1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«This book traces the changing forms and meanings of family in the territory that now comprises Canada, from the first contacts between Indigenous peoples and French explorers, traders, missionaries, and settlers in northeastern North America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the present.» (p. 1) The author «explores the histories of indigenous and settler families in both Quebec and English Canada – experiences too often treated in isolation […].» (p. 2)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
Données documentaires diverses

Type de traitement des données :
Réflexion critique

3. Résumé

The author’s first conclusion «is the extent to which the lives of all families are inextricably bound up with larger political processes, involving conquest, colonization, dispossession, settlement, and migration.» (p. 223) «The second conclusion, which holds true as much for the twenty-first century as for seventeenth-century New France, is the fact that historians must always attempt to peer into families and to examine the inner workings of theses formations, which were very rarely unified or homogeneous. […] The third conclusion has to do with the diversity of families in Canada, beginning long before European settlement in North America. A study of families in Canada must take into account differences of nations, political; organization, ethnic and racial background, religion, language, region, wealth, and […] social class.» (p. 224) «The final conclusion is that of families’ historical agency. Families were in constant interaction with other institutions, and sometimes with institutions more powerful than them: churches, notably Catholic and Protestant, the hospital, or the asylum. These institutions helped to shape families. Sometimes they were a source of assistance to families; sometimes they exerted control over families and their members. Families could also use these institutions, and not always in ways that the institutions themselves intended.» (p. 225)