La grande émigration canadienne: quelques réflexions exploratoires

Marvin McInnis
Additional contact information
Marvin McInnis: Département d’économie, Queen’s University

L'Actualité Economique, 2000, vol. 76, issue 1, 113-135

Abstract: This paper reviews the too-much neglected historical experience of large-scale emigration from Canada over the last four decades of the nineteenth century. It is shown that this involved anglophone Canadians as well as French. The paper focuses on the similarities and also on some of the contrasts in the emigration characteristics of the two ethnic groups. An explanation of the emigration is offered in terms of a rate of growth of industrial employment insufficient to absorb the rapid population growth that was occuring in a rural society that had run out of cultivable land onto which to expand settlement. The major change in tariff policy in the United States that was brought about in the 1860s is identified as an important reason for the insufficient growth of industrial employment. L’article s’intéresse à un événement trop souvent négligé dans l’histoire canadienne : l’émigration, tant anglophone que francophone, survenue durant les 40 dernières années du 19e siècle. Le texte fait ressortir les similitudes et les contrastes de l’émigration des deux groupes linguistiques. L’explication offerte ici repose sur l’incapacité de la croissance d’emplois industriels à absorber la croissance rapide de la population dans une société rurale qui n’avait plus de terres cultivables disponibles. Les changements majeurs apportés dans les années 1860 à la structure tarifaire américaine sont un important facteur d’explication, selon nous, de cette croissance insuffisante de l’emploi industriel canadien.

Date: 2000
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/602317ar

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:actuec:v:76:y:2000:i:1:p:113-135

Access Statistics for this article

L'Actualité Economique is currently edited by Benoit Dostie

More articles in L'Actualité Economique from Société Canadienne de Science Economique Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benoit Dostie ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).