Talk:French Canadians

Corrected numerous mistakes based on a fallacious interpretation of historical data. French Canadians and Acadians are separated peoples. The first Canadians were the Canadiens who renamed themselves Canadiens-français and later again québécois during the Quiet Revolution. The Acadians became inhabitants of Canada in 1867 and therefore cannot be considered Canadians before that time. -- Mathieugp

Quote from the article: "One of the motivations for the union was to limit French Canadian political power." What kind of POV unfounded rubbish is this? Angelique 23:33, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Do you prefer "One of the primary motivations for the union was the complete assimilation of French Canadians for their own good."? I thought this would pass as non-neutral, although that is what the Durham report clearly states as an objective. If you want to quote the Durham report, you are free to do it, but I garantee you that someone will eventually try to tone it down with something like "limiting French Canadian political power". -- Mathieugp 03:52, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

For me the flags all show up in a single right-aligned vertical column. I'm not an expert in wikipedia editing, but is there anyway they could be organized into multiple columns dependent on the width of the browser? I could table them into a fixed number of columns, but it would be nice if the number of columns could be window-size-dependent. Willhsmit

Semantics

Recently, someone moved this article form French-Canadian to French Canadian. This action resurrected the semantic problem that we need to fix with regards to Francophone Canadians. Here is what we need to distinguish:

Francophone Canadians: Canadian citizens who speak French. This denomination includes French Canadians (2), Acadians, Metis, or immigrants from any part of the world. This definition excludes all people who are not Canadian citizens. In French, this would be Canadiens francophone.

French Canadians (1): Canadian citizens who have some French ancestry. This denomination can include actual French (from France), French Canadians (2), Acadians, Metis, Cajuns etc. This denomination excludes Canadian citizens who may be Francophone, but are not of French descent. It is somewhat equivalent to "Franco Americans which include Americans of French, French Canadian, Acadian (and others) descent. In French, this would be Franco-Canadien or Canadiens d'ascendance française.

French Canadians (2): People who are French Canadian by birth or adoption. This denomination includes individuals of French Canadian descent (on either side of their famility tree), or Acadians, Irish, Scots, English etc. who were brought up as French Canadians or accepted as such by their community. Such communities existed in French Canada (Quebec) and then from there some migrated to all parts of North America. This denomination excludes French, Acadians, Cajuns, Metis etc. and other distinct Francophone cultural groups. In French, this would be Canadiens from the time of New France up to the Union Act, then later on Canadiens francais when the Canadiens became a minority ethnic group inside a federal Canada with different borders. After the 1960s, the Canadiens francais of the province of Quebec started to refer to themselves as Québécois (citizens of Quebec).

Considering the current contents of this article, I think we should move this article from the ambiguous French Canadian to Francophone Canadian or create an disambiguation page with French Canadian. What do you all think? -- Mathieugp 00:41, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Last week, I added a subheading to Franco-ontarian in order to clarify almost exactly this kind of issue. I think, realistically, there does need to be something at the title French Canadian, since it's unquestionably a common historical term and one that still gets used by many today (even if it shouldn't be). I think it's probably possible to resolve the issue by adding something similar to what I wrote up at franco-ontarian (under the heading Franco-ontarian identity). Bearcat 17:09, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for responding. Does that mean you favour a disambiguation page? Because I can't imagine including a disambiguation paragraph into each article dealing with the broad subject of French Canada. It would, in the long run, lead to a lot of duplications. I think a disambiguation notice at the top of the current French Canadian article would be appropriate. The disambiguation page already sort of exists in French Canada.

Personnally, I think it is essential that this encyclopedia informs its readers of the distinction between "Canadian citizens of French descent" which lumps everyone into one meaningless ensemble and "Canadian citizens of French Canadian descent" which specifically refers to a national group that is distinct from the French, the Acadians and the others francophones. I mean, if people don't even know that Quebecers are to the French as the Americans are to the English, how could they possibly understand anything about our culture? -- Mathieugp 21:04, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Another good reason to solve this issue: Franco Americans. Where do they fit in this? They are certainly French Canadians (2) but not French Canadians (1). Considering that there are many more people of French Canadian (2) heritage in the United States than in Canada outisde Quebec, there is no way we can avoid the subject in the long run. -- Mathieugp 15:49, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

ACADIA

Although the history of Acadia, noted in the separate discussion of Acadia in another article, is valid, one CANNOT seriously list present-day French-Canadian groups without some reference to Acadia and Acadians. The article on French-Canadians has a glaring hole in it and is of little use to people using this document to learn about Canada and its french-speaking population. It should be fixed by someone more knowledgeable than I. User: 234561

I understand. The confusion around the term "French Canadian" is a big problem. Historically, Acadians are NOT French Canadians, for the simple reason that the French colony of Canada and the French colony of Acadia were separate colonies. The people of French Canada (today Quebecers) and the people of Acadia are quite isolated from each other geographically speaking. What is today called Canada just happens to include both the historical homeland of the Canadiens (French Canadians) and the Acadiens (Acadians). The result is that there are two different French language nationalities in present day Canada. See the semantic problem I discussed just above (under Semantics). -- Mathieugp 21:22, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hyphenation

I disagree that "French-Canadian" should not be hyphenated. I am in the middle of editing this article and am finding that we are hyphenating the provincial groups (Franco-Manitoban) but not the umbrella group, which is grammatically inconsistent. In addition, I am French-Canadian and have always seen and used the term primarily with a hyphen, just as one would write Italian-Canadian or African-American. I propose the page be moved back. Was there a prior discussion about this before it happened? Mona-Lynn 21:12, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

These expressions fall into two different groups. (1) Terms that start with combining forms, like Anglo-, Franco-, Russo-, Sino-, and so on. These are always hyphenated. (2) Terms containing two national adjectives, like French Canadian, Italian Canadian, and so on. These take a hyphen when they are adjectives: "French-Canadian town", "Italian-Canadian newspaper", "Irish-Canadian woman", "Mona-Lynn is French-Canadian"; but not when they are nouns: "He is a French Canadian", "Italian Canadians have been around for generations". It's a bit tricky till you get used to it. The Wikipedia naming convention is to have titles in noun form, with adjective forms as redirects, so that's why the article is "French Canadian" and "French-Canadian" is a redirect. Indefatigable 21:52, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

So do we need to remove the hyphens from Franco-Manitoban, Franco-Albertan, etc. when being used as nouns? Mona-Lynn 00:07, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No, those belong to group (1) above, and they always have hyphens. Those combining forms that end in with an o never stand alone. They have to be joined to the word they modify with a hyphen, whether they are adjectives or nouns. Isn't English grammar grand? Indefatigable 01:17, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but you're mistaken. French Canadian is the noun and French-Canadian is the adjective. (And for the record, the same is true for Italian Canadian and African American.) Funnyhat 06:16, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)