Janet Hale's "Bloodlines"; McLoughlin and fort demographics

[Mike Cleven]

>At 07:56 PM 4/16/2001 -0700, you wrote:
> >Here is a page of links to more info about Janet Hale and her books.
> >The first two links lead to brief bios, which also include
> >photographs of her.  http://www.ipl.org/cgi/ref/native/browse.pl/A36
> >As to how many generations away from McLoughlin she would be, Ms.
> >Hale relates being told she was the great-great granddaughter of
> >McLoughlin, and she is in the right age bracket for that number of
> >"great's."
> >
> >I see my county library has two copies out in branches of
> >"Bloodlines," so it might be available in most local libraries.
> >
> >I was surprised to see she described McLoughlin as Irish (and
> >consequently herself as part-Irish), as I had always thought him to
> >be a Scot (though born in Canada).  I found an article in the [online
> >version of the 1908] Catholic Encyclopedia which describes his
> >background. There I discovered he was Irish on his father's side and
> >Scottish on his mother's.  The impression of him as a Scot is
> >probably reinforced by the facts that John was raised by his maternal
> >grandfather (his father died young), and he was sent for a to study a
> >while in Scotland.  http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09504b.htm
> >
> >On the topic of the predominant religion in the Fort, I was
> >interested to also see there that McLoughlin himself was Anglican but
> >converted to Catholicism in 1842.  I would imagine the fort
> >population and HBC employees were mostly Catholic due to the
> >preponderance of French Canadians among them.
> >
> >(Per the CIA Fact Book online, Canada is today divided about 42%/40%
> >Protestant/Catholic, as compared to 56%/28% in the U.S. I can't work
> >an equation, but using my trusty percent-key calculator to factor out
> >the one-quarter of Canada's population who are French-speaking seems
> >to account within a couple percent for the difference.
> >http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ca.html .)

Nice bookmark; wonder what other tidbits there are.  The difference you
point out is rightly mostly due to the French, but also to a strong Catholic
element in Atlantic Canada as well as in the West; Ontario I'm not so sure
about, at least until recent times before its multiculturalization (it used
to be near-solid Orange).  Out West there's a large Ukrainian and other
East-Euro Catholic population dating both back to frontier times and also
among the newcomers; and there are a surprising amount of Chinese-Catholic
churches; at least one or two of the local parochial schools do, in fact,
serve the Chinese community directly.  Another difference out West, though,
espeically out here beyond the mountains, is that there's also a broad
element of society that's a-religious and have only the loosest connection
to their hereditary religions; at most where weddings and funerals are held;
back East there's a lot more actual worship, especially in Quebec (even
now), and the Church (of any demonination) is much more a part of local
society than the rectors are out here.

The breakdown of that 42/40 split I'd be interested to see; in Quebec it's
more like 80%, I think.  The percentage totals differ slightly; 82% for
Canada, 84% for US; the breakdown of the "other" 18 and 16 percents would be
a very interesting comparison, I think; as would a province-by-province
breakdown.

>
>Pardon my interjection, but hmm.
>
>I'm not sure that you can project those figures back into Canadian history,
>or that the modern Canadian figures on religion are comparable to the
>United
>States ones.
>
>For the US: Protestant 56%, Roman Catholic 28%, Jewish 2%, other 4%, none
>10% (1989)
>
>For Canada: Roman Catholic 42%, Protestant 40%, other 18%
>
>The American figures look like they were based on religious affiliation at
>birth, given that the US is more religious than, well, the rest of the
>First
>World. Conversely, the Canadian figures seem to be based on religious
>_practice_ and active identification, which are considerably lower. I don't
>think that those figures are directly comparable.

Again, I'm not so sure about those parameters in this context; my impression
of the figures you've quoted is that they were by birth; technically I'm
United Church under those definitions but would never now think of myself
that way (what I am is another question, but we'll leave that for now), and
that's the way I've always assumed the census types totted up their figures.

And _are_ Americans really more religious than Europeans?  That's a testy
one; the Church has lost its zeal throughout Europe but the devout are still
the devout.  I think it's well-known that Americans have a lot of ideas
about their Republic being mandated by God etc. etc. and that can get scary
for the rest of the world to listen to; but it's true that Americans _do_
make going to Church part of their regular social schedule, and much more
visibly and proudly so, than I would say Canadians do, or Europeans might.
>
>More to the point, here, I would call it safe to say that circa 1870,
>before
>the beginning of large-scale net immigration into Canada, almost the entire
>French Canadian population of Canada (then, 30% of the total) were
>Catholic,
>along with between a quarter and a third of the English Canadian
>population.
>
>I have no idea, though, how those figures would play out in western Canada.
>If someone asked me (or I just went and told y'all), I'd guess that the
>predominance of the French-influenced Catholic Métis would have left the
>Prairies substantially more Catholic than, say, Ontario, though there was
>in
>1870 a strong Scottish Protestant minority in southern Manitoba. Perhaps a
>2-1 split in favour of the Catholics?

They Metis were and still are too small to affect the religious balance any
more than any other of the many religious groups found across the Prairies
since the failure of Nord-Ouest as a political dream.  The 2-1 split you
mention might have been the case at the time of the Rebellions, if you
included the "urban" settlements at the Forks etc. vs. the still-open
Prairie out past today's Saskatchewan border; the outer Prairie would have
been exclusively Catholic, if not simply aboriginal, in faith, although the
Catholic church made heavy inroads throughout native Canada, including
there.  There's also the French migration to the Red River Valley, the
descendants of which are still around today (and have French accents in
their English, and their own distinct dialect).  It's for them as well as to
mollify the Metis that French was made a language of the new
pocket-province; this was overridden around the turn of the (last) century
(?) by the Manitoba Schools Act and technically a violation of Manitoba's
own constitution as well as the agreements by which the province became part
of Confederation (I don't know my Manitoba history for the particulars, or
if I've got that story quite straight); at that time I believe the
franco-anglo split may have been already as wide as 5/95; or 10/90, because
of the intense immigration to the Prairies and Winnipeg especially brought
on by the railway; as elsewhere in the West, the idea of a common lingua
franca - English - between many peoples with no other common tongue - was
highly politicially saleable, despite the prominence of French within
Manitoban society; indeed within a whole quarter of central Winnipeg (St.
Boniface); linguistic issues of the whole controversy aside, I brought up
all this by way of mentioning that _much_ of the immigration to the West was
from Catholic lands, especially the Ukraine, Poland, Italy and Catholic
Germany/Austria-Hungary; and of course Ireland and Catholic Scots and
English (what are the Welsh, anyway?  Religiously, I mean).

Another point here; the American population has a high contingent of
Latino-Catholics to bring _up_ its own Catholic numbers.....

Final point of this digression is in ref to the original question you posed:
it's immigration that determined the religious shape of the West, more than
the French history and early settlement of the region did; they are a factor
in whatever breakdown of the West there is, especially in Manitoba,
>
>In British Columbia, well, I give up. Maybe Catholics predominated in the
>interior, and various breeds of Protestants concentrated on the coast, but
>with no clear heartland?

It's a valley-by-valley thing, or was in the old days; and each town had its
ethnic makeup; Trail-Rossland Italian-Catholic, Penticton diehard Anglican
and UC, Victoria with its cathedrals and old-guard churches; and suburban
Vancouver with its plethora of new, um, experimental churches, and the
city's long tradition of strange cults and universalist thinking; a tour of
religious buildings on the West Side is an eye-opener.  And you get ethnic
pockets like the Doukhobours in the West Kootenay, who are sort of
heretic-Orthodox, or the Mennonites of the Fraser Valley, who are decidedly
Reform in character; and a heavy Dutch contingent, often _very_ religious
(we have one charismatic Catholic premier in recent memeory, to boot).
Vancouver itself is a mixed bag, especially in the last couple of decades
because of ethnic diversification; Sikhs and Buddhists number prominently in
the city's religious rolls, and it's true that the new immigrations of
recent time are far more religious than the descendants of the older
settlers, who moved away from here to get away from religion; the current
Premier is, of course, a Sikh, although not for much longer if all the polls
and the media are right (though not because he's a Sikh; it's a party
thing).

BC was long-known for its lackadaisacal attitude towards religion, as well
as its experimentation with weird spiritualities; also religious extremism
(as with many of the new Protestant churches, though not them exclusively);
it goes on and on.  But mostly political apathy here extends towards
political apathy; the lure of the good life - or rainy boredom - being just
too strong.  There was a figure here a couple of decades ago that only about
20% of British Columbians considered themselves practicing _anything_; the
religious fervour (for whichever faith) of the newcomers of recent times has
much changed this, and it's true that the born-again and other proselytizing
Christianities have been doing well for themselves in attendance and
membership in recent times; but there is no real predominant religious
dominance here, either in population or power; the city's elite is itself
multi-religious as well as multi-ethnic...

MC
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