La Survivance
“Survivance” or, Survival in English. was a powerful societal concept developed in the Province of Quebec in the days of British rule (after 1743) whereby French-Canadian Catholics would unite in spirit and, in action, sometime, to resist “en masse” any efforts made by their British overlords at all levels of government to weaken the religious, cultural, culinary and ethnic essence of the remaining “habitant” population in the province.
Note: Much more on this socioeconomic and highly political topic will soon follow.
As destitute, large, failed-farmer-families (often a mother and father with 8 to 14 children) sought some relief from the Quebec natural elements plus hunger and despair by seeking low-skilled jobs in the New England textile factories such as those in Lowell, Massachusetts, leaders of the Survivance movement (Quebec Catholic clerics and political pundits) encouraged their departing flock to establish strong, new, neighborhood societies where the Church, the language and all cultural aspects of their former “Quebecois” lives could still survive.
These are the people that eventually became Franco- Americans, my own relatives and kin, although we always referred to ourselves as “les canadiens français”, i.e. French Canadians.
A particularly important driving force in the broader Survivance movement in the Lowell area would fall under the title of “History of Franco Americans in Lowell Massachusetts“, a website worth mentioning that describes in some details the established close-knit community of folks (first, second and third generations) that pervaded the Lower-Centralville, “Little Canada” and Pawtucketville portions of the city.
See the following articles on la Survivance.
Gérard Bouchard, the ideology of “survivance” and its corollaries. See Below.
http://faculty.marianopolis.edu/c.belanger/quebechistory/readings/bouchard.htm
Note: More on the concept and practice of survivance in the lives and beliefs of my grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, brother, sisters plus cousins and neighbors will follow soon.
