Aha! Canadians!

[shockwave203]

canuck is actually a horse that is common in Canada, but the slang term 'canuck' refers to mainly french canadians

(i had to use dictionary.com, because i just realized that I had no idea what the hell a canuck was either lol)

[Chacal]

Originally posted by Colonel Ingus
Ironically you have a similar species of people in LA (thats Louisiana folks not Los Angeles, or if you are from Alabama its Lower Alabama ) and the New Orleans area especially. The difference beijng Napoleon sold the LA purchase to America to pay for his Napoleonic wars. Many of the french descended peoples stayed in position of power and business there though. Perhaps it was a radically different situation (foremost that it was not an invasion and colonial take-over).

Of course now the language is mutated into Cajun and although by no means an expert I would hazard to guess its about as similar to modern French as Cockney is to English.

Well there is another sad story behind that. It is called "the deportation of the Acadians" and it happened half a century before Louisiana was sold.

The territory now known as Nova Scotia in Canada was known as "Acadie" (Acadia) during the days of the French colonies.

In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht ended a series of conflicts and wars between England and France that had been ongoing since 1689. Under the treaty, France agreed to surrender much of its colonial influence in North America to the British.

From 1744 to 1755 skirmishes erupted again between French and British troops over control of Nova Scotia, ending with British victory.

After defeating the French at Fort Beauséjour, the British wanted to protect their gains in Acadia. They viewed the Acadians as the only remaining threat to British dominance of the colony. For forty years the British had unsuccessfully demanded an unconditional oath of allegiance from the Acadians who prefered to stay neutral, as they now had little faith in either the British or the French.

Starting 1755, all Acadians in Nova Scotia were forced to surrender their arms under penalty of being treated as rebels. Their boats were also seized. Orders were sent to gather all Acadian inhabitants. Their titles of possession were deemed worthless, and all land and livestock owned by them was forfeited to the crown. The only possessions the Acadians were allowed to retain were those items they could carry. Transport ships were soon summoned from Boston to disperse the Acadians among the Thirteen Colonies to the south (the future United States).

Some 6,000 Acadians were exiled from Port Royal, Grand Pré, and Beaubassin by English forces in the fall of 1755. The expulsion continued until 1763, by which time fewer than 1,000 Acadians were left in Nova Scotia. Approximately 2,000 of the captives died on board transport ships because of poor sanitary conditions or a lack of food or water. Tragically, some vessels were also lost at sea, along with their human cargo.

The British governor's plan was to disperse the Acadians across enough territory to ensure that they would not regroup and return to Nova Scotia, Louisbourg, or Quebec. Unfortunately for the Acadians, as if the treatment at the hands of their English captors had not been enough, they were then treated with hostility at nearly every destination to which they arrived.

Within the Thirteen Colonies, a deep resentment towards the French existed. No matter where they were sent, the Acadians were largely segregated and distrusted by the locals. In addition, among the colonies, only Massachusetts and Connecticut were forewarned of the Acadians' impending arrival. Neither New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, nor Georgia were prepared for the Acadians. Virginia flatly refused the entry of the French Neutrals, who were then sent to England and later arrived in Louisiana, eventual home of the majority of exiled Acadians.

Louisiana, originally a French colony, had managed to retain its French culture despite being owned by Spain after 1763.

Between 1764 and 1770, approximately 1,000 Acadians emigrated to Louisiana from Halifax, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The next mass emigration brought 1,600 Acadians back from France in 1785, while 19 Acadians arrived in Louisiana from St. Pierre in 1788. Gradually, the Acadian lifestyle blended with the diverse cultures that comprised those of New Orleans and Louisiana. Even the word "Acadian" began to change in accordance with the dominating local dialects until it became known as "Cajun". In Louisiana, the Cajun population flourished, as has Cajun culture to this day. In 1803, when Louisiana was sold to the United States, more than 2,500 Cajuns became American citizens.

The war eneded in 1763 and the Acadians were permitted to return to Nova Scotia. Some Acadians made the trek, by foot, from as far away as Georgia and South Carolina, and thereby formed the basis of the modern Acadian population. Nevertheless, by 1771, only about 2,000 Acadians lived in the formerly prosperous colony. Sadly, this amounted to just one-fifth of the pre-expulsion population. Those who did return soon found out that they could never truly go back.

Beginning in 1760, settlers from New England had begun to move to Nova Scotia, occupying the dyked, fertile, reclaimed lands formerly held by the Acadians. Some 12,000 of these emigrants, known to history as Planters, forever changed the ethnic balance of the colony. For the first time since 1710, the English colony was inhabited by a British and Protestant majority. Consequently, the Acadians were given the lands that the Planters did not want, in less productive areas. Their days as prosperous farmers over, the remaining Acadians largely turned to the forest and the sea for their livelihoods.

In the years after 1755, the Acadians did not forget their period of exile. Instead, the tragic story of the deported peoples was passed down through the generations and into Acadian folklore. In 1847, American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow forever romanticized and immortalized the Acadian plight in his poem Evangeline . Despite never visiting Nova Scotia and only being familiar with a general outline of the deportation saga, Longfellow's tale captured global attention. For many people, Evangeline is the only source of knowledge they have of the Acadians' plight during the 18th century. This poem became immensely popular throughout North America and around the world, increasing awareness of Acadian heritage and history. Despite largely being the work of poetic imagination, Evangeline is for many Acadians a distilled truth of their ancestral past.

[Colonel Ingus]

DAMN! and i really mean DAMN!

Good info there Chacal. I bet many, including myself, never heard of that. (Although I did see an episode of that on the History Channel)

I would hazard to guess though, and this is in no means an insult to the french, that there are many underlying reasons for this.

The French have never had a good track record for colonization. And I am not starting flame wars here but many "Americans" (being defined as living in the territory that is now considered USA) had very poor feelings for the French. As I hope many of you know the colonies fought the French Indian war prior to the Revolutionary War and there were many bad sentiments towards the French who were spurring the Native Americans to fight the British Colonials in order to advance French interests in the New Found Lands.

France was by no means innocent of the types of attrocities we attribute towards the British during the Revolutionary war.

French National interests dictated oppossing the English founded colonies and they did their damndest to promote that. Earlier Chacal you mentioned "The Patriot" as a reference and if you people haven't paid attention to the movie folks many of the men fighting in that movie were veterans from the French-Indian Wars.

Mind you I am not saying one side was better than the other, or one side was more correct than the other, but this is fact.

The French were very much into the colonization and subjugation of North America. Just look at names like Detroit (pronounced Day-Twa) or even in my home state of Minnesota where we have Hennepin county (a prominent French explorer).

I would be willing to wager that the French colonists in North America recieved 100 times better treatment than the North American Natives did.

And I mean no insult to the sufferance that the French descendants sufferred in North America but that would hold short shrift with the American Indians.

And I ask this seriously: I know for a fact the Native Americans were treated as poorly in Canada as they were in the USA. What is the status of Native Americans in Canada? If you are so ardent about what we will losely call French Canadians what about the Native Americans? Arguably their plight is as bad if not worse than any western European French descended person. (except of course in the US were they have used their sovreigniety rights and opened Casinos and are now rich! Haha! Way To Go Indians! I applaud you!)

Now I end with an addendum. I like the French people I have met overseas (by that I mean the French people who were ALSO overseas that I met) But I noticed a very disturbing fact while serving in the U.S. Navy.

I was often times tasked to write-up a local intel report and I swear to God as my witness about 99% of the time I was writing how the locals had French guns, French Missiles, and French aircraft. I am more than willing to admit that I am biased by this but I grew to loathe the French National policy of selling arms to anyone with cash, oil, or trade for these types of products. In addition I would see my intel group reflect on how the French had sold whatever peashit nation we were worried about Nuclear Technology to garner the French nation more revenue.

This is by no means an insult Chacal and by no means an indictment. You and I suspect most of the Quebecois (sp?) had absolutely nothing to do with this. But I freely admit this is a foundation of my (and by no means virulent) anti-french attitude.

Are the French perfect? NO! Were the British perfect? NO! Is modern American policy perfect? NO! I guess I mean in short everyones hands are dirty and the only good guys are those who try to make the best of it.

Kind of like what most Americans want.

[Folic_Acid]

Originally posted by Colonel Ingus
And I ask this seriously: I know for a fact the Native Americans were treated as poorly in Canada as they were in the USA. What is the status of Native Americans in Canada? If you are so ardent about what we will losely call French Canadians what about the Native Americans? Arguably their plight is as bad if not worse than any western European French descended person. (except of course in the US were they have used their sovreigniety rights and opened Casinos and are now rich! Haha! Way To Go Indians! I applaud you!)

Canada treats native Americans a lot better than we do here in the US. In fact, the native Inuit people got what amounts to their own province back in 1999 - the province of Nunavut. Of course, it's only got 29,000 people in it (85% of which are native Inuit), but it's got the same rights and privileges as any province in the federation.

Frankly, I think our own policy toward native Americans is pretty shoddy, though I couldn't really tell you what needs to be done. We could learn a thing or two about that from our friends to the north.

First, I honestly appreciate the history lessons Chacal. I as many Americans no little about Canadian history and am quite thankful for your incite. Goes to show how ignorant the general American public is on International affairs if we do not even no cultural, societal, and political issues of our BORDER neighbors. Sad , Really Sad .

Thanks

Now, people always hit a nerve when I hear talk of the Native Americans. To me, It IS, IT HAS BEEN, IT WILL ALWAYS BE a case of Genocide. Some will argue: well the cultural still exists, or Indians still do their regular customs. BullShit! We frankily (and I speak in a historical context) destroyed their way of living. I would love to speak of all that pops in my mind in regards to this issue yet I refuse to write a book on this forum.

Thanks.

P.S. Please continue with this interesting thread. And I mean that.

Yeah, this is very interesting. I knew most of the stuff about the history of Lousiana and Quebec and stuff, and the creation of Nunavut, but it's nice to hear all it coming from someone who actually has a link to the stuff, instead of just AP History class.

[Chacal]

Originally posted by Colonel Ingus
This is by no means an insult Chacal and by no means an indictment. You and I suspect most of the Quebecois (sp?) had absolutely nothing to do with this.

First of all, you have to understand this: the name "French Canadians" means only "French-speaking Canadians". We are no more French than you are British. The French colonized America because they wanted to expand their empire, they wanted profit, and they wanted to annoy the other colonial powers (Britain, Spain, Portugal and Holland), which did likewise.

The French lost interest in North America in 1760 because there were more pressing matters at home and frankly, it was just snow and beaver pelts. They saw the amount of trouble the British had with their 13 colonies and it didn't seem worth it.

So that was the last we saw of them until 1967, when the Montreal World Fair (Expo 67) brought us back to their attention and they were amazed to discover a modern country with such marvels as telephones, refrigerators and water heaters that worked, things the average French citizen could only imagine in his wildest dreams (I'm being a little sarcastic here).

What happened in between was we grew our own culture. Our spoken French closely resembles the one that was spoken in France prior to the Revolution. The infamous French accent of today was adopted in Paris as a way to reject the language of the monarchy. Our culture adapted to our unique conditions, for example borrowing traditional Irish music and dances, because we had a lot of catholic Irish immigrants and their lot was no better than ours under British rule (of course, we still have our latin ancestry, with concepts our anglo neighbors have yet to discover, such as "fun", "wine" and "sex").

As far as colonization goes, all the above-mentioned powers had bad track records. The reason for colonies was to suck new territories dry in order to maintain the wealth of the empire, and a quick look at the history of India, Africa, Australia, Brazil and other previous colonies will tell you a lot.

Frankly, if you look at the most horrible events in recent history, the Nazi's genocide of the Jews, the Hutu's genocide of the Tustsis, the Turk's genocide of the Armenians, the Serb's genocide of the Croatians, the Israeli's genocide of the Palestinians, the Iraqi's genocide of the Kurds, etc, you'll discover that it's all been done before. History repeats itself and Man still won't learn from his mistakes.

The "civilized" european and north-american countries that are so quick to judge those recent atrocities have quickly forgotten how recently they themselves have stopped committing them. And don't you think they stopped because of remorse. They stopped because it was no longer economically efficient.

They turned instead to more profitable and less dangerous ways of sucking the rest of the planet dry. Yes, France, Belgium and Russia will sell weapons to anybody. The US just gave them according to a political agenda (contras, afghans) and only stopped when those same weapons started turning against them. Both Canada and the US profit from millions of slave laborers in third-world countries, most of them children.

As for natives, it can be argued that the natives in Canada were slightly better treated than in the US. It seems like that because there was no overt war here between the natives and the French or British troops (both sides used them as mercenaries). Yet, what occured was three centuries of slow assimilation, silent assassinations, betrayals, treaties conveniently forgotten, tribes being driven out of productive lands and penned up in desolate reservations. Question: how do you get rid of a bothersome Indian tribe? Gather blankets from the contagious ward of an hospital and send them as gifts to the Indians. They will thank you and die peacefully.

An entire civilized nation (much more civilized than their conquerors), was driven to despair, alcoholism and suicide. The few survivors are still trying to get out of it.