LA FRANCOPHONIE IN THE DETROIT REGION

Climb aboard…

Here, which is named Le Détroit, does not refer to the city but to the area on the north and south banks of the waterway between Lake Erie and Lake Huron. Here, if you listen carefully, you can hear the continent’s heart beating. We are located nine hundred kilometres southwest of the Quebec border, on the Ontario shore of the automotive capital of the world. Here, both climate and earth bear that southern air that makes it seem like you are no longer in Canada. Just across the river lies Detroit, The Motor City, which gave birth to an entire civilisation. In fact, without
consideration for the border, we are at the heart of the American way of life.

And yet, for the past three centuries, here lies a still vibrant Francophone community that has not only left French topographical names; it has left its mark on the economy, the culture and, on the society. Our ancestors were the first Europeans to settle here. We adapted to the ways of those whose land it already was, and to all those who followed. Accompanied by our Amerindian allies, we watched the arrival of the English and then the Americans, and then all the others from around the world. Today, Windsor is an archetype of the great Canadian mosaic. But we are still here, indestructible, bearing our truly distinctive stamp, proud of our heritage. And always, far within the silence of our memory, we can hear the first canoes gliding along the river.

The “Rabascaw”; It is a beautiful summer morning; the water is sparkling, and the swans seem a bit distracted. To the paddling voyageurs, it seems like the first day on earth.

Climb aboard…

The first people

Over the ages, Amerindians such as the Fox, the Miami, the Neutral and the Iroquois migrated along the shores of Detroit. At times, some would set up camp for a season or two, but never permanently. Thus, at the dawning of the 17th century, the First Nations left the region much as it must have been at the beginning of time for those who would follow.

European settlers

The French were the first to permanently settle in the region, already acquired for New France by two missionaries, Dollier and Gallinée, who had claimed it on behalf of Louis XIV. This same region would later belong to the British before being divided into two nations (Canada and the United States) and into two cities (Windsor and Detroit). Prior to putting down roots in the rich land of this country, however, adventurous subjects of the King of France began to compile a list of its resources.

The explorers

In 1626, Etienne Brulé had remarked on the bountiful local flora and fauna at the Roche d’Aillon Mission. Fathers Brébeuf and Chaumonot spent the winter of 1640 on the south shore.

Sixteen years later, Sanson d’Abeville produced the first map of the river separating Lakes Erie and Huron. Thirteen years later, Cavelier de La Salle used this same map to ascend the Detroit River, eventually crossing paths with Adrien Joliet who was returning to Quebec City.

A decade later, in 1679, La Salle travelled back up the Detroit River, this time aboard the first tall ship, the Griffon, to traverse the western Great Lakes. On board was Father Louis Hennepin who, enraptured by the region, urged Cavelier de La Salle to set up an outpost there. It would take another twenty-two years, however, before a visionary Gascon posing as a nobleman would establish the first French colony west of Montreal still in existence.

In 1679, La Salle travelled back up the Detroit River, this time aboard the first tall ship, the Griffon, to traverse the western Great Lakes. On board was Father Louis Hennepin who, enraptured by the region, urged Cavelier de La Salle to set up an outpost there. It would take another twenty-two years, however, before a visionary Gascon posing as a nobleman would establish the first French colony west of Montreal still in existence.

The founding of Le Détroit

At the start of the 18th century, Anne Stuart had threatened the interests of Louis XIV in the entire Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes region. A commoner, Antoine Laumet, known as Lamothe Cadillac, who had dreamt of founding a capital city persuaded Callières, then governor of New France, to establish a trading post at Le Détroit (French for “the strait »), at the narrowest point in the river, where it would be easier to control shipping wert of Lake Erie.
Cadillac, who had departed Montreal in June 1701 with fifty militiamen and as many settlers, reached the shores of Detroit on July 24, 1701. He did not waste any time; the very next day, he began directing the construction of Fort Pointchartrain and St. Anne’s chapel. By the time the first snow fell, the small colony already numbered 200 French and 6000 Amerindians.

Jesuits victory over Cadillac

In 1710, the Jesuits spoke: Quebec City and Paris no longer wanted Cadillac in Detroit. He was named governor of Louisiana, although it is impossible to confirm, it seems that before his departure, Cadillac did his utmost to destroy everything had helped to build – thus explaining his disenchantment with Canada and the words he reportedly exchanged in 1717 with François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, when they shared a cell in the Bastille prison.

Was Voltaire responsible?

In 1712, a dispute between the tribes living around the post almost destroyed the colony and, by 1716, other than militiamen, only eleven families remained in the Détroit region, Despite everything, life – consisting of hunting trapping and a culture of subsistence – continued without too many difficulties, In 1722, a fishery was established on the island Isle à la péche (literally, Fish Island) – not from the French homonym for peach as it was later translated by the English giving us Peach Island. Cadillac, back in his native land, had been dead 12 years and by 1742, when Father Armand de la Richardie relocated the Assumption Mission to Bois Blane (Bob-La) Island, a mission he had first founded in 1728 in the Huron village. During the same period, the English were arriving in greater numbers in the Ohio Valley, and Beauharnois decided to enhance the French presence in Detroit. Some families came from Mantreal while families already in the region, such as the Marentette, Janisse, Goyeau, Parent and Langlois families, were granted lands east of the Huron Mission. By 1742, over one hundred families resided in the colon. Jean Baptiste Goyeau officially became the first Canadian farmer in what would later be Ontario,

In 1749, in order to encourage French settlement at the junction of the Great Lakes, the Count of Galisonnière ordered it proclaimed in all parishes throughout Canada that any man settling in Detroit would be granted free tools, livestock and seeds.

That year, twenty-two new families travelled southwest to Detroit. But this was unsuccessful. It is not known what Cadillac told Voltaire about Canada: however, Voltaire’s written accounts – proclaiming that Canada was nothing more than a few acres of snow — influenced Louis XV. They proved so influential, in fact, that the French sovereign decided to leave northern America to the English in exchange for
peace in the sugar-producing Caribbean islands.

Thus, in 1760, with little immediate impact on the settlers’; daily lives, the colony that Cadillac had dreamt would be the French metropolis of the New World was ceded to the British crown.

Abandoned by the Motherland

Despite being abandoned by Versailles, the Canadians established a strong colony in Detroit, with all the virtues of a well-organized and sustainable society. This masterpiece of colonization and civilization, was managed by the Canadians without the assistance of the motherland, which, it could be said, behaved more like an ignoble cousin.

The splendor and misery of civilisation

A few shadows mar this portrait of a civilized society, such as the presence among several Detroit families of more slaves – notably Pawnees and Africans – than elsewhere in former New France. There were also numerous occasions on which the Canadians betrayed Pontiac, who believed them to be his friends. During the revolt of 1763, when British Major Gladwin wrote in July, “Soon, half the inhabitants will merit the gallows and the other half should be eliminated, » the Navarre, Babie, Saint-Martin and Lasalle families positioned themselves on the same side as the Major against Pontiac’s people and, at the fort, forty Canadians fought with the English against those they continued to call “savages”.

Hard times

Despite the fact that the British Crown was now master of the domain and that many settlers, refusing the new lawmaker, had decided to settle in what would later be St.Louis, the majority of the population was still primarily French, in other words, Canadian. In 1770, three years after the Assumption Mission became Assumption Parish, the oldest in Ontario, it was estimated that the population of Detroit would soon surpass that of Montreal, Father Boquet, St. Anne’s parish priest, wrote that. new settlers were arriving every day. The winter of that same year was particularly difficult, as boats were locked in the ice of Lake Erie for over two months and supplies were hard to come by.

The separation

During the American Revolution, there was much infighting among the Canadians. British Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton had hoped to organize seven companies of sixty men each; he was unsuccessful, despite the fact that the majority of Canadians supported George III since they did most of their business with the province of Québec.

The same was not true of Canadians living in settlements in Illinois and Indiana, who were won over to the Revolution’s cause.
In 1777, a handful of Canadians from Cahokia and Peoria, supporters of the Revolution, surprised the St. Joseph outpost, which they then pillaged. Other Canadians, however, united to oust the Amerindians in favour of the British and massacred many of those attacking St. Joseph.
Hamilton himself, encouraged by Father Potier and his flock, organized an expedition of seventy Canadians against Vincennes, even though relatives of the expedition party were living there.
They succeeded in holding the post for a year, until American General Clark forced Hamilton to surrender as a prisoner of war.

The First School

In 1786, Father Hubert founded the first French school in Ontario. In the beginning, it consisted of only one classroom and a dormitory housing thirteen beds. When it opened, there were eight boarders.

Treaty of Paris 1783

Under the Treaty of Paris of 1783, Michigan and Detroit were coded to the United States. However, England retained possession of this territory until 1796. England made use of the time to win the sympathy of the Canadian population and was seconded in this task by the Catholic clergy. The propaganda paid off; in 1795, fifty Canadians on the American side declared their wish to remain English subjects. Some families even crossed to the British shore to remain under George III, an action that led to the foundation of Sandwich and Amherstburg.

EDUCATION

In Le Détroit, which would become Southwestern Ontario and Michigan, religion almost always goes hand in hand with education. Still today, it is Le Conseil scolaire de district des écoles catholiques du Sud-Ouest which manages most of the French education. In 1786, the first teachers, Mesdemoiselles Adémard and Papineau arrive from Quebec. At this time wages were practically non-existent as most parents could not pay the school fees. In 1912, the provincial government passes Order 17 prohibiting the teaching of French in Ontario schools. In the
Windsor area, several members of the French-speaking clergy rebel against their bishop, Mgr.
Fallon, who is considered the champion of English unilingualism. Father Lucien Beaudoin, from the Notre-Dame du Lac parish in Ford City, becomes the symbol of this resistance. With his death, in 1917, Mgr. Fallon chooses his successor, and this event sparks the beginning of what would later be described in as the riot of Ford City. In 1927, the provincial government dissolves Order 17 and French gradually regains its place in the curriculum. Today, thanks to secondary schools like E. J. Lajeunesse, L’Essor and Paint Court, the French-speaking students of the area can follow French courses from junior kindergarten until the end of secondary school. In 1995, the Collège des Grands-Lacs opens its doors, but what would be an experiment in decentralization benefiting from high technology fails in the spring of 2001. A fallen victim to the tendency for centralization. Consequently, the French-speaking students of the area are deprived of any possibility of acquiring professional technical experience on the spot.Of course, as is customary in the country of Cadillac, the community has not said its last word, and nothing prohibits us to think that one day another collège will be born.

Taking root

Over the course of the 19th century, the Canadian community became deeply entrenched at Le Détroit. Traditions formed and a regional spirit developed. The need for food and faith dominated daily life. With regard to the former, the setters were content to practice subsistence farming, largely supported by hunting, fishing and trapping. As to the latter, the population trusted in the priests who established themselves as the community’s guides and shepherds. They did not see themselves only as preachers and spiritual guides; they were also determined to participate in running the community. Thus, the clergy contributed more than anyone else to education, health care, toponymy and even politics.

In 1801, to meet the needs of an increasingly dispersed population, Father Marchand, parish priest of Assumption, established the St. John the Baptist Parish in Amherstburg and the St. Pierre Parish along La Tranche River (Thames).

Torn apart

But the War of 1812 again divided Canadians. In the city of Detroit, Reverend Richard, loyal to the United States, actively helped to enlist Canadian volunteers, an action that earned him imprisonment by the English in Sandwich after the fall of Detroit. While Tecumseh’s Amerindians were intent on attacking Detroit even before England had declared war, Canadians on the British shore were assessed a tax on gunpowder from the United States. In the opposing camp, Canadian neighbours and brothers alike, joined the nearly four hundred volunteers commanded by two of the Babie brothers to contribute greatly to the takeover of Detroit by General Brock on August 16.

The ultimate division of the region into two nations split the population, as they who were once referred to as Canadian, thereafter became known as French Canadian.
In 1820, Upper Canada numbered only four thousand Francophones among the one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants. Immigration from Lower Canada (Québec and Acadia), then subject to an economic crisis, would not pick up again until 1830.

Blossoming communities

New parishes blossomed, such as the one in Belle River. Founded in 1836, Windsor flourished as the centre of the French-Canadian community. The railway arrived in the southwest in 1854, bringing with it even greater numbers of immigrants from Lower-Canada. These immigrants settled in northeastern Essex County and around Pain Court in Kent County. The following parishes were created as a result: St. François Xavier in Tilbury (1855), St. Joseph in Canard River (1864), Annunciation in Pointe-aux-Roches (1867), St. Clement in McGregor (1881), St. Joachim in St. Joachim (1881). Meanwhile, in 1859, the Jesuits founded Assumption College, which would later become the University of Windsor. The Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary arrived in Windsor to found St. Mary’s Academy, an institution for young girls. The French-speaking population was large enough to justify a weekly paper, called Le Progrès, which the Pacau brothers began publishing in 1880. And yet another priest, Father Wagner from the St. Alphonse Parish, founded the Hôtel-Dieu, Windsor’s first hospital in 1889.

New Directions

Detroit was no longer a French village but an American city that, by the start of the century, already had a population of nearly 300,000, Cadillac’s vision, to a certain extent, had come true:
Detroit’s central location at the heart of the Great Lakes meant the city played an essential role in North America’s economic development. A significant concentration of transportation-related industries developed -boats, carriages, wagons, and even bicycles —Leading almost naturally to the production of automobiles. In fact, the flat terrain, the abundance of gravel and the mild
winters favoured, very early on, the popularity of this new means of transportation; consequently, factories were built where the market was located. For French Canadians in Detroit, the 20th century was marked by five major events: – Regulation 17, which denied French-language schooling to an entire generation.

Industrialisation, which led to a new wave of Francophone immigration from Quebec and the Maritime provinces, and which transformed the local economy, going without any transition fut subsistence farming to paid mechanical labour:
The publication of the weekly French paper “Le Rempart”
At The establishment of a local French radio station and later of a French television station
The creation of Francophone separate school boards.

A Bishop Fights for Monolingualism

In 1912, under the instigation of Bishop Fallon, the government of Ontario adopted Regulation 17, which forbade French-language teaching in all provincial schools. In the Windsor area, this legislation distressed all French Canadians fond of their mother tongue. Priests attempted to lend their support, including Father Napoléon Saint-Cyr in Grande Pointe, the same priest who had lent his support in 1908 to the establishment of a tomato cannery. Unmoved, however, Bishop Fallon appointed, in their stead, priests who were « more amenable » to his political views. In 1917, the appointment of Father Lucien Beaudoin’s successor set off the Ford City Riot. It wasn’t until the Pope sent Bishop Fallon to the United States and the government of Ontario abolished Regulation 17 in 1927 that French reappeared in schools. But the damage had been done; an entire generation of students had lost the language forever.

Starting 1904, when Henry Ford built his first plant in Ford City, the automobile sector and related industries carved out a dominant position in the Windsor area. In 1908, a blacksmith and Francophone by the name of Moise Menard founded Menard Auto Buggy. Life changed rapidly, and relatively high salaries attracted people from across the country. At a new accelerated rate, Francophones were losing their majority status.

Highs and Lows

French might have disappeared if, in 1970, Windsor hadn't obtained CBEF French radio station and then, in 1976, the French television channel. Another candle of hope was lit in 1979 with the construction of L’Essor, the first French high school; followed by E. J. Lajeunesse, a second French high school, in 1990, one year after Ontario adopted the French Language Services Act.
During that same year, Place Concorde, Windsor’s Francophone community centre, was purchased. In 1995, a new victory: the opening of the Collège des Grands Lacs. Unfortunately, the college’s administration is in Toronto and appears to have “centralized” its interests. The Windsor facility was dismantled in April 2001, several months before the tercentenary anniversary celebrations of the oldest permanent Francophone settlement west of Montreal.

Towards the Future

June 2001 marked the opening of the Historical Trails retracing the great adventures of the French settlement in “the strait”. As we look to the past, we cannot help but imagine the future.
What will it be? From the fur trade to e-commerce, from the birch-bark canoe to the minivan and the FTAAA, we are still here. Will we face future challenges as French-speaking citizens of Windsor, Elex and Kent? Given our past, we believe that the answer is yes. Two words summarize the experience of Francophones at Le Détroit adaptation and renewal. In ensuring a balance between these two concepts lies the key to the survival of a community that, since the colony’s early days, was able to negotiate cultural exchanges with a succession of majority groups – First Nations, the British, the Loyalists, the Americans – and that has now become a multicultural society. The climate, the distance to other urban centres and the geographic location of Le Détroit in the heart of North America are factors that have contributed to the unique experience as part of French Canada. Each new population wave has brought its own perspectives and proposed its own solutions to the challenges of living in this region; each group has maintained its own characteristics while integrating new perspectives into its vision of the world. These experiences shared over three centuries are the community’s greatest resource.

In a letter to the king, here is an extract of the description that Cadillac made of the banks of Le Détroit:

The banks are many vast meadows where the freshness of these beautiful streams keep the grass forever green. These same meadows are fringed with long and broad avenues of fruit trees…
Under these vast avenues you may see assembling in hundreds the shy stag and the timid hind with the bounding roebuck, to pick up eagerly the apples and plums with which the ground is paved. It is there that the careful turkey hen calls back her numerous broods and leads them to gather the grapes. The golden pheasant, the quail, the partridge, the woodcock, the teeming turtledove, swarm in the woods and cover the open country intersected and broken by groves of full-grown forest trees.
The fish there are fed and laved in sparkling and pellucid waters and are none the less delicious for the bountiful supply (of them). There are such large numbers of swans that the rushes among which they are massed might be taken for lilies. The gabbling goose, the duck, the teal and the bustard are so common there that, in order to satisfy you of it. I will only make use of the expression of one of the (Indians) of whom I asked before I got there whether there was much game there; “there is so much”; he told me, “That it only moves aside long enough to allow the boat to pass.”; It is in such a country that the ancestors of the community settled. As is well known, the catholic religion and education were the first guardians of the language and the customs. Already, in July 1701, hardly two days after the arrival of the first soldiers and colonists, Cadillac ordered the construction of a chapel dedicated to Sainte-Anne. Today, there stands at the same place, a church of the same name, which is the oldest of the United States after that of Saint-Augustine in Florida: and, on the other side of the river, the Assumption parish is the oldest in Canada west of Montreal. As early as 1626, Father Joseph de la Roche d’Aillon, a Récollet missionary, met Étienne Brûlé in this arca. In 1640, fathers Jean de Brébeuf and Father Joseph-Marie Chaumonot spent an entire winter here. In 1670, the Sulpiciens, fathers Dollier and Galinée, reached what would later be named Lake St. Clair. Nine years later, Father Louis Hennepin, accompanies La Salle on board the Griffon. But it is in 1728 that father la Richardic is sent to found a mission for the Huron. In 1742, he moves the Huron mission to Bois Blancs Island (Bob-lo Island) and in 1747 he is recalled to Le Détroit to restore order between the tribes. In 1767. Father Potier becomes the first priest of the oldest parish in Ontario, Notre-Dame de l’Assumption.

Thereafter, throughout the history of Le Detroit, the foundation of parishes accurately reflects the expansion of the French-speaking population.

1767 – Paroisse de L’Assomption
1802 – St-Pierre (Rivière La Tranche)
– St-Jean-Baptiste (Amhentourg)
1834 – St-Simon et St-Jude (Belle Rivière )
1851 – Immaculé Conception (Pain Court)
1855 – St-Françoise-Xavier (Tilbury)
1856- St- Alphonse(Windsor)
1859 – Ste-Anne (Tecumseh)
1864 – St-joseph (Rivière-aux-Canards)
1867 – Paroisse de l'Annonciation (Pointe-aux-Roches)
1880- St-Clément (McGregor)
1881 – St-Joachim
1884 – Notre-Dame du Lac (Sandwich East)
1886 – St-Philippe (Grande Pointe)
1900 – Très Saint Rédempteur (Staples)
1921 – Sacré-Coeur (LaSalle)
1928 – Ste-Thérèse (Windsor)
1934 – St-Charles (Stevenson)
1951 – Notre-Dame de Lourdes (Combes)
1955 – St-William (Emeryville)
1958 – St-Jérôme (Windsor)

In light of these facts, it is nevertheless curious to think that it was a bishop from the London diocese who attempted to eradicate the French language from Ontario schools.

FORESTRY AND AGRICULTURE

In the southwest, forestry went hand in hand with agricultural development from the very beginning. Modern-day visitors will note that land along Lake St.Claire is almost bare of trees compared to farmers along the Detroit coast. In the 18th century, early settlers cleared the land according to their needs. In the 19th century, there were a number of mills at one time along the Canard River and in McGregor, but an extensive forestry industry developed mainly in the eastern sector of the territory. The towns of Comber, Staples and Tilbury owed their expansion almost exclusively to the forestry. Large mills were built in La Peche River, Belle River, St. Joachim, Pointe-aux-Roches and Pain Court. Not only did clear-cutting free up land for farming, it also provided a source of supplementary income for new settlers who sold the wood for construction and firewood. Ashes used in the production of potash were marketed, as were wood coal, which fired Detroit’s steel mills. In 1881, there were 30 coal-fired ovens in Essex County, 18 of which were situated in the former town of St. Claire, then situated between Pointe-aux-Roches and St. Joachim. These ovens consumed over 600 cords of wood per week. A train from Staples transported the wood directly to the ovens; the ashes and coal were exported by boat from the port of Belle River. Most of the trees were used to produce boards for the construction of homes and farm outbuildings. In Staples, there was also a barrel mill. Much wood was also burned in the region; several witnesses mentioned the great cloud of smoke over Essex County.
Others even reported that the fires were visible in the night sky from as far away as Chicago. At the same time, the railway contributed to agricultural development, allowing goods to be exported to markets ever further away. Agriculture in the southwest was in its heyday. The new arrivals were not like their 18th century predecessors. Naturally, they shared the same language and culture, but the latter had evolved over the past century under the influence of a religious and professional elite who believed that maintaining a traditional way of life was the best means of safeguarding language and faith. Survival no longer depended on the ability to adapt but on the ability to defend tradition. New colonists demonstrated a particular interest in agriculture. Unlike their predecessors, newcomers immediately launched into large-scale production. The British government abandoned the old system of dividing land into long narrow strips along waterways.

By the end of the 19th century, Essex County was divided into districts and subdivided into 200-acre sections granted to any man promising to clear the land and build a habitable dwelling. This new system, along with the new means of transportation, enabled commercial production of wheat, barley, corn and soybean crops, as well as large-scale cattle breeding. Before the end of this period, more specialized crops were developed, like tobacco and sugar beets in Kent County.
Farmers in Pointe-aux-Roches, with the assistance of Father Saint-Cyr, organized the first tomato cannery in the early 20th century, thereby opening the door to a new agricultural industry.
During this period, several grand projects were undertaken to drain the marshland along the Lake St-Claire and Thames River. Even today, in Grande Pointe or Pain Court, you can still see the wide canals that allowed farming on this rich black soil, one of the most fertile sections of land in the country. Furthermore, draining the marshland had the advantage of putting an end to malaria epidemics.

In 1943, Philippe Chauvin took steps that lead to the establishment of the Pointe-aux-Roches farm cooperative in 1946.

Today, Francophone farmers frequently undertake original initiatives, such as the one in Pain Court where Brussels sprouts are produced on a mass scale, or in the mass production of hemp, or the wide-scale production of hothouse vegetables, and ornamental and medicinal plants. All these efforts along with the exceptional richness of the soil and a climate, quite different frame what one would imagine in a country that lies near the North Pole, have ensured the attraction of food industry giants like Heinz, Campbell and Green Giant to the southwest Consequently; the land is deserving of the nickname, Canada’s Garden.

INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TRADE

In the beginning, the region’s primary economic activity was trapping then, after Cadillac and throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, local Francophones survived mainly by subsistence farming, although market gardens such as those in Petit Côte, were already supplying the city of Detroit. By the end of the 19th century, Francophones in Windsor were participating in the city’s social and commercial development, while powerful interests were forming. In 1880, Hiram Walker purchased several farms east of the city and established the distillery that bears his name and produces the famous Canadian Club. He built lodgings for his employees and allowed banks, businesses and port offices to open to serve the small community that would later become Walkerville. Several years later, in 1904, industrialist Henry Ford, hoping to sell his goods at reduced rates throughout the British Empire, built a plant east of Windsor. During the first year of operation at the Walkerville Wagon Works, 17 employees assembled 117 Ford automobiles.

Five years later, 1,000 employees were producing 6,000 automobiles per year. In 1915, the district was incorporated under the name Ford City. This was only the beginning, because Ford would be followed not only by Chrysler and General Motors, but also by Studebaker, Hupp, Packard, Dodge and Pierce Arrow, all of which manufactured cars in Windsor. Among the pioneers, let us not forget, Moise Ménard, a blacksmith born in Belle River in 1859.

In 1908, he founded Menard Auto Buggy in Windsor. His plant, located at the corner of Caron and University Streets, produced automobiles until 1920. Ménard called himself the “father of the Canadian automobile”. He was the first person to advertise cars manufactured entirely in Windsor, and these proved very popular in Quebec and Western Canada. Windsor became the first major manufacturing centre in Canada. Development attracted workers from around the country and even overseas. Former French-speaking neighbourhoods in Windsor quickly became home to workers from Czechoslovakia, the Ukraine, Poland, Italy and then later, Asia and Africa. The union movement developed along with industrialization; together, the two had a major impact on the traditional lifestyle of local Francophones who, soon a minority, believed they had to adopt the common language for work and business.

Work in the plants meant very high salaries in relation to farm income, so Francophones in the southwest did not leave the area. In fact, by the end of the 19th century, the city of Windsor was a favourite destination not only of Francophones from the southwest, but also of numerous French Canadians from across the country. With them came the professional elite – doctors, lawyers, educators, and businessmen – often with connections to the political and religious network based in Ottawa and Montreal. They brought their strong nationalism with them. Most
of this group settled in Windsor or Tecumseh, but their influence was felt throughout the southwest region, notably through newspapers such as, La Défense (1918), La Presse Frontière (1921) and La feuille d’Erable (1931) by Senator Gustave Lacasse.

The end of the Second World War brought profound changes to the Francophone community. Road improvements and the popularity of the automobile allowed people a mobility that had been inconceivable a generation earlier. The countryside was less than one hour from the city. Marriages outside the community became increasingly frequent. The labour market became considerably more concentrated.
However, the effects of industrialization on traditional living were mixed. Farmland was quickly disappearing under the advance of urban and industrial development. Despite everything, well-paid factory labour allowed many families to keep their homesteads. By day, farmers worked the land; by night, they manufactured cars. The Windsor region became host to Francophones from around the world. For personal, economic and political reasons, a large number of people from Haiti, Lebanon, Vietnam, Senegal, Cameroon, Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi now call Windsor home. Members of these new communities have not only brought new life to the region, but they have also helped to create essential economic ties between Le Détroit and the rest of the national and international Francophonie.