Mad Flight? The Quebec Emigration to the Coffee Plantations of Brazil

On 15 September 1896, nearly a thousand people prepared to board a steamer in the port of Montreal, headed for Santos, Brazil, and on to the coffee plantations of São Paulo, while a crowd of a few thousand pleaded with them to stay. Families were split as wives boarded without husbands, or husbands without wives. While many prospective migrants were convinced to get off the boat, close to five hundred people departed for South America. Of the migrants, the author claims that less than 32 percent were French Canadians, the rest being of British, Irish and Italian descent, and possibly Jewish. Ultimately the experience was a disaster. Some died on board the ship, others in Brazil; yet others became indigent labourers on coffee plantations or beggars on the streets of São Paulo. The vast majority returned to Canada within eighteen months, many of them helped back by British consular representatives. The author tries to understand why some people migrate on impulse, despite the warnings of neighbours and officials, and undertake a journey that to the eyes of others will end up in failure. He argues that the disposition of these individuals to migrate was strengthened by their lack of rootedness in their society and neighbourhoods.

Montreal and Kingston

McGill-Queen's University Press

2018

184p.

en

978-0-7735-5359-0