QUI PERD SA FOI, PERD SA LANGUE'?: THE BIRTH AND DECLINE OF A FRENCH PROTESTANT COMMUNITY IN ALBERTA, 1916-1940

摘要

This article examines a group of French-Canadian settlers in northern Alberta who renounced their Roman Catholic faith to join the Presbyterian Church in 1916 and how this move led to integration of the converts into the wider, dominant Anglo-Albertancommunity. By becoming Protestants, the members of the Duclos Protestant mission were exposed to the Anglo-Canadian nation-building agenda of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Presbyterian Church. Leaving the Roman Catholic Church also meant greater involvement in institutions whose leaders were Anglo-Canadians and in activities conducted primarily in English. Increased contact with anglophones led to faster language shift and to the decline of the French-speaking element in this Protestant community only decades after its creation.