Another Note for my Honours

[rfmcdonald]

• In Thirty Acres, the elite in rural Québec was strongly particularistic, attached to the French language, Roman Catholic religion, and a reactionary rural/peasant ideology explicitly constructed in opposition to liberal central Canadian/US ideologies.


• In Barometer Rising, the elite in Nova Scotia--actually, the two elites, in Cape Breton and in Halifax--were assimilatory. They did not oppose use of the English language nearly so virulently as did their counterparts in Québec, the question of religious distinctiveness from the rest of the continent was not an issue anywhere in Nova Scotia, and the goals of secular prosperity through trade were universal.

Hence, more assimilation in Nova Scotia than in Québec.