English-speaking Quebecers
English-speaking Quebecers, also known as Anglo-Quebecers, English Quebecers, or Anglophone Quebecers or simply Anglos in a Quebec context, are Québécois people who speak English as their primary language. According to the 2011 Canadian census, 599,225 people in Quebec declare English as a mother tongue. When asked, 834,950 people reported using English the most at home.
The origins of English-speaking Quebecers include immigration from both English-speaking and non English-speaking countries, migration from other Canadian provinces, and strong English language education programs in Quebecois schools. This makes estimating the population of those who identify as English-speaking Quebecers difficult.
Population
Statistics Canada uses census data to keep track of minority language communities in Canada. It has recorded mother tongue since 1921, home language since 1971, and first official language learned since 1991. In addition, conversational knowledge of English and French is documented. A considerable number of census respondents in each category cite equal proficiency, knowledge, and use of different languages. In this case, census respondents are divided evenly among the language groups involved. As allophone immigrants generally arrive with knowledge of either English or French and eventually integrate into these two linguistic groups, first official language learned is used to determine the Official Language minority population. It is used by the federal government and Quebec anglophone community organizations to determine the demand for minority language services. Specifically, it classifies members of immigrant groups who learn English before French as English-speaking. Half of the people equally proficient since childhood in both English and French are placed into each linguistic community. The English-speaking population has shown an accelerated decline in population between 1971 and 2001. During this interval, the number of mother tongue anglophones decreased from 788,830 to 591,365, representing a drop in its share of the Quebec population from 13.1% to 8.3%. This is attributed primarily to an exodus of anglophones to other provinces and raised questions about the sustainability of the community. Immigration from other countries and integration of allophones helped to partially alleviate the impact of this trend. In 2001, one in three immigrants to Quebec was English-speaking and settled in Montreal. This made the decrease in home-language anglophones less pronounced, particularly in the Montreal area. This situation is rapidly changing as the vast majority of immigrants now adopt French as their first language: three quarters of linguistic transfers of allophones arriving between 2001 and 2006 allophones arriving have been towards French instead of English. The 2006 census showed an increase of the Anglophone population in Quebec. The rise of 16,000 people represents a growth rate of +2.7%, which is higher than that for the Francophone population for the same period. This increase is attributed to a much reduced net outmigration of Anglophones, with some 34,000 departures vs 26,000 arrivals. Emigration to other Canadian provinces was perceived as the biggest challenge facing the continued presence of English-language communities in Quebec, particularly outside Montreal, during the 1976 to 2001 period. English-speakers accounted for half the out-migrants from Quebec as they are extremely mobile compared to their francophone neighbours because they share a language and cultural identity with most other Canadians and North Americans. In a survey on the matter, English-speaking Quebecers cited limited economic prospects and politics as primary reasons for leaving. These political factors are also cited as having led to fewer Canadians from other provinces settling in Quebec. Anglophones are also less likely to migrate within the province than Francophones and Allophones. This is due to a strong sense of belonging among those in the Montreal area, the relative lack of English-language services and institutions outside Montreal, and a weak sense of identification with Quebec. Despite a lull in this outflux during an economic boom and break from separatist governments in 2003, this outmigration had returned to established levels by 2006 and is projected to continue at these rates over the next five years. At the time, this forecast made researcher Jack Jedwab predict a continued long term decline of the community. LocationsMontrealMost of Quebec's English-speaking population resides in the Montreal region on the Island of Montreal. The population is concentrated in the West Island and in the western half of Montreal's urban core, where there is a large network of English-language educational, social, cultural, economic, and medical institutions. However, there are smaller English-speaking communities in the east end as well, notably Saint-Leonard and Rivière-des-Prairies.The earliest English-speaking people arrived in Montreal at the beginning of the British regime in the second half of the 18th century. By 1831 the majority of the population were of British origin. American merchants, United Empire Loyalists and Anglo-Scot Protestants founded Quebec's public and private English-language institutions and would represent Quebec's elite merchant and financial classes up until the 1960s; the heritage of this era remains in neighbourhoods such as Westmount and the Golden Square Mile. Irish Quebecers established their schools, churches and hospitals in the mid-19th century in traditionally working-class neighbourhoods such as Point St. Charles and Griffintown. Separate English-language confessional school systems emerged, in the religious-based Montreal Catholic School Commission and Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal, and would be guaranteed in the British North America Act 1867 thanks to D'Arcy McGee, a prominent Irish Montrealer. Prior 2000, these school systems were merged into linguistic English-language boards. An English-speaking Black Canadian community grew in the 1860s with the coming of the railway industry centred in Montreal, settling in Little Burgundy and Saint-Henri. The first school built by the new Protestant Board of School Commissioners of Montreal was the Royal Arthur School which opened in 1870. The early 1900s brought waves of settlers from all over Europe. Jews from Poland, Romania and Russia established a large Jewish community, and integrated into the English-speaking "Protestant" schools and businesses. Italian immigrants would adopt the Catholic institutions of either the Irish or francophone community. These and many other immigrant communities would initially settle along Saint Lawrence Boulevard, before moving on to more prosperous suburbs such as Côte-Saint-Luc and Saint-Léonard.
In the 1950s, more immigration from Europe again changed the face of Montreal. Immigrants flocked to Montreal from all across Europe, bolstering the numbers of established cultural communities, with a Greek community planting strong roots in the English-speaking community. Immigrants of today come from all over the world. Also, a larger proportion are French-speaking than before. However, immigrants from English-speaking countries such as Britain, the United States, and Jamaica usually come with a knowledge of English; Asians account for the fastest growing segment of the population, with over 26,000 Asians coming to Quebec between 1996 and 2001 and having English as their first official language spoken in 2001; as a result, over a quarter of anglophones now come from visible minority groups. Some First Nation peoples such as the Mohawk, the Cree, and Inuit also use English in their day-to-day lives. These groups blend in easily in a community that defines itself increasingly as multicultural and bilingual. Its large diversity, mobility and access to mainstream North American society means that most anglophones in Quebec will identify themselves as Canadian or by their cultural group, and identify as "anglophone" only in the context of Quebec's French-speaking majority. Montérégie and EstrieIn the late 18th century and the early 19th century, the Eastern Townships and the Chateauguay Valley were pioneered by English-speaking settlers who moved north from the United States; the first were Loyalists wishing to remain British subjects after The American Revolution. Very few of these Loyalists were allowed to stay in the Eastern Townships and were in fact forced by the British to move from the lands that they were squatting on because the British desired to keep the Eastern Townships as an unpopulated buffer zone between the Canadians and the Americans. By the end of the 1790s, American homesteaders were allowed to come northward to settle lands across the border.Today, the southwestern portion of the Montérégie, notably the Chateauguay Valley and Vaudreuil-Soulanges, are home to a significant anglophone presence. The town of Hudson, and the cities of Saint-Lazare and Pincourt, have an anglophone majority and pluralities respectively. LavalIn Laval, the neighbourhoods of Chomedey and Sainte-Dorothée have noticeable English-speaking communities, particularly of Italian and Greek descent.Elsewhere in QuebecMany American and Anglo-Scottish merchants settled in Quebec City in the nineteenth century; however, the majority of anglophones were working-class Irish immigrants. In the 1860s, the proportion of English-speakers reached a historic high of 40%. The population gradually dwindled as Montreal replaced Quebec City as a centre of commerce and industry. English-speakers now represent 1.9% of the total population in the Quebec metropolitan area. The Morrin Centre is a cultural hub for Quebec City's English-speaking community, linked together by media institutions such as the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, CBC Radio One in Quebec City, and the La Maison Anglaise bookstoreAll English-speaking communities outside the Montreal metropolitan area have been in decline for over a century. However, communities near Montreal, the border with Ontario, and the border with the United States are still large enough to constitute a sizeable yet shrinking minority in these regions. Immigrants from England, Scotland, and Ireland would further settle these regions in the mid 19th century, and pioneer the Outaouais region and many Laurentian communities. By the end of the nineteenth century, many grew into thriving small cities: Shawville, Aylmer, Hull, Lachute, Huntingdon, St. Johns, Granby, Saint-Hyacinthe, Victoriaville, Drummondville, Magog, Sherbrooke, Sawyerville. Migration to larger cities in Canada has since reduced the English-speaking population in these regions, but sizeable English-speaking communities remain in Sherbrooke, North Hatley, Richmond, Ayer's Cliff, Brome Lake, and Sutton. The English-speaking population is anchored by such institutions as Bishop's University in Sherbrooke and the Eastern Townships School Board. There has been English-speaking settlement or immigration to some degree in almost all areas of Quebec at one time or another. What remains today in many regions is only symbolic as anglophones have moved away, or assimilated into the French-speaking community. English-speaking communities in the Gaspé Peninsula and the Lower North Shore remain, as well as a small community in the Magdalen Islands. |