Today, about 22% of Canadians speak French as their native language. This is a third less than Anglophone Canadians (who make up 58% of Canadians) Also, the vast majority of Francophones live in Quebec with only a million French-Canadians living in other Provinces. Your challenge is to come up with a plausible scenario that would increase the percentage of French speaking Canadians to about 35% of the total population and also to spread Francophones out more evenly throughout all of Canada, such that more provinces could be more along the lines of New Brunswick, where French speakers are about a third of the population.
AHC: Larger French Minority in Canada?
- Thread starter Guildencrantz
- Start date
Avoid the Acadian Genocide after the 7YW, safest bet. The french could be around 10-11 million ar least. I strongly recommend this excellent TL in progress https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...of-providence-an-acadian-timeline-2-0.403097/ done by phil03 if you want to see a realistic process and result 
In addition to, or perhaps even instead of, Eastern European peasants, Clifford Sifton and the Liberals decide to populate western Canada with immigrants from French-speaking parts of the world.
For this to work, though, you'd probably need to re-arrange things a bit in the countries that would be supplying the immigrants. Anti-cajun pogroms in Louisiana? Metastasized Dreyfus backlash leads to devout Catholic peasants fleeing France for their lives?
For this to work, though, you'd probably need to re-arrange things a bit in the countries that would be supplying the immigrants. Anti-cajun pogroms in Louisiana? Metastasized Dreyfus backlash leads to devout Catholic peasants fleeing France for their lives?
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Less emigration to the USA, instead have them move to the prairies in search of jobs perhaps?
Alternatively have la grande noirceur continue for a bit longer or start a bit earlier, birth control was essentially non-existent in Quebec and the size of each family was massive, if you have this ocntinue for another generation you'd have a much much larger Quebec.
that being said I'm not sure if it was possible for la grande noirceur to continue
Alternatively have la grande noirceur continue for a bit longer or start a bit earlier, birth control was essentially non-existent in Quebec and the size of each family was massive, if you have this ocntinue for another generation you'd have a much much larger Quebec.
that being said I'm not sure if it was possible for la grande noirceur to continue
Napoleonrules
Banned
Instead of the Metis being treated as First Nation peoples they are treated as French-Canadians and Manitoba ends up having French language protections and school systems as strong as Quebec.
Just hand-wave away the whole British and French rivalry which sparked the French and Indian Wars, Seven Years War, Expulsion of Acadians, Battle on the Plains of Abraham, American Revolutionary War, French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, Riel Rebellion, etc.
If English-American colonists were permanently restricted from expanding into the Ohio River and Mississippi River valleys, there would be far fewer English-speakers in the middle of North America. Ideally, France would retain the Port of New Orleans and the French language would become the lingua Franca for trade in the vast interior.
Without the expulsion, Acadians continue to farm the best land in the Maritimes, there would be no room for United Empire Loyalists or their black slaves.
Without a Battle on the Plains of Abraham, French noblemen would continue to dominate import-export trade from Quebec. French would remain the dominant language in Eastern Canada and "revenge of the cradle" would continue to swell student rolls in French-language schools and universities.
Without the American Revolutionary War, there would be no incentives for United Empire Loyalists (my ancestors) to flee to Southern Quebec and Southern Ontario.
Without the French Revolution, French merchants would still trade regularly with France. Meanwhile troublesome religious dissidents (Hugenots?) or women of ill repute (les filled du Roi) would be expelled to New France in far larger numbers.
Finally, don't allow railway investors to intimidate Prime Minister John A MacDonald into displacing Metis from their Prairie farms.
Continue "whites only" immigration policies into the 21st century.
If English-American colonists were permanently restricted from expanding into the Ohio River and Mississippi River valleys, there would be far fewer English-speakers in the middle of North America. Ideally, France would retain the Port of New Orleans and the French language would become the lingua Franca for trade in the vast interior.
Without the expulsion, Acadians continue to farm the best land in the Maritimes, there would be no room for United Empire Loyalists or their black slaves.
Without a Battle on the Plains of Abraham, French noblemen would continue to dominate import-export trade from Quebec. French would remain the dominant language in Eastern Canada and "revenge of the cradle" would continue to swell student rolls in French-language schools and universities.
Without the American Revolutionary War, there would be no incentives for United Empire Loyalists (my ancestors) to flee to Southern Quebec and Southern Ontario.
Without the French Revolution, French merchants would still trade regularly with France. Meanwhile troublesome religious dissidents (Hugenots?) or women of ill repute (les filled du Roi) would be expelled to New France in far larger numbers.
Finally, don't allow railway investors to intimidate Prime Minister John A MacDonald into displacing Metis from their Prairie farms.
Continue "whites only" immigration policies into the 21st century.
There are a few million anglophone Canadians of French ancestry, so you could probably get to 35% without significant demographic change. It's more a question of policy changes.
You need to avoid the pressure to assimilate that existed OTL, as outside Québec the francophone populations often had little to no legal recognition in the 19th/early 20th centuries, and in some places French was even banned from the public sphere.
Canada only became officially bilingual (at the federal level) in 1969. Have it become so a century earlier and you'll probably see less language attrition outside Québec.
You need to avoid the pressure to assimilate that existed OTL, as outside Québec the francophone populations often had little to no legal recognition in the 19th/early 20th centuries, and in some places French was even banned from the public sphere.
Canada only became officially bilingual (at the federal level) in 1969. Have it become so a century earlier and you'll probably see less language attrition outside Québec.
If you spread them out, have them make up a larger percentage of the population and make Canada bilingual earlier it will lead to the two groups just kinda merging together with basically all Canadians speaking both languages and the only real difference between the anglo and franco Canadians will be what's spoken at home.
If that battle is never fought, then Canada (presumably) is never conquered at all and remains monolingually French.
The problem is that immigration ended up being almost entirely Anglo. And that's a really tough obstacle to overcome. The fact that the French speaking population stayed as large a percentage as it did required an amazingly fertile Québec (La Revanche des Berceaux).
The jobs, land and other opportunities were in Anglo Canada, so any non-English speakers naturally assimilated to the Anglo population.
So... How can we fix this?
Firstly, OTL, there was a lot of Franco emigration to the US
To help keep the French population in Canada up, one obvious way would be to provide more jobs IN Canada, have people move to e.g. mining towns in Ontario, or to farms out West, instead of moving to the States.
This has multiple effects. 1) it keeps those people in Canada. 2) it helps keep the birthrate up (more on this later), and 3) if e.g. Manitoba stays predominantly French speaking, with more Québecois moving west than Orange Lodge Ontarians, then even if 'peasants in sheepskin coats' DO come to the prairies later, they might well speak French rather than English.
OTOH, that's going to be tough. It was a lot easier to get from Québec to New England mills than it would be to go to the prairies - as there's no railway west yet.
You'd need a deliberate effort to populate the West with anyone who'd go, rather than leaving it up to individual initiative. Ontarians had been hacking farms out of the bush for most of a hundred years - plowing the prairies is easy by comparison. Whereas the Québecois had pretty thoroughly cultivated the land available, so young men going west would not be used to hacking a new farm from the wilderness. Thus there needs to be stronger incentives for the Québecois, IMO. And those incentives would be very unlikely to come from Ottawa. Maybe the Catholic Church needs to proactively encourage farmers to go West, providing hundreds of local priests for the necessary churches, as well as the seed money needed to start them going.
Get a few thousand French speaking Catholic settlers to Manitoba by 1850, say, and you could make the Prairies fairly solidly French speaking... (The more people there early, the more you can send later.)
And, again, having 10 kids (say) when you have a postage stamp sized farm on the St. Lawrence means it's really difficult to support them all - especially when it comes time for THEM to inherit and have 10 kids each. Having a 'relief valve' out west would help a lot. Farms can use just about all the labour they can get from their kids, and having the entire Prairies available to homestead new farms means you don't have to keep subdividing a farm that was subsistence to start with.
However, this also means that SOME sort of railway has to happen earlier than OTL. Building rail from Winnipeg west is not a problem, of course, as the land is flat and solid. OTOH, the OTL TransContinental Railway (CPR) that ran north of Lake Superior was an incredible sink of resources and especially money. My guess is what happens is that rail is run to Lakehead (Port Arthur), and grain is shipped out via ship from there, and supplies are shipped in. That means that the prairies are essentially isolated from the rest of Canada for, say, 3 months of the year, but ...
I would also guess that a post road would be hacked out for e.g. mail north of Lake Superior, but it wouldn't be enough to carry freight or an army (either for putting down a hypothetical rebellion, or for defence against US encroachment).
How's that?
The jobs, land and other opportunities were in Anglo Canada, so any non-English speakers naturally assimilated to the Anglo population.
So... How can we fix this?
Firstly, OTL, there was a lot of Franco emigration to the US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Americans#New_England.2C_New_York_State said:
To help keep the French population in Canada up, one obvious way would be to provide more jobs IN Canada, have people move to e.g. mining towns in Ontario, or to farms out West, instead of moving to the States.
This has multiple effects. 1) it keeps those people in Canada. 2) it helps keep the birthrate up (more on this later), and 3) if e.g. Manitoba stays predominantly French speaking, with more Québecois moving west than Orange Lodge Ontarians, then even if 'peasants in sheepskin coats' DO come to the prairies later, they might well speak French rather than English.
OTOH, that's going to be tough. It was a lot easier to get from Québec to New England mills than it would be to go to the prairies - as there's no railway west yet.
You'd need a deliberate effort to populate the West with anyone who'd go, rather than leaving it up to individual initiative. Ontarians had been hacking farms out of the bush for most of a hundred years - plowing the prairies is easy by comparison. Whereas the Québecois had pretty thoroughly cultivated the land available, so young men going west would not be used to hacking a new farm from the wilderness. Thus there needs to be stronger incentives for the Québecois, IMO. And those incentives would be very unlikely to come from Ottawa. Maybe the Catholic Church needs to proactively encourage farmers to go West, providing hundreds of local priests for the necessary churches, as well as the seed money needed to start them going.
Get a few thousand French speaking Catholic settlers to Manitoba by 1850, say, and you could make the Prairies fairly solidly French speaking... (The more people there early, the more you can send later.)
And, again, having 10 kids (say) when you have a postage stamp sized farm on the St. Lawrence means it's really difficult to support them all - especially when it comes time for THEM to inherit and have 10 kids each. Having a 'relief valve' out west would help a lot. Farms can use just about all the labour they can get from their kids, and having the entire Prairies available to homestead new farms means you don't have to keep subdividing a farm that was subsistence to start with.
However, this also means that SOME sort of railway has to happen earlier than OTL. Building rail from Winnipeg west is not a problem, of course, as the land is flat and solid. OTOH, the OTL TransContinental Railway (CPR) that ran north of Lake Superior was an incredible sink of resources and especially money. My guess is what happens is that rail is run to Lakehead (Port Arthur), and grain is shipped out via ship from there, and supplies are shipped in. That means that the prairies are essentially isolated from the rest of Canada for, say, 3 months of the year, but ...
I would also guess that a post road would be hacked out for e.g. mail north of Lake Superior, but it wouldn't be enough to carry freight or an army (either for putting down a hypothetical rebellion, or for defence against US encroachment).
How's that?
With a post 1815 POD(I think that with an earlier one is too easy) you can have Britain and France have good relations and thus even immigration from France to Canada.
First of all from what I read the expulsion is not classified as a Genocide, second I don´t see how 12k people become 5 million, that´s ludicrous.Avoid the Acadian Genocide after the 7YW, safest bet. The french could be around 10-11 million ar least. I strongly recommend this excellent TL in progress https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...of-providence-an-acadian-timeline-2-0.403097/ done by phil03 if you want to see a realistic process and result
Well, out of 16000 Acadians, 3500 survived. Expulsion during the winter, with very little food and nowhere to sleep, is kinda harsh. Even if you don't kill the dude, you know that his chances of surviving are slim. But it's true that concept of "genocide" didn't exist back then. Let's talk of "ethnic cleansing" if you prefer. And when I said 10 000 000 french, it includes Quebec with already more than 8 000 000. The Acadians had a ridiculously high birthrate for very long time: nowadays they're 500 000. So I'm just saying that 15000 Acadians in Acadia in 1760 could give around 2000 000 Acadians in 2017
A timeline where the Acadians were not subject to deportation, but instead remained in their traditional homelands and became the dominant population of European extraction in the east, would help.
Failing that, you would need to play with migration. In terms of international migration to Canada, less British and other migration to Canada would increase the French proportion, and might be manageable. Substantially more French immigration would also change things, but might be more difficult to arrange. More assimilation of immigrants, or the chance to assimilate more, would help. (What if Catholics were automatically grouped with the Canadiens?) In terms of international migration from Canada, diminishing the number of Canadian Francophones who went south to work in the United States would help.
Failing that, you would need to play with migration. In terms of international migration to Canada, less British and other migration to Canada would increase the French proportion, and might be manageable. Substantially more French immigration would also change things, but might be more difficult to arrange. More assimilation of immigrants, or the chance to assimilate more, would help. (What if Catholics were automatically grouped with the Canadiens?) In terms of international migration from Canada, diminishing the number of Canadian Francophones who went south to work in the United States would help.
Just avoid, limit, or delay the Quiet Revolution. French Canadians traditionally had higher TFR than Anglo-Canadians, but the trend was reversed in the Quiet Revolution. In just one decade (the 1960s), French TFR in Canada fell from 3.8 to 1.9.
If the cultural change can just be more gradual with TFR only falling from 3.8 to 3.0 during the 60s, 3.0 to 2.3 in the 70s, and down to 1.9 in the 80s (and remain there to the present), and I imagine that we could nearly double French Canadian's population.
If the cultural change can just be more gradual with TFR only falling from 3.8 to 3.0 during the 60s, 3.0 to 2.3 in the 70s, and down to 1.9 in the 80s (and remain there to the present), and I imagine that we could nearly double French Canadian's population.
I do not think that postponing the Quiet Revolution significantly, never mind aborting it altogether, would result in lasting positive demographic change. Québec and French Canada simply cannot remain isolated from the changes occurring in the wider Western world, and could not remain isolated for much longer.
A Québec that stays more conservative might well see lower fertility. Most other late-modernizing societies in the West that have traditionally been strongly Roman Catholic have also seen fertility rates fall to much lower levels than Québec (and French Canada) have experienced. Québec did see fertility fall until the mid-1980s, yes, but it also afterwards saw fertility rates recover. Right now, the TFR in Québec is above the Canadian average, substantially higher than that of Ontario, and has been stably so since 2005 or so.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/hlth85b-eng.htm
Drilling down to the regional level, the fertility rate increase in Québec appears to be general across the province. This increase cannot, in other words, be assigned to higher fertility rates among immigrants--TFRs in Montréal, if anything, are below the Québec average.
http://www.stat.gouv.qc.ca/statistiques/population-demographie/naissance-fecondite/405.htm
Most of the Roman Catholic late-modernizers did not see fertility rates recover from the mid-1980s. If anything, these countries--Portugal, Spain, Italy--saw fertility rates continue t fall to lowest-low levels. Ireland is the only exception to this trend, with fertility rates considerably above the averages for Europe and high-income countries, but Ireland also seems to be the only country of this class that accepted non-traditional family norms (cohabitation without marriage, single parenthood, etc.). Québec's experience is closer to that of Ireland than Italy. A Québec that did not echo Ireland would be a Québec with much lower fertility rates--the increase in fertility rates that occurred from the mid-1980s on would not have happened.
A Québec that stays more conservative might well see lower fertility. Most other late-modernizing societies in the West that have traditionally been strongly Roman Catholic have also seen fertility rates fall to much lower levels than Québec (and French Canada) have experienced. Québec did see fertility fall until the mid-1980s, yes, but it also afterwards saw fertility rates recover. Right now, the TFR in Québec is above the Canadian average, substantially higher than that of Ontario, and has been stably so since 2005 or so.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/hlth85b-eng.htm
Drilling down to the regional level, the fertility rate increase in Québec appears to be general across the province. This increase cannot, in other words, be assigned to higher fertility rates among immigrants--TFRs in Montréal, if anything, are below the Québec average.
http://www.stat.gouv.qc.ca/statistiques/population-demographie/naissance-fecondite/405.htm
Most of the Roman Catholic late-modernizers did not see fertility rates recover from the mid-1980s. If anything, these countries--Portugal, Spain, Italy--saw fertility rates continue t fall to lowest-low levels. Ireland is the only exception to this trend, with fertility rates considerably above the averages for Europe and high-income countries, but Ireland also seems to be the only country of this class that accepted non-traditional family norms (cohabitation without marriage, single parenthood, etc.). Québec's experience is closer to that of Ireland than Italy. A Québec that did not echo Ireland would be a Québec with much lower fertility rates--the increase in fertility rates that occurred from the mid-1980s on would not have happened.
If we are talking about maximizing the number of French Canadians in Canada without doing much in terms of international migration to Canada, doing something to make the French Canadian migration to the United States smaller is essential. We could have a French Canada that industrializes and urbanizes quickly, minimizing the amount of emigration from the farms to foreign factories. We could have some sort of bars preventing or discouraging French Canadian immigration, perhaps dealing with religion or language. We could have a Canadian exodus that would be disproportionately English Canadian, leaving French Canadians relatively in place.
That might be acheivable if Cartier wasn't adamant that he be the voice of French Canada furing Confederation. Bring a more balanced committee furing the writing of the constitution (and someone to make sure Macdonald doesn't sneak some anti-French articles last minute) and it might just happen.