1. Objectifs

Intentions :
« While we know a great deal about the role religion played in institutions in Victorian Canada, its place in home and family life has remained relatively unexplored. [...] Marguerite Van Die depicts religion as ’lived experience’ in a
portrait of a Protestant middle-class family in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. » (quatrième de couverture)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
« Family papers and material culture » (quatrième de couverture)

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse de contenu

3. Résumé

« We need to know more about the connections that college-educated middle-class Protestants made between the world in which they lived and their perceptions of God. Did those perceptions change as people began to experience time and space differently under the impact of new technologies, new communications systems, and increased consumerism? What motivated lay people to invest so heavily in religious and moral institutions once they were no longer supported by the state through religious establishment? Did religious concerns have any influence on the economic and political strategies of middle-class families to ensure their well-being and continuity? It has been observed that in Canada ’Confederation was an offspring of secular statesmanship, born of political and economic necessity, fathered by politicians and railway promoters. Its purpose was not to create a covenant people or to hasten the coming of the kingdom of God.’ We know little, however, about the ways in which evangelicals made connections in private and public life between their moral convictions and the economic policies of the new Canadian nation. In short, how did religion interact with other aspects of peoples’s lives - the day-to-day demands of keeping a house and caring for one’s family, coping with death and loss, advancing a family’s economic and social interests, and shaping individual and family identity in the local community and the nation? [...] The study that follows is an entry - a kind of ’preliminary probe’ - into these and related questions. It is a case study of three generations of an evangelical and unabshedly middle-class family, the Colbys of Stanstead, Quebec. Members of Canada’s emerging economic elite, they were active contributors to their local community and, through elected political office, to public life in early post-Confederation Canada. » (pp. 10-11)