La Nouvelle-France (1534–1760)

One of the undeniable pleasures of reading the francophone writing of Canada as a historical project is to observe how it takes shape. Although it is produced for the most part in Quebec, in its initial phase it was published in France. A printing press was not established in Quebec until 1764 when the first periodical, La Gazette de Québec/The Quebec Gazette, appeared. The point of departure for subsequent writing in French is New France, which included what are now known as the regions of Acadia and Franco-Ontario. Subsequent writing from the Prairies did not appear until the nineteenth century. It also includes Aboriginal writing, which holds a distinct, if often neglected, place. Although critics of both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries consider francophone writing to be a literature of resistance, the cultures resisted are not always the same, inasmuch as French Canada would variously oppose Great Britain and France, and often the differing ideologies and regions of French Canada itself would be in opposition.