This study examines the creation and growth of the Ordre de Jacques Cartier (OJC) - a French-Canadian Catholic secret society created in Ottawa - and its opposition to the Knights of Columbus - a Catholic fraternity created in Connecticut in the late nineteenth century but which had expanded into Ontario and Quebec by the early twentieth century---from 1917 to 1965. Historians of French-Canadian nationalism in the early to mid twentieth century have largely passed over the Ordre de Jacques Cartier and the Knights of Columbus in their studies of Catholic movements and associations. The few studies that have looked at the OJC have downplayed the influence that the Knights of Columbus had on the secret society and its campaigns. This study seeks to fill that gap in looking at how the OJC anti-Knight campaign reflects shifts in French-Canadian nationalism and conception of French-Canadian identity. More specifically, by taking a closer look at the attitudes of the OJC's leaders towards the Knights of Columbus, a more nuanced picture of relations between French-Canadian nationalists in Quebec and Ontario emerges.
This study argues that the OJC's campaign against the Knights reveals the shifting priorities both of its Ottawa-based leadership and its growing Quebec membership base. Differences of opinion over the Knights of Columbus in Quebec and Ontario from the end of the Great War are symptomatic of the eventual schism between neo-nationalists in Quebec and French-Canadian nationalists in Ontario that came to the fore in the 1960s with the Quiet Revolution in Quebec and the dissolution of the OJC. Using both the archives of the Knights of Columbus and the OJC, this study will analyze the increasing emphasis on territorial autonomy in Quebec by nationalists as well as how lay movements both preceded, and were part of, shifting nationalist discourse in the mid-twentieth century.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/27561 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Trepanier, James |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 186 p. |
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