Quebec, the French Language, and Quebecois Identity

[kool maudit]

People from those cities, as well as DC or Houston or the Bay, generally like visiting Toronto and Vancouver and probably appreciate the culinary spectrum. But they don't feel like their hometowns are comparatively provincial or lacking in options, because they're not. They're huge, wealthy, cosmopolitan cities.

[niwell]

I don't want to speak for hipster duck but I think what he may have been referring to is the "New American" style that's common in gentrified areas of many US cities. Cues for that style come more from elevated traditional "American" cooking but tends to have more influences from the South and Latin/Mexican dishes. There's a lot of similarity with what's going on in Canadian cities but there is a divergence in terms of flavours, with more emphasis on Asian cuisine, for instance. It certainly doesn't mean that a wide variety of stuff isn't available though.

Interestingly this style seems less predominant in places like NYC (and I can only assume SoCal) which are much more varied. Whereas in Chicago - which still has a very well rounded food scene - you are likely to get more takes on American food. And Mexican.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by niwell

I don't want to speak for hipster duck but I think what he may have been referring to is the "New American" style that's common in gentrified areas of many US cities. Cues for that style come more from elevated traditional "American" cooking but tends to have more influences from the South and Latin/Mexican dishes. There's a lot of similarity with what's going on in Canadian cities but there is a divergence in terms of flavours, with more emphasis on Asian cuisine, for instance. It certainly doesn't mean that a wide variety of stuff isn't available though.

Interestingly this style seems less predominant in places like NYC (and I can only assume SoCal) which are much more varied. Whereas in Chicago - which still has a very well rounded food scene - you are likely to get more takes on American food. And Mexican.

Yeah, there are a lot of places like that, I just don't think they are exactly the right comparison for Toronto/Vancouver diaspora cuisines, where I think New York/Los Angeles have different but comparable offerings.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

This was a really good post, but I have to take issue with this. It makes it sound as though Canadians are these enormously varied eaters while Americans are stuck in the 1970s.

Cities like New York, Los Angeles, DC or Houston have been transformed by their immigration experiences just like Toronto and Vancouver have. I am in Toronto and Southern California for extended periods every year, and that's been the case for over two decades. I really don't think one is any more gastronomically varied than the other, although both places are more so than they were in 2004.

You could say, sure, but Southern California isn't the US, which is true. But it is home to like 25 million people and is certainly a key US "node" like Toronto or Vancouver are for Canada.

We can't compare residents of two of our largest, most cosmopolitan cities with a vague idea of "middle America". Los Angeles and New York have lots of things and lots of communities as well, and while Toronto or Vancouver might outshine them with this or that diaspora, NY/LA surely do with others.

There are ways in which Los Angeles can feel quite a bit more varied than Toronto. And beef patties and roti (whether Guyanese or Indian) are hardly scarce in New York.

With the possible exception of Vancouver, the best places in Canada are not neighbours to the best places in the US. Canadians who claim to be sophisticated should know better than to compare our most refined urban areas to what are the US equivalents to Sudbury and Prince George, but what can I say, it still colours a lot of the Canadian view of what the US is all about and has to offer.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Acajack

As you know I am very pro-Maritimes on here, but I do think it's pretty much a given that Ontario and Quebec had more development than the Maritimes back in the day, given their much larger populations and the fact that there wasn't a Denmark vs. Nigeria disparity in economic development and standard of living between the colonies of British North America.

It isn't though. Back before the railways, Ontario was pretty remote while Halifax and St. John's were places you might naturally stop at when traveling between the US and the UK. Ontario ended up with more population relatively early on because it had more farmland but this doesn't make it more developed. Toronto and Saint John were about the same size in 1850. Ontario might have been less urbanized than New Brunswick back then.

If you look at historical content from even the 1910's or earlier there wasn't much sense of the Maritimes being "behind" Quebec and Ontario. I think this emerged culturally mostly in the 20th century (seemingly in the 1970's in particular due to media from that era like Goin' Down the Road) and is applied anachronistically. And I'm not sure it's that applicable today. There isn't much quality of life gap between Quebec and Ontario and the Maritimes. They are all about the same these days. Urbanization rates are converging too with about half of the people in each province living in the primary cities, in Atlantic Canada and elsewhere. But there is still a double standard where the identity of Atlantic Canada is more strongly culturally tied to rural living while the norm presented for Ontario is downtown Toronto.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Cities like New York, Los Angeles, DC or Houston have been transformed by their immigration experiences just like Toronto and Vancouver have. I am in Toronto and Southern California for extended periods every year, and that's been the case for over two decades. I really don't think one is any more gastronomically varied than the other, although both places are more so than they were in 2004.

You can find a great variety of cuisines in the largest and richest US metropolitan areas but I get the feeling the average resident even in those areas tends to eat something closer to traditional "American" cuisine than in Vancouver and Toronto. Here in Vancouver places like burger chains and steak houses are somewhat rare now; I think Chinese food is more available. And really Vancouver should be nowhere near LA for food, all else being equal. I don't think the factors other than population and wealth are all equal.

It is a bit like the IKEA example too where you can go to metropolitan areas in the US with millions of people that don't obviously have more cosmopolitan food options than much smaller Canadian cities.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

This is what the Swedish visitor of whom I talked yesterday said about his visit to French Canada in 1749 (I'm translating)

I'm not arguing that people couldn't write in French Canada in 1749. But the fact remains that in 1752 you could get a local newspaper in Halifax (featuring constant news from the Atlantic world as there were constant ships coming in) but not Quebec City or Montreal (where ships couldn't visit for large parts of the year due to ice), and Toronto didn't exist yet. And 100 years later you could vote without owning land or print an editorial in the paper criticizing the government without being thrown in prison in NS but not in ON or QC. All I'm saying is these easily googlable bits of history are out of sync with the notion that NS was less developed. Usually less developed areas have less technology and fewer freedoms. I think these are stronger correlates of development than population counts.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by someone123

It isn't though. Back before the railways, Ontario was pretty remote while Halifax and St. John's were places you might naturally stop at when traveling between the US and the UK. Ontario ended up with more population relatively early on because it had more farmland but this doesn't make it more developed. Toronto and Saint John were about the same size in 1850. Ontario might have been less urbanized than New Brunswick back then.

If you look at historical content from even the 1910's or earlier there wasn't much sense of the Maritimes being "behind" Quebec and Ontario. I think this emerged culturally mostly in the 20th century (seemingly in the 1970's in particular due to media from that era like Goin' Down the Road) and is applied anachronistically. And I'm not sure it's that applicable today. There isn't much quality of life gap between Quebec and Ontario and the Maritimes. They are all about the same these days. Urbanization rates are converging too with about half of the people in each province living in the primary cities, in Atlantic Canada and elsewhere. But there is still a double standard where the identity of Atlantic Canada is more strongly culturally tied to rural living while the norm presented for Ontario is downtown Toronto.

You're pretty much arguing against stuff that I'm not really saying. Ontario and Quebec's advantage in early Confederation was primarily population. I don't think there was really that much of a difference in levels of development at the time, at least not significant like first world vs second or third world.

And as you know I agree with you in terms of the present-day desirability of Atlantic Canada versus, say, Ontario. All things considered Halifax is probably a better and more complete city to live in right now than any city in Ontario except Toronto and Ottawa.

[big T]

Originally Posted by someone123

You can find a great variety of cuisines in the largest and richest US metropolitan areas but I get the feeling the average resident even in those areas tends to eat something closer to traditional "American" cuisine than in Vancouver and Toronto. Here in Vancouver places like burger chains and steak houses are somewhat rare now; I think Chinese food is more available. And really Vancouver should be nowhere near LA for food, all else being equal. I don't think the factors other than population and wealth are all equal.

It is a bit like the IKEA example too where you can go to metropolitan areas in the US with millions of people that don't obviously have more cosmopolitan food options than much smaller Canadian cities.

I guess everything is scaled up in the US, including the threshold for provincialism

[Acajack]

In terms of cuisine, it's been said here (and I think it's true) that the cuisine in most large Canadian cities is more "international" whereas in the US even in large cities you're more likely to find American-based fare. Even a lot of the finer American big city restaurants will have gussied up food inspired by cuisine that originated in the US. Or innovative fusions between American cuisine and foreign cuisines.

Canadian cuisine doesn't do that nearly as much, with the possible exception of Montreal and even Quebec in general. (Which is more like the US in this respect.)

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

This was a really good post, but I have to take issue with this. It makes it sound as though Canadians are these enormously varied eaters while Americans are stuck in the 1970s.

Cities like New York, Los Angeles, DC or Houston have been transformed by their immigration experiences just like Toronto and Vancouver have. I am in Toronto and Southern California for extended periods every year, and that's been the case for over two decades. I really don't think one is any more gastronomically varied than the other, although both places are more so than they were in 2004.

I was never suggesting that Americans - especially citizens of megacities like NY and LA - have worse food options than Canadians. I'm just saying, which I think you alluded to later, that English Canadian tastes have migrated towards Asian-inspired foods and American cuisine has become a lot more Latin American-inspired and Southern US-inspired. It was a counterpoint to a comment made by someone else that Americans and English Canadians lead indistinguishable lives.

I'm not just talking about unfair comparisons of Toronto to small town USA (FWIW, I think comparing NYC to Vancouver which is 1/8 the size is also unfair, but I digress), but also like-for-like city comparisons.

This is just a random example, but it's a good experiment. Try typing in "Lanzhou noodles" on Google maps, zoom out to include the Southern Ontario peninsula and surrounding US states and then hit "search this area".

When I tried it, I got 1 hit in London ON, 1 hit in Waterloo ON, 1 hit in St. Catharines, 1 in Kingston, 2 in Ottawa, 4 hits in Detroit, 3 hits in Cleveland, no hits in Buffalo, no hits in Rochester, and too many to count in the GTA. Just to prove I'm not focusing on the Rust Belt, I moused over to Baltimore-Washington and got 2 hits (9 million people).

You can pick another regional Asian dish (obviously don't use a generic search string like "Chinese restaurant") or Latin American or Southern US dish and do a similar search and see what pops up.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by someone123

You can find a great variety of cuisines in the largest and richest US metropolitan areas but I get the feeling the average resident even in those areas tends to eat something closer to traditional "American" cuisine than in Vancouver and Toronto. Here in Vancouver places like burger chains and steak houses are somewhat rare now; I think Chinese food is more available. And really Vancouver should be nowhere near LA for food, all else being equal. I don't think the factors other than population and wealth are all equal.

It is a bit like the IKEA example too where you can go to metropolitan areas in the US with millions of people that don't obviously have more cosmopolitan food options than much smaller Canadian cities.

Vancouver is like 50% Asian and they are present in all income classes possibly even more in the very wealthy and upper middle class. No US city has such demographics. LA might be nearly that Hispanic and Mexican food is also very present in LA but the westside is still predominantly white as is the fine dining scene. I think middle to upper middle class white palates are probably pretty similar in both countries.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Acajack

You're pretty much arguing against stuff that I'm not really saying. Ontario and Quebec's advantage in early Confederation was primarily population. I don't think there was really that much of a difference in levels of development at the time, at least not significant like first world vs second or third world.

And as you know I agree with you in terms of the present-day desirability of Atlantic Canada versus, say, Ontario. All things considered Halifax is probably a better and more complete city to live in right now than any city in Ontario except Toronto and Ottawa.

It sounds like you are changing your argument a little. I think this conversation started back on page 551, with this exchange:

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

In fact for awhile the Maritimes were a very rich, highly influential part of Canada until that influence shifted to the regions now occupied as Ontario and Quebec, so perhaps we could say that the Maritimes were the primary exporter of Canadian culture?

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

In the early 19th century, the Maritimes had only barely half the population of Québec. And the capital of colonial Canada was in Québec, not in the Maritimes. They were always some outlying territories.

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

By the mid 19th Century, the east coast was a hotbed of international shipping and trade, etc. and thus the area had become quite prosperous. Population is not a singular metric by which to measure prosperity. However, by the early 20th century, the expansion of rail tipped the economic scales back in favour of Montreal and Toronto, so Halifax had a period of decline, which was worsened by the Halifax Explosion in 1917. It is the opinion of some that this held back Halifax's development by about 20 years as it recovered from that event.

Originally Posted by Acajack

Ontario and Quebec were certainly much more developed than the Maritimes both economically and demographically for most of Canada's history. Pre- and post-Confederation.

If you look at numbers of the Confederation of 1867 it is very much an Ontario-Quebec duo (which is the source of the "pact between two nations" perspective that is very common in French Canada) with the other smaller provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia as add-ons.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Vancouver is like 50% Asian and they are present in all income classes possibly even more in the very wealthy and upper middle class. No US city has such demographics. LA might be nearly that Hispanic and Mexican food is also very present in LA but the westside is still predominantly white as is the fine dining scene. I think middle to upper middle class white palates are probably pretty similar in both countries.

The white people I know still eat a lot of Chinese food and in a lot of cases have opinions on specific varieties of Chinese cuisine. Korean food has become really popular too (IMO a bit oversaturated here now with fried chicken places everywhere). It is like how sushi became a standard part of the local food scene years ago; I would bet that most sushi consumed here is not consumed by Japanese people.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by someone123

I'm not arguing that people couldn't write in French Canada in 1749. But the fact remains that in 1752 you could get a local newspaper in Halifax (featuring constant news from the Atlantic world as there were constant ships coming in) but not Quebec City or Montreal

There were virtually no newspapers in France either (the big explosion of newspapers in France dates from 1789). So was Nova Scotia more developed than France?

And if these observations by the Swedish traveler are correct, that would make French Canada one of the most literate Western society at the time (when not even half of the population in France could sign their names in marriage certificates). That's certainly far more important in terms of development than the existence of a newspaper (back when newspapers were rather rare things everywhere, as there were no elections, no political life, no public opinion in most European countries, with French Canada being no exception), but it doesn't mean news didn't travel, as there were colporteurs, crieurs publics, parish priests telling official news and announcements to their parishioners at the Sunday mass, government decrees pasted on the walls of the main settlements, and travelers telling the news they had learned. The French Canadians, with their coureurs des bois and missionaries, were far more informed about the interior of North America and what happened there than the 13 British colonies or Nova Scotia with their newspapers.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

This is just a random example, but it's a good experiment. Try typing in "Lanzhou noodles" on Google maps, zoom out to include the Southern Ontario peninsula and surrounding US states and then hit "search this area".

When I tried it, I got 1 hit in London ON, 1 hit in Waterloo ON, 1 hit in St. Catharines, 1 in Kingston, 2 in Ottawa, 4 hits in Detroit, 3 hits in Cleveland, no hits in Buffalo, no hits in Rochester, and too many to count in the GTA. Just to prove I'm not focusing on the Rust Belt, I moused over to Baltimore-Washington and got 2 hits (9 million people).

Lanzhou noodles have become rather common in Paris, but I find them a bit overdone. Although I know one place near the Champs-Elysées where they serve a very large bowl of homemade Lanzhou noodle soup with beef or pork for just 13 euros tax and tip included (used to be only 10 euros before Covid) that is rather good (they prepare the dough in front of clients).

In the US I had better Asian food than Lanzhou noodles though. For example in California it's possible to find very good and authentic sushis (which is hard to find in either Paris or London, England, unless you spend an amazing amount of money in the very few authentic sushi places).

[someone123]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

That's certainly far more important in terms of development than the existence of a newspaper (back when newspapers were rather rare things everywhere, as there were no elections, no political life, no public opinion in most European countries, with French Canada being no exception)

Well, there were elections in NS starting in 1758. You guys eventually got those after a lot of grisly decapitations and rebellions.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/e...canadian-parliamentary-democracy-feature

My argument is simply that it's unusual for a less developed polity to be ahead in areas like this.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by someone123

My argument is simply that it's unusual for a less developed polity to be ahead in areas like this.

Proof is in the pudding. The British chose Québec City as the capital city, and not Halifax, even though Québec City was full of annoying "French" people, whereas Halifax would certainly have felt more at home.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Proof is in the pudding. The British chose Québec City as the capital city, and not Halifax, even though Québec City was full of annoying "French" people, whereas Halifax would certainly have felt more at home.

It would have been highly unusual to put the capital of Canada outside of Canada.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by someone123

The white people I know still eat a lot of Chinese food and in a lot of cases have opinions on specific varieties of Chinese cuisine. Korean food has become really popular too (IMO a bit oversaturated here now with fried chicken places everywhere). It is like how sushi became a standard part of the local food scene years ago; I would bet that most sushi consumed here is not consumed by Japanese people.

Yes and white people eat Mexican food in Los Angeles. When you are bicultural city it's not really evidence of cosmopolitism that you eat the food completely surrounding you. White people eat high end sushi for sure less so Chinese food still.