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Educational influences in the development of English-speaking culture in post-conquest Quebec, 1760-1800

University of British Columbia

The underlying problem undertaken in this study was to find out how English-speaking culture in Quebec managed to develop during the first forty years of British rule of a land that hitherto had been the home of French-speaking culture. As language is considered to be the most important aspect of a culture, so the problem narrowed itself into an examination of how the English language was kept alive in a period marked by the dearth of English-speaking schools to teach English. The reason for the survival of the English language in a land where French was the native tongue was due to the educational influences named in the Introduction. The conclusions reached in this study bear out the importance of such influences in the development of English-speaking culture. Historical research was used to amass material to illustrate the role of educational influences in the development of English-speaking culture. The gathering of such material itself was a problem because historians have hitherto concentrated on the political aspects of the period, so that secondary material on English-speaking culture is scarce. Archival records have been of some use but have required extensive time for perusal in order to locate pertinent information. Newspaper records have proved to be exceedingly useful, and have been used extensively. It is hoped that this study, despite its inadequacies, will illuminate one or two dark recesses in Canadian history.

Text

2011-05-31

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/34985

Education

University of British Columbia

Graduate