Black history in Canada has an international dimension. In 1910-1911, in the context of a crisis in domesticity, women and a few men were recruited from the French colony of Guadeloupe to be placed as domestics and placed as domestic servants in Quebec. This story is interesting in more than one way and also concerns the life of French Canadian families in Montreal as well as in Terrebonne, Beloeil or Trois-Rivières.
It raises the question of the opening of the borders and the representations of the Other. At that time Canada is a country officially open to immigration, but where the entry of Asians and Blacks is limited. Why recruit in an archipelago populated majority of descendants of slaves? It is therefore a question here of bringing to light the arrival of these servants who worked for a time in Canada, and who, for some of them stayed on to live in Canada, becoming even more intimately involved in Quebec society.
To watch the conference. (In French only)
The partners of this conference are: UQAM, Écomusée fier monde, Université des Antilles, 3 siècles de migrations francophones en Amérique du Nord (1640-1940).
