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2 Gérard, Bouchard, ‘Sur la reproduction familiale en milieu rural: systèmes ouverts et systèmes clos’, Recherches sociographiques, XXVIII, 2–3 (1987), 229–51Google Scholar; Gérard, Bouchard and Isabelle De, Pourbaix, ‘Individual and family life courses in the Saguenay Region, Quebec, 1842–1911’, Journal of Family History, 12, 1–3 (1987), 225–42.Google Scholar

3 For a description of the index, see Ainsley, Coale, ‘The decline of fertility in Europe from the French Revolution to World War II’, in Behrman, O. J. et al. , Fertility and family planning. A world view, The University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, 1970), 3–6.Google Scholar

4 Christian, Pouyez, Yolande, Lavoie, Gérard, Bouchard, Raymond, Roy et al. , Les Saguenayens. Introduction à l'histoire des populations du Saguenay, XVIe-XXe siècles, Presses de l'Université du Québec (Québec, 1983), chapter 6.Google Scholar

5 Gérard Bouchard and Raymond Roy, ‘Fécondité et alphabétisation au Saguenay et au Québec (19e–20e siècle)’, (1990), submitted for publication.

6 Cf. Easterlin, Richard A., ‘Does human fertility adjust to the environment?’, Population Proceedings of the American Economic Association, LXI (1971), 399–407Google Scholar; Easterlin, Richard A., ‘Population change and farm settlement in the northern United States’, Journal of Economic History, XXXVI, 1 (1976), 45–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More precisely, the period corresponding to 90 per cent or more of the maximum value of this ratio (=1) has been taken as the threshold point. In many parishes, the elapsed time between the 90 and 100 per cent values is relatively long, which may lead to distorted representations of reality (Gérard, Bouchard and Régis, Thibeault, ‘L'économic agraire et la reproduction sociale dans les campagnes saguenayennes (1852–1971)’, Histoire Sociale/Social History, XVIII, 36 (November-November 1985), 237–57)Google Scholar. Within the frontier period, it is also useful to distinguish a pioneer stage (from the very beginning of land clearing to the introduction of the first priest - or the creation of the parish) and a maturation stage (up to the end of the settlement and physical expansion process). In the Saguenay context, the installation of the first priest is meaningful since it marks the attainment of a minimum level of development (on this: Gérard, Bouchard and Jeannette, Larouche, ‘Dynamique des populations locales: la formation des paroisses rurales au Saguenay (1840–1911)’, Revue d'histoire de l'Amerique française, 41, 3 (Winter 1988), 363–88)Google Scholar. We could also have defined the frontier with reference to other empirical indicators such as the type of migration or economic activities, population density, socio-cultural processes and so forth: see, for example, Miller, David Harry, Steffen, Jerome O. et al. , The Frontier: comparative studies, (Oklahoma, 1977)Google Scholar; Hudson, John C., ‘Migration to an American Frontier’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 66, 2 (June 1976), 242–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marvin, Mikesell, ‘Comparative studies in Frontier history’, Annals, Association of American Geographers, 51 (1961), 62–74)Google Scholar. However, since we are dealing with an agricultural frontier, a land indicator seemed relevant (for an example of this: Taylor, H. W., Clarke, J. and Wightman, W. R., ‘Contrasting land development rates in southern Ontario to 1891’, Canadian Papers in Rural History, V (1986), 50–72.Google Scholar

7 Gérard Bouchard, Raymond Roy and Bernard Casgrain, Reconstitution automatique des families. Le système SOREP, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Dossier no. 2, 2 vols. (1985); Gerard, Bouchard, Raymond, Roy and Bernard, Casgrain, ‘De la micro à la macro-reconstitution des families. Le Système SOREP’, GENUS, XLII, 3–4 (1986), 33–54.Google Scholar

8 Of the 23 parishes created before 1892, 7 were eliminated because of their shifting boundaries (N = 7) or because they developed into small cities before the end of the period (N = 3). As to the BALSAC register, it consists of a computerized database containing the 125,000 reconstituted families of the Saguenay region for the period 1842–1971. The register is now being extended to other regions of the Province of Quebec.

9 René Jetté and Danielle Gauvreau, En marge de l'élaboration dune méthode de mesure des migrations à partir de fiches de families reconstituées. SOREP, Doc. no II–C–121, (1986); René Jetté and Danielle Gauvreau, Le processus de validation du mode de prolongation dans l'étude des migrations: le jumelage des recensements et des families reconstitutées. SOREP, Doc. no. II–C–122 (1986); René, Jetté and Danielle, Gauvreau, ‘Des fiches de famille à la mesure des migrations: une méthode élaborée à partir des données du Saguenay au XIXe siècle’, Cahiers québécois de démographie, 16, 1 (April 1987), 37–65.Google Scholar

10 See R. Jetté and D. Gauvreau, ‘Des fiches de famille.’

11 Gérard Bouchard and Jeannette Larouche, ‘Dynamique des populations’.

12 See, among many others, Chayanov, A. V., The theory of peasant economy (Thorner, D., Kerblay, B. and Smith, R. E. F. eds.) (Homewood, Illinois, 1966)Google Scholar; Ester, Boserup, The conditions of agricultural growth (London, 1965)Google Scholar; Slicher Van Ban, B. H., The agrarian history of Western Europe, AD 500–1500 (New York, 1963)Google Scholar. For a more recent illustration, in an African environment: Claude-Hélène Perrot, ‘L'appropriation de l'espace, un enjeu politique. Pour une histoire du peuplement’, Annales E.S.C., 40e année, no. 6 (November-December 1985), 1,289–1,306.

13 Normand Séguin, La conquête du sol au 19e siècle, (Sillery, 1977), chapter II.

14 Géerard Bouchard and Jeannette Larouche, ‘Dynamique des populations’.

15 Bouchard, Gérard, ‘Le peuplement blanc’, in C. Pouyez, Y. Lavoie et al., Les Saguenayens, chapter 4.Google Scholar

16 Note that the abrupt shifts in the figures from one decade to another have been carefully investigated and they are not an artefact of the data. Rather, they are to be blamed on the small size of the populations (see Graph 1) and, of course, the extent of the mobility. To put these numbers in perspective, the reader has to figure out that a migration increase of + 100/00 would usually mean a net migration of 50 to 100. The following formula has been used: net migration (or natural increase)/×1000 average parish population during the period

17 Gérard, Bouchard, ‘Family structures and geographic mobility at Laterrière, 1851–1935’, The Journal of Family History, II, 4 (Winter 1977), 350–69.Google Scholar

18 See Hubert Charbonneau, ‘Commentaire’, in Gérard Bouchard ed., De la dynamique de la population à l'épidémiologie génétique. Actes du Symposium international SOREP / Proceedings of the SOREP International Symposium, 23–25 September 1987 (Chicoutimi, 1988), 37. But it is fair to recall that the New-France incidence of immigration was relatively low, compared to other North American frontiers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

19 Gérard, Bouchard, ‘L'histoire démographique et le problème des migrations: l'exemple de Laterrière’, Histoire sociale/Social History, VIII, 15 (mai/May 1975), 21–33Google Scholar; Gérard, Bouchard, ‘Démographic et société rurale au Saguenay 1851–1935’, Recherches sociographiques, XIX, 1 (January-April 1978), 7–31Google Scholar; Christian, Pouyez, Raymond, Roy and Gérard, Bouchard, ‘La mobilité géogcaphique en milieu rural: le Saguenay, 1852–1861’, Histoire sociale/Social History, XIV, 27 (mai/May 1981), 123–55.Google Scholar

20 Daniel, Maisonneuve, ‘Structure familiale et exode rural. Le cas de Saint-Damase, 1852–1861’, Cahiers québécois de démographie, 14, 2 (October 1985), 231–40Google Scholar; Philippe Garigue, Saint-Justin. Une réévaluation de l'organisation communautaire, dans J.-C. Falardeau et P. Garigue (sous la direction de), Léon Gérin et l'habitant de Saint-Justin, P.U.L. (Québec 1968), 129–46; Yolande, Lavoie, L'émigration des Canadiens aux Etats-Unis avant 1930 (Montréal, 1971).Google Scholar

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22 Among others: Malin, James C., ‘The turnover of farm population in Kansas’, Kansas Historical Quarterly, 4 (1935), 229–72Google Scholar; Prest, W. R., ‘Stability and change in Old and New England: Clayworth and Dedham’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, VI, 3 (Winter 1976), 359–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adams, John W. and Kasakoff, Alice Bee, ‘Migration and the family in Colonial New England: the view from genealogies’, Journal of Family History (Spring 1984), 24–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rutman, Darrett B., ‘People in process: the New Hampshire towns of the eighteenth century’, Family and kin in urban communities, 1700–1930, Hareven, Tamara K. ed., New Viewpoint (New York and London, 1977), 16–37Google Scholar; Villaflor, G. C. and Sokoloff, K. L., ‘Mission in colonial America: evidence from the militia muster rolls’, Social Science History, 6 (Fall, 1982), 539–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Douglas, Dinsmore, ‘Demographic structure and opportunity for selection of Halfmoon Township, Pennsylvania: 1850–1900’, Human biology, 57, 3 (September, 1985), 335–52Google Scholar; Jeremy, Atack and Fred, Bateman, To their own soil: agriculture in the Antebellum North (Wallace, Henry A. Series on Agricultural History and Rural Studies) (Ames, Iowa, 1987).Google Scholar

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27 Gérard Bouchard, ‘Démographic et société rurale’. Similar cases of socio-economic heterogeneity have been documented elsewhere Bieder, Robert E., ‘Kinship as a factor in migration’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 35, 3 (August, 1973), 429–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David, Gagan, ‘Geographical and social mobility in nineteenth-century Ontario’, The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology/La Revue canadienne de Sociologie et d'Anthropologie, 13, 2 (May/mai, 1976), 152–64Google Scholar; Merle, Curti, The making of an American community. A case study of democracy in a frontier county (Stanford, California, 1969), 483Google Scholar; Adams, John W. and Kasakoff, Alice Bee, ‘Wealth and migration in Massachusetts and Maine: 1771–1798’, The Journal of Economic History, XLV, 2 (1985)Google Scholar; Gjerde, Jon, From peasants to farmers: the migration from Balestrand, Norway, to the Upper Middle West (Inter-disciplinary perspectives on modern history) (New York, 1985) xiv, 319.Google Scholar

28 Gérard Bouchard, ‘Sur la reproduction familiale’.

29 Gérard Bouchard and Jeannette Larouche, ‘Paramètres sociaux de la reproduction’.

30 On this, see Gérard Bouchard and Isabelle De Pourbaix, ‘Dynamique familiale et transmission foncière au Saguenay (1842–1911)’, Sociétés villageoises et rapports villes-campagnes au Québec et dans la France de l'ouest XVII–XXe siècles. Proceedings of the France-Québec Conference, Québec, 1985 (Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières/Presses universitaires de Rennes 1987), 15–23. On the European models, cf. Habakkuk, H. J., ‘Family structure and economic change in nineteenth-century Europe’, The Journal of Economic History, XV, 1 (1955), 1–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy, ‘Structures familiales et coutumes d'héritage en France au XVIe siècle. Système de la coutume’, Annales E.S.C., 27, 4 (07–10, 1972), 825–46Google Scholar; Lutz, Berkner, ‘The stem family and the development cycle of the peasant household; an eighteenth-century Austrian example’, The American Historical Review, 77 (1972), 398–418Google Scholar; Mendels, Franklin F. and Berkner, Lutz K., ‘Inheritance system, family structure and demographic patterns in Western Europe’, in Charles, Tilly ed., Historical Studies of Changing Fertility (Princeton, 1978), 209–23Google Scholar; Martine, Segalen, ‘The family cycle and household structures: five generations in a French village’, The Journal of Family History, 2, 3 (1977), 223–36.Google Scholar

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35 On this topic, with respect to the Saguenay region, see also Marc, Saint-Hilaire, ‘Origines et destins des families pionnières d'une paroisse saguenayenne au XIXe siècle’, Cahiers de géorgraphie du Québec, 32, 85 (April, 1988), 5–26.Google Scholar

36 Hal. S. Barren, Those who stayed behind; Jon Gjerde, From peasants to farmers; Bowen, William A., The Willamette Valley: migration and settlement on the Oregon frontier (Seattle, 1978), xiii + 120Google Scholar; Mathieu, J. and Courville, S., eds., Peuplement colonisateur aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Cahiers du Célat no. 8 (Québec, 1987)Google Scholar; Peter, Uhlenberg, ‘Noneconomic determinants of nonmigration: sociological considerations for migration theory’, Rural Sociology, 38, 3 (Fall, 1973), 296–311.Google Scholar

37 Myers, George C., ‘The duration of residence approach to a dynamic stochastic model of internal migration: a test of the axiom of cumulative inertia’, Eugenics Quarterly, 14 (1967), 121–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

38 Including Gérard Bouchard, ‘L'histoire démographique et le problème des migrations’.

39 Hal S. Barron, Those who stayed behind, provides a good example of this exercise. See also John W. Adams and Alice Bee Kasakoff, ‘Migration and the family in colonial New England’.

40 Dobson, T. and Roberts, D. F., ‘Historical population movement and gene flow in Northumberland parishes’, Journal of Biosocial Science, 3 (1971), 193–208CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Gradie, Margaret I. and Danielle, Gauvreau, ‘Migration and hereditary disease in the Saguenay population of Eastern Québec’, (research note), IMR (International Migration Review), 21 (Fall, 1987), 592–608Google Scholar; Gérard, Bouchard, ‘Sur la distribution spatiale des gènes délétères dans la région du Saguenay (XlXe-XXe siècles)’, Cahiers de géographie du Québec, 32, 85 (April, 1988), 27–47.Google Scholar

41 For instance, through extending the area of cultivation to non-arable lands in order to avoid emigration and disruption of community bonds, as happened in Saguenay and among Ukrainians in the Canadian West (Lehr, John C., ‘Kinship and society in the Ukrainian pioneer settlement of the Canadian West’, The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien, 29, 3 (1985), 207–19).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 Readers will find a few analytic suggestions relating to this issue in Gérard Bouchard ‘La dynamique communautaire’. For instance, we stress the fact that most of the intra-and extra-regional migrations were family-related; very often, mobility itself served as a means to preserve the family bonds rather than being a disruptive factor. Besides, there was a strong family ethic that kept the relatives interacting even when they were physically separated (e.g.: sons and daughters sending part of their earnings to their parents).

43 Gérard Bouchard and Jeannette Larouche, ‘Dynamique des populations locales’.