1867-1914: Background / Fitful Growth / Changing Conditions / First Wave / Laurier Boom

Background

These migrants were certainly not the first to venture to North America or to leave traces of the immigrant experience. Although Amerindian oral traditions describe First Nations people as always living in America, many scholars believe that Natives first arrived between 25,000 and 30,000 years ago. Using a land mass over the Bering Strait to travel from Asia, they subsequently dispersed throughout the North American continent. The French, arriving in the sixteenth century on the shores of the Gaspé Peninsula and later exploring the St. Lawrence River, probably encountered Iroquoian people, and, later, Huron, Montagnais, and Cree peoples, who seasonally migrated between agricultural, hunting, fishing, and gathering areas. Some of these Amerindian groups had recently moved from traditional hunting and agricultural territories into new ones. The French population in Lower Canada (Canada East from 184 to 1867, when it became Quebec) established a unique migration tradition based on the fur trade. French traders journeyed from New France to distant points in the interior. Thus, families in the colony often maintained networks with relatives and friends who lived in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys and deep within the colony of Louisiana.

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