Studies in Quebec History: Seminar Series of the Department of History of Queen's University. Gatineau, Quebec. Retrieved 22 September 2015.
^Groulx, Lionel (1922). L'Appel de la race. Montréal: L'Action française. p. 278. ISBN9782762138887.
^Mathieu, Jacques; Lacoursière, Jacques (1991). Les mémoires québécoises. ISBN2-7637-7229-3.
^Delisle, Esther (1998). Myths, Memories & Lies: Quebec's Intelligentsia and the Fascist Temptation, 1939-1960 (Essais sur l'imprégnation fasciste au Québec). ISBN1-55207-008-5.
^Wong, Jan (September 16, 2006). "Get under the desk". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved September 20, 2006.[permanent dead link]
^"Charest seeks Globe apology over notion culture a factor in school shootings", Canadian Press via The Gazette, September 19, 2006, retrieved September 20, 2006
^Robitaille, Antoine (September 19, 2006), "Les pures laines coupables?", La Presse, retrieved 20 September 2015
^Vastel, Michel (18 September 2006), "Le racisme sournois du Globe & Mail", L'actualité blog
^ ab, Canadian Press via The Gazette, September 19, 2006, archived from the original on March 11, 2007, retrieved September 20, 2006
^Ottawa, The (March 20, 2007). . Canada.com. Archived from the original on October 25, 2012. Retrieved 2010-01-02.
^. Canada.com. September 23, 2006. Archived from the original on October 25, 2012. Retrieved 2010-01-02.
^Katia Gagnon : La commission Bouchard-Taylor... à l'envers | Actualités | Cyberpresse
^"Leaked accommodation commission report sparks fury in Quebec". CBC News. Montreal. May 19, 2008. Retrieved 20 September 2015.
^"Harper's 'old-stock Canadians' line is part deliberate strategy: pollster". CBC News. CBC. 18 September 2015. Retrieved 26 January 2017.
Further readingEdit
Taras Grescoe. Sacre Blues: An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec. Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 2004. ISBN1-55199-081-4
Look up pure laine in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
October 21, 2023
pure, laine, main, article, stock, canadians, neutrality, this, article, disputed, relevant, discussion, found, talk, page, please, remove, this, message, until, conditions, 2021, learn, when, remove, this, template, message, french, term, pure, laine, pure, w. Main article Old Stock Canadians The neutrality of this article is disputed Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met May 2021 Learn how and when to remove this template message The French term pure laine lit pure wool or genuine often translated as old stock or dyed in the wool refers to Quebecois people of full French Canadian ancestry meaning those descended from the original settlers of New France who arrived during the 17th and 18th centuries 1 2 Terms with a similar meaning include de souche of the base of the tree or root 3 and old stock as in Old Stock Canadians 4 Samuel de Champlain was a French explorer who established the earliest French settlements in what is now Quebec Many French Canadians are able to trace their ancestry back to the original settlers from France a number are descended from mixed marriages between the French Scottish and Irish settlers 5 Unions sharing Roman Catholic faith were approved by the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec Many English emigrants in the region especially after 1763 when Quebec was ceded to Britain were ultimately assimilated into Francophone culture The term is associated with nativism and ethnic nationalism in Quebec and its usage has been criticized for excluding immigrants from Quebecois identity and culture 6 7 Contents 1 History 2 Controversy and Debate 3 Similar terms in English 3 1 Old stock Canadians 4 See also 5 References 6 Further readingHistory Edit nbsp The King s Daughters les filles du roi were among the first French women to settle in New France becoming the ancestors of many claiming pure laine ancestry The genealogy of the pure laine dating back to original settlers of New France in the seventeenth century has been the subject of detailed research 8 9 Prior to 1663 the Societe Notre Dame de Montreal recruited women to come to Montreal then known as Ville Marie 10 8 King Louis XIV following the advice of Jean Talon Intendant of New France sponsored about 800 female immigrants the King s Daughters or les filles du Roi to increase the number of marriages and therefore the population of New France 11 12 The Sisters of Notre Dame facilitated their settling in Ville Marie In his 1992 PhD dissertation Yves Landry listed 770 of the approximately 800 by name 8 From the seventeenth century into the twentieth century French Canadians lived in relative geographic and linguistic isolation 13 Their settlements internal migrations and natural population increase were well documented 13 with 3 million records covering the whole province of Quebec over four centuries 14 By 2015 extended pedigrees of up to 17 generations were constructed from a sample of present day individuals 14 In an article published in 2001 in the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics McGill University professor Charles R Scriver observed there is important evidence of social transmission of demographic behavior sic that contributed to effective family size and population structure 13 Founder populations like the descendants of the early French immigrants have an important role in the study of genetic diseases 14 15 With an unusually high prevalence of genetic disorders in the subpopulations of Quebec they became the subject of human genetics research 13 Clusters of hereditary disorders in eastern Quebec in the twentieth century were traced to immigrants from Perche France who arrived in the seventeenth century Catholic priest and historian Lionel Groulx 1878 1967 was the key figure behind the rise of Quebec nationalism which stressed territoriality and the use of the Quebec state in the first half of the twentieth century Jean Ethier Blais claimed that among Quebec nationalist intellectuals the twentieth century was Groulx century le siecle de l abbe Groulx 16 Groulx s best known novel L Appel de la race challenged the narrative surrounding French English relationships in Quebec and revisited the history of Canada from a French Canadian perspective 17 In the 1920s following the publication of this novel French Canadian nationalism espoused the thought of Lionel Groulx retained Catholicism and abandoned Henri Bourassa s pan Canadian perspective 16 In 1998 Xavier Gelinas then Curator at the Canadian Museum of History French Musee canadien de l histoire then known as the Canadian Museum of Civilization presented a talk at a conference on Quebec history in which he argued that even in the 1980s Groulxism remained as an important ideology among Quebecois 16 Groulx s work is considered to be a contributing factor to the Quiet Revolution in 1960 even though the Quebec nationalism of the revolution tranquille was a religious and ethnically pluralistic 16 Expressions such as Canadiens francais pure laine Quebecois pure laine or revolution tranquille became powerful evocative symbols charged with ideology and identity 18 18 Gelinas challenged the thesis of French Canadian historian Esther Delisle whom he described as pure laine Delisle s controversial PhD political science dissertation and the book entitled The Traitor and the Jew based on her thesis 19 20 argued that Groulx and the newspaper Le Devoir were antisemitic and supported fascism 16 Controversy and Debate EditThe use of pure laine was brought to the forefront following its controversial usage in the front page article by Jan Wong in Canada s nationally distributed newspaper The Globe and Mail on September 16 2006 three days after the shooting at Dawson College in Montreal 21 In her article entitled Get under the desk Wong argued that the frequent and historic use of the term pure laine revealed a uniquely Quebecois brand of racism Elsewhere to talk of racial purity is repugnant Not in Quebec Furthermore she suggested that the school shootings might have been related to the fact that the perpetrators were not old stock French Quebecois and they had been alienated by a Quebec society concerned with racial purity 22 23 24 25 Wong s accusations were denounced by National Post journalist Barbara Kay then Premier Jean Charest and the Societe Saint Jean Baptiste SSJB SSJB President Jean Dorion declared There is no obsession for racial purity in Quebec definitely not The expression pure laine is absolutely obsolete 25 However the term was still frequently used in both English and French media 26 27 28 And in 2007 the Taylor Bouchard Commission included the recommendation that the use of the expression Quebecois de souche be ended and replaced with the term Quebecers of French Canadian origin 29 The Commission investigated reasonable accommodation of immigrants into Quebec society According to David Austin author of Fear of a Black Nation 2013 which was based on Austin s two decades of inquiry including interviews and international archival research 3 Quebecois has conventionally been used to signify the descendants of Quebec settlers from France the majority habitants of the province who are otherwise referred to as pure laine pure wool or Quebecois de souche of the base of the tree or root However the changing face of Quebec s increasingly diverse population challenges the privileged place of those French descendants and calls for a more inclusive notion of what it means to be Quebecois or a Quebecer Similar terms in English EditOld stock Canadians Edit Main article Old Stock Canadians The English Canadian equivalent to pure laine is old stock referring to the descendants of those original settlers of British Canada and French Canada who immigrated in the 17th and 18th centuries Liberal MP Stephane Dion used the term in 2014 If I m fishing with a friend on a magnificent lake in the Laurentians and I see a small boat in the distance usually it s two middle aged old stock French Canadians or English Canadians 30 See also EditQuebecois people Pur et durReferences Edit pure laine Oxford English Dictionary Online ed Oxford University Press Subscription or participating institution membership required Hopper Tristin 20 September 2015 Taking stock of old stock Canadians Stephen Harper called a racist after remark during debate National Post Toronto Retrieved 28 January 2017 pure laine pure wool a term to describe someone whose lineage is 100 per cent derived from New France settlers a b Fear of a Black Nation Race Sex and Security in Sixties Montreal Toronto Between the Lines 2013 p 255 ISBN 9781771130103 Tu Thanh Ha 13 March 2015 Of wool and old stocks When is a Quebecois not a Quebecois The Globe and Mail Retrieved 2 December 2015 Quebec History Quebec City Tourism Retrieved 2 December 2015 Agnew Vijay 2005 01 01 Diaspora Memory and Identity A Search for Home University of Toronto Press p 129 ISBN 978 0 8020 9374 5 The term pure laine old stock literally pure wool is sometimes taken to be synonymous with Quebecois a term and belonging in recent years in Quebec many find the idea and its linking with Quebecois identity and culture to be racist Kelly Jennifer 1998 Under the Gaze Learning to be Black in White Society Fernwood Pub p 51 ISBN 978 1 895686 21 0 So we find that this new racism is produced as part of a general political move that aligns race with national and cultural a challenge that posits ethnic groups as interlopers not the pure laine who have no right to participate a b Landry Yves 1992 Orphelines en France pionnieres au Canada les filles du Roi au XVIIe siecle Thesis Montreal Haines Michael R Steckel Richard H 15 August 2000 A Population History of North America Cambridge University Press p 736 ISBN 0521496667 Beaudoin Marie Louise Sevigny Jeannine 1996 Les premieres et les filles du roi a Ville Marie Montreal Maison Saint Gabriel a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help Lanctot Gustave 1952 Filles de joie ou filles du roi Montreal Les Editions Chantecler Ltee a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help Landry Yves 1992 Orphelines en France pionnieres au Canada Les filles du roi au XVIIe siecle Montreal Lemeac Editeur Inc a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help a b c d Scriver Charles R September 2001 Human Genetics Lessons from Quebec Populations Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 2 69 101 doi 10 1146 annurev genom 2 1 69 PMID 11701644 a b c Gauvin H Lefebvre J F Moreau C Lavoie E M Labuda D Vezina H Roy Gagnon M May 2015 GENLIB an R package for the analysis of genealogical data BMC Bioinformatics 16 160 160 doi 10 1186 s12859 015 0581 5 PMC 4431039 PMID 25971991 de Braekeleer Marc Dao To Nga April 1994 Hereditary Disorders in the French Canadian Population of Quebec II Contribution of Perche Human Biology Wayne State University Press 66 2 225 249 JSTOR 41464974 PMID 8194845 a b c d e Gelinas Xavier 8 October 1998 Notes on Anti Semitism Among Quebec Nationalists 1920 1970 Methodological Failings Distorted Conclusions Studies in Quebec History Seminar Series of the Department of History of Queen s University Gatineau Quebec Retrieved 22 September 2015 Groulx Lionel 1922 L Appel de la race Montreal L Action francaise p 278 ISBN 9782762138887 Mathieu Jacques Lacoursiere Jacques 1991 Les memoires quebecoises ISBN 2 7637 7229 3 Delisle Esther 1993 The Traitor and the Jew Anti Semitism and the Delirium of Extremist Right Wing Nationalism in French Canada from 1929 1939 Antisemitisme et nationalisme d extreme droite dans la province de Quebec 1929 1939 ISBN 1 895854 01 6 Delisle Esther 1998 Myths Memories amp Lies Quebec s Intelligentsia and the Fascist Temptation 1939 1960 Essais sur l impregnation fasciste au Quebec ISBN 1 55207 008 5 Wong Jan September 16 2006 Get under the desk The Globe and Mail Retrieved September 20 2006 permanent dead link Charest seeks Globe apology over notion culture a factor in school shootings Canadian Press via The Gazette September 19 2006 retrieved September 20 2006 Robitaille Antoine September 19 2006 Les pures laines coupables La Presse retrieved 20 September 2015 Vastel Michel 18 September 2006 Le racisme sournois du Globe amp Mail L actualite blog a b Charest seeks Globe apology over notion culture a factor in school shootings Canadian Press via The Gazette September 19 2006 archived from the original on March 11 2007 retrieved September 20 2006 Ottawa The March 20 2007 Don t faint I m siding with a separatist Canada com Archived from the original on October 25 2012 Retrieved 2010 01 02 L affaire Wong becomes talk of Quebec Canada com September 23 2006 Archived from the original on October 25 2012 Retrieved 2010 01 02 Katia Gagnon La commission Bouchard Taylor a l envers Actualites Cyberpresse Leaked accommodation commission report sparks fury in Quebec CBC News Montreal May 19 2008 Retrieved 20 September 2015 Harper s old stock Canadians line is part deliberate strategy pollster CBC News CBC 18 September 2015 Retrieved 26 January 2017 Further reading EditTaras Grescoe Sacre Blues An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec Macfarlane Walter amp Ross 2004 ISBN 1 55199 081 4 nbsp Look up pure laine in Wiktionary the free dictionary Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Pure laine amp oldid 1176432493, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
