Manufacturing French Canadian tradition: Tabac canadien and the construction of French-Canadian identity, 1880-1950

Histoire Sociale

Volumn 39, Issue 77, 2006, Pages 205-233

  Rudy, Jarrett ^a  

^a MCGILL UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

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EID: 33845512096     PISSN: 00182257     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (153)

1. While there are no statistics gauging tobacco consumption in Quebec, excise statistics suggest that in Canada pipe smoking predominated until at least the late 1920s. Jan Rogozinski, Smokeless Tobacco in the Western World, 1550-1950 (New York: Praeger, 1990), pp. 129-130.
2. This is not to say that Quebec in the period studied hero is pre-industrial or to enter into the debates popular some years ago which tried to judge whether Quebec during the nineteenth century was "feudal" or "rural" or "pre" or "proto" industrial or simply industrial. Here I feel it is necessary to stress transition, especially when discussing cultural traditions.
3. The 1921 Census found that the majority of Quebeckers lived in urban centres, though it was not until after the Second World War that the majority of francophones lived in cities or significantly sized towns.
4. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1982).
5. On the politics of gesture, see John Kasson, Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990);
6. Mary P. Ryan, "The American Parade: Representations of the Nineteenth-Century Social Order", in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 131-153,
7. Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990),
8. and Civic Wars: Democracy and Public Life in the American City during the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997);
9. David Scobey, "Anatomy of the Promenade: The Politics of Bourgeois Sociability in Nineteenth-century New York", Social History (May 1992), pp. 203-227.
10. Cultural historians and anthropologists have problematized claims of "authenticity". See T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Anti-modernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981);
11. Ian McKay, The Quest of the Folk: Antimodemism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994);
12. Erik Cohen, "Authenticity and Commoditization in Tourism", Annals of Tourism Research, vol. 15 (1988), pp. 371-386.
13. This section provides a partial summary of chapters 1-3 of my book, The Freedom to Smoke: Tobacco Consumption and the Construction of Identity (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005).
14. F. Charlan, "Tobacco Culture in Canada", Canadian Cigar and Tobacco Journal, May 1910, p. 31;
15. Louis Lewis, "The World's Tobacco Crops: A Description of the Types of Leaf Grown all over the World," Candian Cigar and Tobacco Journal, October 1898, p. 359.
16. A. D. Porcheron, "Traitement et culture du tabac canadien", Montreal, Cie d'Impr. Canadien, 1882 [Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions no. 12126].
17. For the legislation that exempted home-grown tobacco from taxation, see 43 Victoria, Chapter 19, "An Act to Consolidate and amend the Acts respecting the Inland Revenue" (1880)
18. and 60-61 Victoria, Chapter 19, "An Act respecting the Departments of Customs and Inland Revenue" (1897).
19. See his testimony at the Price Spreads Commission, pp. 1694-1696. Volume consulted at the Imperial Tobacco Reading Room, Montreal and hereafter referred to as "Evidence, Price Spreads".
20. T. G. Major, "Trends in the Canadian Market", The Lighter/Le briquet, March 18, 1933.
21. Women who transgressed the norms of respectable comportment could pay dearly with prospective employers or court judges, who took a dim view of such delinquency. See Karen Dubinsky, Improper Advances: Rape and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, 1880-1929 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993);
22. Reinhold Kramer and Tom Mitchell, Walk Towards the Gallows: The Tragedy of Hilda Blake, Hanged 1899 (Don-Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2002);
23. Joan Sangster, "Softball Solution: Female Workers, Male Managers and the Operation of Paternalism at Westclox, 1923-1960", Labour/Le Travail, vol. 32 (Fall 1993), pp. 167-199.
24. For an example of this discourse, see Dr. L. J. Lemieux in "Evidence, Price Spreads", p. 82.
25. My central argument in The Freedom to Smoke.
26. See, for example, Octave Cuisset, "Le père Coulange: ou, Entretiens sur la culture et la préparation du Tabac", Quebec, Imprimerie A. Coté et Cie., 1876 [CIHM no. 04193];
27. "Les Veillées", La Presse, January 28, 1905, p. 1.
28. Matthew Hilton, Smoking in British Popular Culture, 1800-2000 (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2000);
29. Didier Nourrisson, Histoire sociale du tabac (Paris: Editions Christian, 1999).
30. th-century Maritimes (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1994), front cover and p. 7.
31. In an analogous comparison, Eric Hobsbawm points out that "the wigs of lawyers could hardly acquire their modern significance until-other people stopped wearing wigs". See his "Introduction: Inventing Traditions" in Hobsbawm and Terrance Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 4.
32. For examples of such social events, see "Nouvelles Ouvrières", La Presse, January 13 and 15, 1913, p. 7;
33. La Presse, December 27, 1921, p. 3;
34. La Presse, March 18, 1922, p. 35.
35. Léon Ledieu, "Entre Nous", Le Monde illustré, April 4, 1891, p. 766.
36. "Le Tabac du Proletaire", Le Devoir, March 2, 1915, p. 8.
37. Ernest Bilodeau, "Cinquante années de souvenirs",
38. Louis Robillard, "'Monsieur' Bourassa, solennel et familier",
39. and Lionel Groulx, "Henri Bourassa ou le causeur prestigieux", all in Hommage à Henri Bourassa (reproduced from a memorial edition of Le Devoir), October 25, 1952, pp. 158, 142, 91, respectively.
40. Bilodeau, "Cinquante années de souvenirs", in Hommage à Henri Bourassa, p. 158.
41. On the creation of the "Straw Woman" consumer, see Jill Greenfield, Sean O'Donnell, and Chris Reid, "Gender, Consumer Culture and the Middle-Class Male, 1918-1939",
42. and Christopher P. Hosgood, "Mrs.Pooter's Purchase: Lower-Middle-Class Consumerism and the Sales, 1870-1914", both in Alan Kidd and David Nichols, eds., Civic Culture and Consumerism: Middle-Class Identity in Britain, 1800-1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), pp. 183-197, 146-163 respectively.
43. For a Canadian example, see Cynthia Wright, "'Feminine Trifles of Vast Importance': Writing Gender into the History of Consumption", in Franca Iacovetta and Mariana Valverde, eds., Gender Conflicts: New Essays in Women's History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992) pp. 229-260.
44. The literature on masculinity is voluminous. This article draws on discussions of masculinity and consumption that largely have focused on connoisseurship. See Leora Auslander, "The Gendering of Consumer Practices", in Victoria de Grazia, ed., The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996);
45. Frank Mort, Cultures of Consumption: Masculinities and Social Space in Late Twentieth Century Britain (London: Routledge, 1996);
46. Hilton, Smoking in British Popular Culture, pp. 17-59.
47. The classic statement on this degrading of pre-capitalist agriculture is Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (London: Chatto and Windus, 1973).
48. Charlan, "Tobacco Culture in Canada", pp. 31-33.
49. E. A. Heaman has shown that habitant cows were criticized on similar grounds; see her The Inglorious Arts of Peace: Exhibitions in Canadian Society during the Nineteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), p. 40.
50. Porcheron, "Traitement et culture du tabac canadien", section I; Louis V. Labelle, "Traité de la culture et de l'Industrie du tabac" [CIHM no. 08362], St-Jacques, April 11, 1898, p. 106.
51. Wine was evaluated in the same way. Historian Kolleen M. Guy argues that the concept of terroir was central to nineteenth-century views of French geography and equally important to the way champagne got its value. See her paper, "Rituals of Pleasure". She draws on the work of nineteenth-century French geographer Vidal de La Blanche.
52. See Jean-Yves Guiomar, "Vidal de La Blanche's Geography of France", in Pierre Nora, ed., Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past, vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), pp. 187-209.
53. Lewis, "The World's Tobacco Crops", p. 359;
54. Labelle, "Traité de la culture", p. 13;
55. Encyclopaedia Britannica, p. 1039.
56. This racist theory proved difficult for anyone trying to explain why Cuba grew the best tobacco in the world. The Encyclopaedia Britannica avoided the problem by claiming that Cuban tobacco had been a white man's crop even during slave times. See "Cuba", Encyclopaedia Britannica, p. 599.
57. Labelle, "Traité de la culture", p. 13.
58. "The Tobacco Kings of Canada before the Tobacco Inquiry", Canadian Cigar and Tobacco Journal, December 1902, p. 719.
59. For Macdonald, see Stanley Brice Frost and Robert H. Michel, "Sir William Christopher Macdonald", in Ramsay Cook and Jean Hamelin, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 689-694.
60. John F. Todd to Rosanna Todd, June 20, 1895 in John L. Todd Letters, 1876-1949, p. 62;
61. see also John F. Todd to Rosanna Todd, February 6, 1895, p. 55.
62. L'Album Universel, October 20, 1906, p. 845.
63. For other examples, see Benjamin Suite, "Le Tabac", Le Manitoba, May 15, 1895, p. 1;
64. on Médéric Martin, see "Le Tabac du Proletaire", Le Devoir, March 2, 1915, p. 8.
65. The specific revision to the Inland Revenue Act to change these excise duties was an amendment to Victoria 60-61, Chapter 19, No. 13 (m) and (n). This amendment put an excise tax of 14 cents per pound on stemmed foreign leaf tobacco and 10 cents per pound on non-stemmed.
66. For Macdonald's complaints, see "The Tobacco Kings of Canada before the Tobacco Inquiry", Canadian Cigar and Tobacco Journal, December 1902, pp. 719-721.
67. This assertion is based on a comparison of "Current Trade Prices" listings in the Canadian Cigar and Tobacco Journal in January 1904, 1924, 1934, and 1944. The year 1924 provides the most fruitful comparison of "Domestic Brands" and other brands of Cut Smoking Tobaccos as prices are listed "per pound" rather than by the various sizes of packages on offer. A representative example is the popular Macdonald "Cut Brier" made with Virginia tobacco, which wholesaled for $1.28 per pound, while a pound of Houde's most advertised brand "Alouette sold for 76¢ per pound. Forest Frères' main brands wholesaled from 78¢ to $1.38 per pound for the company's special aromatic brand. Rock City's most advertised tabac canadien, "Rose Quesnel", wholesaled for $1.04 per pound.
68. For a more detailed discussion of this approach, see Rudy, The Freedom to Smoke, chap. 5.
69. Others included the St-Jacques Tobacco Packing Co. Limited and its brand "Hero", as well as Lemesurier Tobacco Co. of Quebec City with its brand "Pioneer" and the Colonial Tobacco Corporation of Montreal with "Colonial". See Le Soleil, March 8, 1917, p. 7;
70. Le Soleil, March 3, 1926, p. 11;
71. and Le Soleil, March 4, 1921, p. 3.
72. "Forest Frères Limitée", Canadian Cigar and Tobacco Journal, February 1925, p. 29;
73. "Benson and Hedges Sell Forest Products", Canadian Cigar and Tobacco Journal, February 1936, p. 22;
74. "Current Trade Prices", Canadian Cigar and Tobacco Journal, January 1950, p. 33.
75. It is worth noting that the Drouin family had long been involved in Quebec City politics, with oldest son Napoléon elected to city council in 1896 and eventually elected mayor in 1910. On Rock City and the Drouin family, see Nathalie Bouchard and Réjean Lemoine, The Rothmans. Benson & Hedges Factory: In the Heart of Quebec City for the Past 100 Years (Quebec: L. G. Chabot Inc., 1999);
76. "Current Trade Prices", Canadian Cigar and Tobacco Journal, January 1956, p. 25.
77. On B. Houde, see Library and Archives Canada, Royal Commission Re: The Tobacco Trade of Canada, Minutes [hereafter RCTT], RG 13 box 2317 file 349/1903, Evidence of Alphonse Dussault, p. 581;
78. Ernest J. Chalmers, The Book of Canada: Illustrating the Great Dominion (Toronto, 1905), p. 203.
79. Howard Cox, The Global Cigarette: Origins and Evolution of British American Tobacco, 1880-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 101-103;
80. P. G. Porter, "Origins of the American Tobacco Company", Business History Review (Spring 1969), pp. 59-76.
81. For Houde's management's response to a rumour that the company had been taken over by the ATCC, see "Le combine du tabac". Le Soleil, April 7, 1899, p. 6.
82. For Dussault's account, see RCTT, p. 582.
83. RCTT, p. 608.
84. Evidence of Alphonse Dussault, RCTT, p. 584.
85. Evidence of Ernest E. Cinq-Mars, RCTT, pp. 729-732.
86. Evidence of Louis Samenhof, RCTT, p. 719.
87. At the Price Spreads Royal Commission, Gray Miller, president of Imperial Tobacco in the 1930s, testified that in 1908 the ATCC purchased 87% of B. Houde and Company shares for 5435,200. Yet a 1922 biography of the company in the Canadian Cigar and Tobacco Journal claims that Louis Samenhof, an ATCC employee, was general manager of the firm from 1905.
88. See evidence of Gray Miller, "Evidence, Price Spreads", p. 1467;
89. "The B. Houde Company, Limited", Canadian Cigar and Tobacco Journal, February 1925, p. 17.
90. Le Soleil, March 27, 1924, special supplement "Chez-Nous", p. 2.
91. David Monod, Store Wars: Shopkeepers and the Culture of Mass Marketing, 1890-1939 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), pp. 149-194.
92. I had two sampling techniques for these papers. La Patrie and La Presse were sampled one week per month (starting with week one in January, week two in February, and so on) between 1920 and 1960. Le Soleil was read in February and March from 1917 to 1948. Pre-1914 advertising was surveyed in January and February 1900, 1905, 1910, and 1914. While this study focuses on newspaper advertising, store window displays were also important to legitimizing new industrial products like these brands. See Keith Waiden, "Speaking Modern: Language, Culture, and Hegemony in Grocery Window Displays, 1887-1920", Canadian Historical Review, vol. 70 (September 1989), pp. 285-310.
93. See these papers, for example, in February 1925 and 1935.
94. Rose Quesnel advertisement, Le Soleil, March 1, 1905, p. 3.
95. Luc Côté and Jean-Guy Daigle, Publicité de masse et masse publicité: le marché québécois des années 1920 aux années 1960 (Ottawa: Les presses de l'Université d'Ottawa, 1999), pp. 303-330.
96. "Ce fameux tabac naturel est le produit de trois siècles de culture et de sélection" as well as "triée, mûrie, et mélangée par les soins de spécialistes". Alouette advertisements, Le Soleil, April 24, 1924, p. 13;
97. Le Soleil, March 17, 1932, p. 19.
98. "...produit et scientifiquement traité en des ateliers propres et bien aménagés", Canadian Cigar and Tobacco Journal, October 1923, p. 41;
99. Rose Quesnel advertisement, Le Soleil, March 7, 1936, p. 2.
100. "Le préféré des vieux fumeurs". Forest Frères advertisement, Le Soleil, April 12, 1924, p. 27.
101. Le Soleil, April 20, 1931, p. 16;
102. for the same campaign, but with firemen, see La Presse, May 2, 1931, p. 23.
103. Forest Frères advertisement, Le Soleil, March 15, 1923, p. 9.
104. On smoking and the gendering of space, see Rudy, The Freedom to Smoke, chap. 1.
105. Le Soleil, March 5, 1923, p. 9;
106. Le Soleil, March 24, 1923, p. 2;
107. Le Soleil, March 31. 1923, p. 3.
108. "[L]es goûts ne se discutent pas". Le Soleil, March 15, 1923, p. 9.
109. Rudy, Freedom to Smoke, chap. 1.
110. "Ah! Ma petite femme tu fumes! Heureusement que c'est du tabac faible Forest Frères!"
111. Nathalie Hamel, "Coordonner l'artisanat et le tourisme, ou comment mettre en valeur le visage pittoresque du Québec (1915-196O)", Histoire social/Social History, vol. 34, no. 67 (May 2001), pp. 97-114;
112. McKay. The Quest of the Folk.
113. Hamel, "Coordonner l'artisanat et le tourisme".
114. Ibid.
115. Le Soleil, April 16, 1923, p. 8.
116. Bon Bourgeois advertisements, Le Soleil, April 4, 1923, p. 3;
117. Le Soleil, April 18, 1923, p. 12;
118. Le Soleil, May 2, 1923, p. 2 (Figure 6).
119. Rose Quesnel advertisement, Le Soleil, March 7, 1936 (Figure 7);
120. also Le Soleil, March 12, 1937, p. 23;
121. Le Soleil, April 2, 1937, p. 11.
122. Hercule advertisements, La Presse, October 27, 1925, p. 20 (Figure 8);
123. La Presse, November 3, 1925, p. 14;
124. La Presse, Decembers, 1925, p. 25.
125. Alouette advertisement, Le Soleil, March 24, 1932, p. 19.
126. "...les braves de la Nouvelle-France fumaient déjà le bon tabac de Québec", Le Soleil, Ibid.
127. "Quand Jacques-Cartier vint au Canada aux lointains de 1535, il trouva des plantations de tabac...", Le Soleil, March 17, 1932, p. 19.
128. "Quand Trois-Rivières n'était qu'un avant-poste...", Le Soleil, March 29, 1934, p. 17;
129. "Quand Montréal n'était qu'une forêt...", March 22, 1934, p. 12;
130. "Quand Sherbrooke n'était qu'une Bourgade ...", April 13, 1934, p. 10;
131. "Quand Hull était un camp de trafiquants" - "nos vaillants ancêtres", April 25, 1934, p. 11.
132. Alouette advertisement, Le Soleil, April 10, 1924, p. 11.
133. Alouette advertisement, Le Soleil, July 9, 1930, p. 4.
134. "...est infiniment supérieur à tous les tabacs connus de nos aïeuẍ", Alouette advertisement, Le Soleil, April 10, 1924, p. 11.
135. "Il y a du roman dans le mot même - et quelles visions d'hommes robustes et virils". Voyageur advertisement La Presse, October 8, 1930, p. 25.
136. "... autour du feu de camp pour fumer le calumet de la paix", La Presse, July 30, 1930, p. 19.
137. "... notre odorant tabac naturel", La Presse, July 30, 1930, p. 19.
138. For a more detailed discussion, see Rudy, The Freedom to Smoke, pp. 117-120.
139. Joseph Marion, "Evidence, Price Spreads", p. 1687.
140. Gray Miller, "Evidence, Price Spreads", p. 1630;
141. LAC, RG 33-18 Vol. 36, file "General Correspondence of Tobacco Companies", Subject Rock City, A. E. Picard to H. H. Stevens, May 3, 1934.
142. Homegrown tobacco had briefly been excised and licensed in 1918, but the tax was removed in 1923 and the licensing system ended at the same time. See "Growers Must be Licensed Now", Canadian Cigar and Tobacco Journal, September 1918, pp. 49, 51;
143. Ferland, Debates of the House of Commons, July 24, 1942, p. 4640;
144. McGill University, Government Documents, Report of the Minister of Agriculture, 1941-42, "Tobacco Section", p. 71.
145. On the song, see Hélène Ploufe, "Un Canadien errant", Encyclopedia of Music in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), p. 155.
146. Millbank advertisement, Le Soleil, April 21, 1924, p. 3.
147. For other examples of this Millbank campaign, see Le Soleil, March 3, 1924, p. 5 ("Les Montagnards");
148. Le Soleil, March 17, 1924, p. 13 ("Vive la Canadienne");
149. Le Soleil, April 28, 1924, p. 7 ("La Madelon").
150. Turret cigarette advertisement. Le Soleil, April 20, 1932, p. 10.
151. Roger Lemelin, Autopsie d'un fumeur (Montreal: Alain Stanké, 1988).
152. See, for example, Michèle Martin, "Modulating Popular Culture: Cultural Critics on Tremblay's Les Belles-Soeurs", Labour/Le Travail (Fall 2003), pp. 109-135.
153. Cox, The Global Cigarette.