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I am American. My parents are Franco-American. My grandparents were French Canadian.
My mom has traced the family tree for our two primary lines (her side and my dad’s side) back 300+ years to 16-sometime-or-other, when our ancestors first emigrated from France. My grandparents were born and at least partly raised in Canada; I forget exactly who moved down to the U.S. when, but it happened during the first few decades of the twentieth century. I know the family on my mom’s side moved to Vermont first before coming to my hometown in New Hampshire, while I believe my dad’s grandparents brought the family directly to my hometown. Actually, I know, or remember, a lot less of this than I feel I ought to. Although this was part of the time period when many French Canadians were moving to New England to work in the mills, I don’t believe great-grandparents or grandparents were mill-workers. In the case of my dad’s grandfather, he opened a restaurant in my hometown during the Great Depression which, except for a couple years when it was sold to an outside interest, stayed open and in the family for over sixty years, and was considered a city institution.
My hometown had a large French-Canadian population when my parents were growing up. Not only did my parents speak French at home when they were growing up, but also at the local Catholic parish school, they took all subjects in both English and French. However, the city was still predominantly English-speaking, and so my parents (and grandparents) did learn English and adopted that as their primary language. When my siblings and I were growing up, we heard French spoken in two situations: my parents would curse in French, and they would speak in French occasionally with my grandparents—mostly, no doubt, simply when they didn’t want us to know what they were saying. They still tend to slip into French cursing when they’re really angry, and my dad’s English pronunciation still bears a hint or two of his French-Canadian background, in particular a tendency to pronounce ‘th’ as ‘t’. (This, combined with the general New England accent, can be amusing: “thwart” comes out as “twat”.)
I’ve always considered myself Franco-American, like my parents, but it’s more my heritage than a substantial part of my identity. Being Franco-American, for me, means insisting that the R in my last name should be capitalized—even though it turns out that in Canada the French-Canadians themselves no longer do. It means knowing how to pronounce the various French family names still common in my hometown. It means having many aunts, uncles, and cousins—some of whom I’ve only seen a few times in my life despite living in the same city, some of whom I’ve never met—and thinking families with a minimum of four kids are not unusual. It means knowing what gorton is and how to pronounce it.
Still, I feel like I’m missing much of my cultural background. Beyond gorton, I can’t think of any particularly French-Canadian dishes my parents would make. (Crepes, I suppose, though I think of those as more French-French than French-Canadian.) We don’t have any distinctive cultural dress, we never celebrated any traditional French-Canadian holidays. I only learned French when I started taking classes in eighth grade. I still have a fairly decent basic reading comprehension, but my speaking skills were always weak even when I was studying, and I now have a hard time recalling vocabulary if I’m trying to compose sentences in my head. I never even really picked up the swear words (although I know them now). I can claim to be Franco-American because of my family name and background, and a few cultural tidbits as I’ve mentioned, but really when it comes down to it, I’m just American. Sometimes I regret that and wish I could reclaim more of my heritage, but overall I’m okay with being just another American.
My mom has traced the family tree for our two primary lines (her side and my dad’s side) back 300+ years to 16-sometime-or-other, when our ancestors first emigrated from France. My grandparents were born and at least partly raised in Canada; I forget exactly who moved down to the U.S. when, but it happened during the first few decades of the twentieth century. I know the family on my mom’s side moved to Vermont first before coming to my hometown in New Hampshire, while I believe my dad’s grandparents brought the family directly to my hometown. Actually, I know, or remember, a lot less of this than I feel I ought to. Although this was part of the time period when many French Canadians were moving to New England to work in the mills, I don’t believe great-grandparents or grandparents were mill-workers. In the case of my dad’s grandfather, he opened a restaurant in my hometown during the Great Depression which, except for a couple years when it was sold to an outside interest, stayed open and in the family for over sixty years, and was considered a city institution.
My hometown had a large French-Canadian population when my parents were growing up. Not only did my parents speak French at home when they were growing up, but also at the local Catholic parish school, they took all subjects in both English and French. However, the city was still predominantly English-speaking, and so my parents (and grandparents) did learn English and adopted that as their primary language. When my siblings and I were growing up, we heard French spoken in two situations: my parents would curse in French, and they would speak in French occasionally with my grandparents—mostly, no doubt, simply when they didn’t want us to know what they were saying. They still tend to slip into French cursing when they’re really angry, and my dad’s English pronunciation still bears a hint or two of his French-Canadian background, in particular a tendency to pronounce ‘th’ as ‘t’. (This, combined with the general New England accent, can be amusing: “thwart” comes out as “twat”.)
I’ve always considered myself Franco-American, like my parents, but it’s more my heritage than a substantial part of my identity. Being Franco-American, for me, means insisting that the R in my last name should be capitalized—even though it turns out that in Canada the French-Canadians themselves no longer do. It means knowing how to pronounce the various French family names still common in my hometown. It means having many aunts, uncles, and cousins—some of whom I’ve only seen a few times in my life despite living in the same city, some of whom I’ve never met—and thinking families with a minimum of four kids are not unusual. It means knowing what gorton is and how to pronounce it.
Still, I feel like I’m missing much of my cultural background. Beyond gorton, I can’t think of any particularly French-Canadian dishes my parents would make. (Crepes, I suppose, though I think of those as more French-French than French-Canadian.) We don’t have any distinctive cultural dress, we never celebrated any traditional French-Canadian holidays. I only learned French when I started taking classes in eighth grade. I still have a fairly decent basic reading comprehension, but my speaking skills were always weak even when I was studying, and I now have a hard time recalling vocabulary if I’m trying to compose sentences in my head. I never even really picked up the swear words (although I know them now). I can claim to be Franco-American because of my family name and background, and a few cultural tidbits as I’ve mentioned, but really when it comes down to it, I’m just American. Sometimes I regret that and wish I could reclaim more of my heritage, but overall I’m okay with being just another American.
