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St. Justin: A Case-Study in Rural French-Canadian Social Organization*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Philip Garigue
Philip Garigue*
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Extract

St. Justin occupies a special place in the social study of French Canada. It was there that Léon Gérin began, in 1886, his pioneer study of the rural communities of the province of Quebec. It was on the basis of the data he collected there that he formulated his analysis of rural French Canada as a close causal cycle in which the dominant factors were the family, the land, and religion. The basis of his argument is the proposition that the people of St. Justin lead a life which “presents itself here as a simple juxtaposition of families which are very nearly all equal; nearly all occupied in agriculture; nearly all self-sufficient; but none of which has a higher ambition than to transmit intact the family property to one of the children, although favouring, within the limits of its resources, the settlement of the other children outside the family home.”

He elaborated this proposition into a complex of interlocking institutions which gave to the inhabitants of St. Justin a definite form of social organization, as well as a definite culture. In fact, he built a model which has remained unequalled in the analysis of French Canada. Presented as a functional entity, St. Justin was made to represent a stage in the historical, as well as the geographical, development of Quebec. According to Gérin, St. Justin had reached a balanced relationship among its various institutions. The family unit was said by him to be stable and well-integrated. The size of the farm was in direct relation to the size of the family, and the work on the land, carried out by the members of the family, was limited to their needs. The total output thus depended on the quantity of labour each family could supply for a given unit of land, and on the natural fertility of the soil. The general expectation of the members of a family was limited to the creation and maintenance of a unit of property large enough to supply their daily needs, maintain the aged, and provide for the settlement of those who would have to leave the household to go elsewhere. Such an aim demanded a high degree of personal sacrifice from all the members of a family, and tended to turn family property into a communal possession. While the stability of the family was obtained in this manner, the stability of the community had been achieved through the creation of a single broad social class.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , August 1956 , pp. 301 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1956

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Footnotes

*

The author wishes to acknowledge the receipt of a grant from the Social Science Research Council, which allowed him to collect the data upon which this article is based. The field-work was carried out during the summer of 1955.

References

1 Gérin, L., “L'Habitant de St. Justin,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Canada, IV, 1898, 139–216.Google Scholar

2 Gérin, L., Le Type économique et social des Canadiens (Montréal, 1937), 86.Google Scholar

3 Hughes, E. C., French Canada in Transition (Chicago, 1943), 5.Google Scholar

4 Miner, H., St. Denis (Chicago, 1939), 237.Google Scholar

5 Redfield's introduction to ibid., xvi.

6 Falardeau, J.-C., “The Changing Social Structure” in Falardeau, J.-C., ed., Essays on Contemporary Quebec (Quebec, 1953), 120.Google Scholar

7 Miner, , St. Denis, 86.Google Scholar

8 On the problem of the study of peasant communities, see Lewis, O., “Peasant Culture in India and Mexico” in Marriott, M., ed., Village India, Memoir no. 83, American Anthropologist, LVII, no. 3, 1955, part 2, pp. 145–70.Google Scholar

9 Redfield's introduction to Miner, , St. Denis, xv Google Scholar; and Hughes, , French Canada in Transition, 1.Google Scholar

10 Historical information about St. Justin was obtained from records, interviews with older inhabitants, and the following publications: Plante, H., St. Justin (Three Rivers, 1937)Google Scholar; and the newspaper, L'Echo de St. Justin (1921–1947), in 26 vols.Google Scholar

11 A minot is equal to about 78 pints.

12 Gérin, , “L'Habitant de St. Justin,” 210.Google Scholar

13 St. Denis, 248–51.

14 Falardeau, J.-C., “Stratifications sociales de notre milieu,” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Third Series, XXXIX, 65–71.Google Scholar

15 “A New Epoch in Rural Quebec,” American Journal of Sociology, LVI, no. 1, 1950, 1–10.Google Scholar

16 St. Denis, 234–6.

17 Frégault, G., La Civilisation de la Nouvelle France (Montréal, 1944)Google Scholar, and his La Société canadienne sous le régime français (Ottawa, 1954).Google Scholar

18 One of the first studies to point this out was the one by Douglas, J., New England and New France (New York, 1913).Google Scholar

19 “A New Epoch in Rural Quebec,” 9.

20 French Canada in Transition, 2.

21 Ibid., 126.

22 Brunet, M., “Conquête anglaise et la déchéance de la bourgeoisie canadienne,” Amérique française, XIII, no. 2, 1955, 19–84.Google Scholar

23 Falardeau, , ed., Essays on Contemporary Quebec, 120.Google Scholar

24 Rioux, M., Description de la culture de l'Ile Verte (Ottawa, 1954), 1.Google Scholar