“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.
