When:
June 8, 2019 @ 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm
2019-06-08T13:00:00-04:00
2019-06-08T14:30:00-04:00

French Canadian presentation runs 1-2:30pm., Dr. Leslie Choquette, Director of the French Institute, Assumption College, Worcester, Massachusetts and author Jackie Finn. Book is titled: From Habitants to Immigrants: The Sansoucys, the Harpins, and the Potvins. This is the story of the lives of two, eventually three, French Canadian families from their settlement by soldiers in the Richelieu Valley of Quebec in 1665 to their immigration to the mill towns of Massachusetts at the turn of the twentieth century. Told generation by generation, the book portrays the military expeditions of the Carignan-Salières Regiment sent by King Louis XIV of France to quell the marauding Iroquois, the colonization of the soldiers in the Canadian wilderness, the dependence on a family economy with all hands working through the seasons, the pain of epidemics, famine, war, the loss of French Canada to England and the ensuing cultural conflicts, and ultimately, the end of available farmland which led to emigration and the creation of a Franco-American diaspora in New England. Free and open to all.