The need of French-speaking minority groups to access information led to the creation of French-language dailies and weeklies as early as the 19th century. Many of these newspapers had a precarious, short-lived existence, but there were exceptions: Le Droit in Ottawa, La Liberté in Manitoba, Le Patriote de l’Ouest in Saskatchewan, Le Petit Courrier in Nova Scotia, and La Survivance in Alberta. For Acadians in New Brunswick, the weekly L’Évangéline, founded in Digby, Nova Scotia in 1887 and moved to Moncton, New Brunswick in 1905, subsequently became a daily thanks to the success of a campaign organized in 1943 with the help of the Comité permanent de la survivance française en Amérique. Created after the second Congrès de la langue française en Amérique held in Quebec City in 1937, this organization advocated for greater linguistic and cultural rights for French-speaking Canadians. It also promoted solidarity between Quebec and French-speaking communities in the rest of the country. In 1956, the organization became the Conseil de la vie française en Amérique.

How did this organization encourage French-speaking people in Quebec to donate to a campaign for the Acadian press? After all, it wasn’t going to benefit them immediately. This was probably one of the concerns of the Archbishop of Moncton, Norbert Robichaud, when he prepared his appeal for an Acadian press campaign aimed at Quebec residents. His text described the relationship between Quebec and French-speaking minority communities in a manner typical of the time. Drawing on the ideas of nationalist historian Lionel Groulx and the magazine L’Action nationale, Robichaud described these French-speaking groups as “outposts” of French Canada. Their presence was thus presented as indispensable to maintaining the French fact on the North American continent. Using a military analogy, nationalist elites defined French Canada as an entity under siege. As a result, every French-speaking community had to resist and stay the course, but also show solidarity with others to counter assimilation. Providing “outposts” with means of communication in French would thus serve the interests of all francophones throughout the country.