My baby boomer generation in Greenville never gave much thought to being French-Canadian. No more than one would consider the air we breathe, the rising of the sun or the changing of the seasons. After all, one does not consider what has always been there.
And so it was with our ethnicity. The great majority of us had heard the French-Canadian dialects from our time in the womb, had learned to speak it as our maternal tongue on the knees of our parents and had subjects taught to us for half the day in French at L’Ecole du Sacré Coeur, the parochial school taught by the Sisters of the Assumption whose mother house was in Nicolet PQ, but whose teachers were native Francophone girls from the parishes of New England. We said our prayers in French and went to confession in French. Later, when the Catholic church switched from the Latin Mass to that in the local languages, we relearned in French the Latin prayers we had recited as altar boys.
My generation received the language and culture that had been passed down from several regions in France for four centuries in the New World, in an unbroken chain through direct family transmission. Those that came to Greenville (as well as the rest of New England) were largely from the rural parishes of Quebec and Acadia (the maritime provinces). These people were mostly farmers, but some had other occupations. My great-grandfather was a raftsman, a dangerous job (his father drowned in this work) that involved floating enormous rafts of squared logs down the St. Lawrence River from the Great Lakes to Quebec City. The wood was then loaded on ships bound for England. Other trades also followed the immigrants, as well as some professionals who would minister to their needs.
The pattern of immigration often involved a number of families coming from one general area, as those that had arrived would tell others of the opportunities, and would facilitate their arrival. In Greenville, a rather large number of families came from Saint-Jean-Port-Joli and its surrounding parishes on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, located northeast of Quebec City.
Another large contingent came from opposite Quebec City in the Lévis area. It was common for mill owners to recruit workers directly in Canadian villages as the burgeoning Industrial Revolution required ever-larger labor forces. Many workers never intended to settle permanently in the United States, but returned to support families in Canada with cash in hand. However over time, more came to eventually settle in what was known as Les Petits Canadas (the little Canadas), the enclaves of French-Canadian culture within a larger Anglophone world.
The bulk of immigration occurred during the last decades of the 1800s and the start of the 1900s. A second wave occurred in the 1960s and 1970s from both Quebec and Acadia, with some subsequently marrying Greenville residents. Many grandparents of the Greenville “boomers” were born in town or nearby. They quickly became bilingual, able to read, write and speak in English, although French remained the primary language. The same was true for my parents’ generation, and the early boomers.
However, for the children born in the middle and latter parts of that generation, the pattern began to change. After World War II, marriages with non-Francophones became more frequent. In those households, English would be spoken, and children lacked immersion exposure. Consequently, while I had half the day in French and half in English in first grade in 1956, this was discontinued the following year for my grade and subsequent classes entering the school. There were simply too many students who came from the mixed marriages that had little or no proficiency in French. And as the school drew from a wider area, catering to Catholics beyond Greenville, the hard decision to discontinue teaching in French was made to keep enrollment up. However, I am told that the upper classes continued to be taught in French for half the day until their graduation.
Another factor contributing to language loss was the introduction of television, bringing English into households on a daily basis. And for my generation, Saturday-morning cartoons were not to be missed.
While French was spoken in the schoolyard by the upper grades when I entered school, my generation defaulted to English. Likewise when talking to parents, we spoke to them in English and they to us in French. The same can be frequently heard in public places in conversations between more recent immigrants, the result of a natural assimilation/acculturation process. We continued to be able to speak French, but were simply a bit lazy to do so.
While the French-Canadians retained both language and culture, they simultaneously adopted that of their adopted homeland. They celebrated Memorial Day and the 4th of July – flying the Stars and Stripes on those days – as well as Thanksgiving and other national holidays, and on their own big feast days of Christmas with midnight Mass and New Year’s with the réveillons on both days, the late-night feasts always featuring, among other foods, the traditional tourkays (meat pies) and cortons (pork spread). Processions marked the feast of St. John the Baptist and other religious holidays – the Stars and Stripes in the lead, with the Carillon Sacré Coeur, the flag of the French-Canadian Catholics, behind.
They valiantly served in the military in all the wars of the 20th century, and the Leclair-Caron-Pelletier American Legion Post 13 bears the names of those who paid the ultimate price in World War I< World War II and Vietnam in defense of their homeland.
The present-day raucous Pots and Pans Parade held at the stroke of midnight on the 4th of July, which attracts thousands of spectators and siren-blaring fire trucks from the surrounding communities from a radius of 30 miles, has its roots in a much more restrained affair held in earlier years. In the early 1900s, Gilbert Deschenes led an American-style marching band composed almost entirely of French-Canadians which played during the usual town parades. From what I have learned, he decided after World War II to organize the band to celebrate the war’s end with a march at midnight. This continued every year at midnight on July 4 until his death, when others, not being musically adept, continued the tradition with other noisemakers, including pots and pans.
What grew out of Deschenes’ passion for celebration and patriotism has grown into an event that features a festival, music and fireworks in the hours before midnight, and at midnight – with the blowing of the fire siren as a signal – an explosion of noise-making that can be heard for miles in the otherwise-quiet Monadnock countryside.
Greenville has always been a small community compared to others where French-Canadian populations were prominent, such as Lowell, Woonsocket and Manchester. However, I am told it was the community with the largest Francophone population in New Hampshire as a percentage of total inhabitants.
Compared to these other urban communities, it seemed to attract those that desired a more rural, land-based lifestyle, similar to what they had left behind. Hunting, fishing, gardening and raising of some animals for food were common activities. Trapping, blueberry-picking and wreath- and rope-making for cash in season were also common. A number of families also had profitable farms.
Being a majority population, Greenville French-Canadians felt at ease within their own culture, something that was not always the case where Canadians were more a minority. As such, their language and traditions remained strong. This led to an easygoing sociability within their own community and with the non-Francophone world as well, where many strong friendships and associations were made. One of my grandfather’s closest friends – a hunting and fishing buddy – was an Irishman, while my father’s best friend in life was from old Yankee stock.
The language remained strong in Greenville as a maternal tongue for three generations born in America – a remarkable testament to cultural tenacity. While the pre-boomer and boomer generations are the last to speak a dialect acquired in direct familial transmission, other aspects of culture continue with the younger generations. The traditional holiday foods are still prepared by many from old cherished family recipes, and the réveillons parties continue in some families at Christmas and New Year’s. And judging from comments when these topics are brought up in the local Facebook page, many still hold these traditions dear to the heart.
While most young no longer speak or understand French, a number of them still, with good pronunciation, sing the words to “J’irais la voir un jour” (I’ll go see her one day) – the traditional funeral hymn that continues throughout the Francophone world to bring tears to the eyes of many as the casket leaves the church. And the Little Canadas – those strong, visible features of a largely intact culture – have now passed into history, the result of changing economic and social conditions. But, in modified form, the culture they embodied is remembered and cherished, and lives on in a new age.
Henri Vaillancourt is a resident of Greenville and a descendant of the town’s French-Canadian immigrant population.