Canadian Newspapers in French

Year
1887
Month
11
Day
28
Article Title
Canadian Newspapers in French
Author
----
Page Number
2
Article Type
Language
Article Contents
CANADIAN NEWSPAPERS IN FRENCH. A new journalistic enterprise published in the town of Digby is L’Evangeline, a weekly French newspaper, appealing especially to an Acadian constituency. Its editor is Mr. V. A. Landry, well-known to many of our readers as a thoughtful writer and a gentleman of wide journalistic experience. The initial number is well printed, readable in its articles and selections and rather more newsy than most newspapers published in the French language. The paper which is independent in politics should secure a large constituency. There are those who regard every addition to the French-Canadian or Acadian press as something to be lamented; as liable to perpetuate two languages in our midst and thereby continue the natural misunderstanding of each other by the two dominant races, but we do not regard this as so. The misunderstandings between the two races respecting their different sentiments, wishes and prejudices exist to-day, French press or no press. They are accentuated because the spread of education among the French-Canadian and Acadian populations has been somewhat halt in comparison with is spread among the English speaking Canadians, but there are in this respect many motes in the eyes of the latter. Those who had pressed keenly upon their attention the arguments used and the cries raised by the Tory party in Ontario during the provincial general elections, know too well that all the prejudices and misunderstandings are not on the one side. If prejudice is the twin sister of ignorance, as we believe it is, there must be much more ignorance prevalent among those Canadians of our own race and language than is subject for congratulation. The English Canadians who read most and are the best informed, are generally those who have the least sincere prejudices against the French Canadians; and so too among the latter of the former. The spread of French Canadian or Acadian papers should be hailed as an important step, indicating not so much the growth of a spirit of isolation among the French as the growth of education. The spread of a desire to read in their own language among the great mass of our French and Acadian fellow countrymen, will be but a stepping stone to a desire for wider reading. In what direction will that desire more naturally direct itself than towards obtaining an acquaintance with the literature of the English-speaking Canadian majority? It is, therefore, we wish L’Evangeline and all other patriotic French or Acadian newspapers published in Canada every success.