This website is the result of a vision: to make available to a wide audience the most emblematic documents in the history of Canada’s francophone minority communities. We are delighted to publish this virtual bilingual anthology since it will facilitate the discovery of the history of francophone minority communities by allowing users to go directly to source materials.
Until now, there has been no recent, pan-Canadian book of sources — in other words, no collection of documents from the period — about francophone minority communities. Thanks to this website, the public will have direct, but selective and curated, contact with the history of these linguistic communities since 1867.
The basic idea was to select some 50 “key documents” from the main archives on francophone minority communities. The editorial committee determined the following guidelines for their selection. In its view, the anthology should:
- work toward regional, chronological, thematic, ethnic, and gender diversity while avoiding “tokenism”;
- exclude documents not produced by members of these communities;
- emphasize documents that illustrate the situation or priorities of these communities, rather than documents that have influenced the course of history;
- highlight, where possible, internal tensions that resulted when certain members of these communities engaged in “speaking up,” without neglecting to select documents recounting moments of unity;
- choose texts which, for the most part, have never previously been published.
In this anthology, we have sought to strike as close a balance as possible between all these considerations. The documents it features — some fifty in all — bear eloquent witness to the many voices that have spoken up for francophone minority communities. Some of them portray francophones in a combative mode, angry and indignant; others present them as communities simply concerned with improving their lot. Some documents highlight “francophonie of solidarity,” engaged in carrying out large-scale collective projects. Still others reveal francophones who are open to the world and inspired by ideas sweeping the planet. Finally, this collection includes documents illustrating the plurality of experiences of the groups that make up these francophone minority communities: women, young people, artists, cooperative managers, and so on.
Despite our best efforts, the anthology certainly contains some muted voices or even silences: women and workers are underrepresented; racialized minorities and members of the LGBTQ+ community are virtually absent. This shortcoming arises partly because of the biases under which archivists operated in the past, when they did not see fit to preserve many documents from these groups. What can we do about these silences? How can we correct the situation? We call on you to send us your suggestions for documents to include in the anthology since additions are always possible. We intend to update this anthology from time to time.
We hope that this virtual collection will prove useful in animating the teaching and learning of the history of francophone minority communities.
Joel Belliveau et Marcel Martel
Acknowledgements
This project was made possible thanks to the participation of many people.
First, we would like to thank the members of the editorial committee who helped us select documents for the anthology: Ariane Brun del Re, Guillaume Durou, Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon, Mireille McLaughlin, Michael Poplyansky, and Eugénie Tessier. We also salute the generosity of scholars of francophone minority communities who responded to our call for help in searching out documents that bear witness to “speaking up” done by and for francophone minority communities.
We also owe a debt of gratitude to the archival repositories that facilitated our selection of documents. Our warmest thanks go to the staff of the Archives de la Ville de Québec, the Centre d’études acadiennes Anselme-Chiasson at the Université de Moncton and the Centre de recherche sur les francophonies canadiennes at the University of Ottawa.
We would also like to thank Gilberto Fernandes for creating the anthology website, Janet Friskney for English-language editing, and André LaRose for French-language editing, as well as Andréanne Joly for her work on promoting the site.
Last but certainly not least, this project received financial support from the Quebec Government’s Secrétariat du Québec aux relations canadiennes and York University. Many thanks for their financial support.
Joel Belliveau et Marcel Martel
