Resources on English-Speaking Quebec: A Field Map

O’Donnell, Lorraine; Donovan, Patrick

doi:https://doi.org/10.7202/1110172ar

Introduction[1]

From the 1760s to the present day, researchers and other knowledge producers have created thousands of scholarly publications, films, maps, and other materials on the topic of English speakers in what is now called the province of Quebec. Brendan O’Donnell, an independent historian and bibliographer, has collected information on these resources for nearly fifty years. He initially shared his findings in print (B. O’Donnell, 1985, 1992, 2009b) and then online as of 2009, with his Bibliography on English-speaking Quebec (B. O’Donnell, 2023). The Quebec English-Speaking Communities Research Network (QUESCREN) produced the third print volume and maintains the digital platform for the online Bibliography.[2] As of October 2023, the online Bibliography lists over 14,400 resources.[3]

The Bibliography’s about page outlines its scope as follows:

This bibliography aims to help anyone studying English-speaking Quebec find material about the nature, history, contributions, and concerns of this diverse official language minority community. It reveals the wealth of available material and catalogues it in a useful way in the hope of stimulating further research on English-speaking Quebec.

The Bibliography mostly consists of a broad multidisciplinary selection of scholarly secondary sources, but it also lists some non-academic material. As of December 2023, 94% of its titles consisted of academic theses (Master’s and PhD level) as well as books, book chapters, and journal articles. In addition to the theses, many of these last three could be categorized as scholarly.[4] The remaining materials are clearly non-scholarly and include popular magazine articles, webpages, and blog posts. The Bibliography includes very little of the grey literature, such as community group annual reports and newsletters, that QUESCREN compiles in its Community Knowledge Open Library (CKOL; https://ckol.quescren.ca/).[5] The present article concerns the Bibliography (not CKOL) and the mostly scholarly resources the Bibliography lists.

QUESCREN enters its 15th year in 2024. As senior research associates at the Network’s headquarters at Concordia University in Montreal, we are marking the milestone with this article.

Our research question is: What are the defining characteristics of existing resources on English-speaking Quebec, including trends and gaps? We use a mapping review to answer this question, looking at the thematic facets, titles, and abstracts in the Bibliography. We do not analyze or synthesize the contents (findings) of the resources.

Our mapping exercise reveals a flourishing corpus of literature. Certain regional and ethnocultural populations in English-speaking Quebec receive more attention than others when examined through the lens of many disciplines. Trends within this corpus include an increasing number of titles per year, and a growing diversity of topics. Gaps include relatively few resources on certain subgroups within the community and on broad-ranging resources covering the community as a whole. Most of the focus, instead, is on a specific set of subgroups within the larger population.

Considering this, we argue below that the scholarly field of resources on English-speaking Quebec is diversified and expanding. However, it is not balanced or cohesive; it is quite uneven and patchy. This mirrors, to a certain extent, the lack of a focus on English-speaking Quebec within the province’s English-language research institutions, as discussed below.

This method of mapping based on bibliographic data has been used by other scholars to explore other fields of study. Luc van Doorslaer uses it for translation studies. He states that:

[i]n a discipline that is not so young anymore, any scholar’s attempt to gain complete knowledge of all approaches, trends and influences has become an illusion. As a result, the structuring of the existing knowledge is a prerequisite for scholarly dealings with a growing amount of materials.
van Doorslaer, 2014, p. 23

He also includes online bibliographies in his list of “knowledge structuring resources” (van Doorslaer, 2014, p. 23). This author goes on to present the “maps” of a certain bibliography’s keywords (van Doorslaer, 2014, p. 24). For another example, M. Newman uncovers contours of scholar co-authorship and collaboration in some science and math fields by “using data from three bibliographic databases” (Newman, 2004, p. 5200). These examples demonstrate that online bibliographic databases provide data points relevant to fields of study that go beyond the listings themselves.

Our article is related to others looking at the ecosystem of research on English-speaking Quebec. They include a 2006 report produced for the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages (Johnson et al., 2006) and a briefing document for government written by an author of the present article (L. O’Donnell, 2022). They also include work by bibliographer Brendan O’Donnell. He has provided an overview analysis of publications on English-speaking Quebec produced between 1990 and 2008 (B. O’Donnell, 2009a) and explored what his Bibliography says about the history of English-speaking Quebec, and what he identifies as an institutional failure to emphasize it (B. O’Donnell, 2013, 2021).

The population the Bibliography covers, English-speaking Quebec, is an official language minority community under federal law, including the CanadianCharter of Rights and Freedoms (Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 1982) and the Official Languages Act (Official Languages Act, 1985). To support the vitality of these minority language communities, Canada’s Commissioner of Official Languages has acknowledged the importance of comprehensive research and research institutions, partnerships, and initiatives (Johnson et al., 2006, pp. 54–57). It is our hope that this article serves as one effort to meet this need, and that it is useful to both the research community and in English-speaking Quebec.

1. Methodology

1.1 Justification of the Mapping Review as Our Evidence Synthesis Method

Scholarship on evidence synthesis, particularly on scoping and mapping reviews, provides us with a means for approaching the large corpus of over 14,400 resources. Below is a brief overview, and the rationale for choosing the mapping approach.

It is useful to carry out some form of evidence synthesis to deal with growing numbers of research resources. Defined as “the rigorous collation, evaluation and analysis of literature, studies, and reports”(Campbell et al., 2023, p. 1), evidence syntheses help scholars understand their respective fields, and support informed decision-making, especially in time-sensitive fields like health where evidence-based practice is crucial (Campbell et al., 2023, p. 1; Grant & Booth, 2009, p. 108).

Scholars are working to provide guidelines for conducting evidence synthesis reviews. Consider, for instance, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) Checklist, a detailed best practice list of elements that scoping reviews should include (Grant & Booth, 2009, p. 91).

Among the types of evidence syntheses relevant to our vast corpus of studies on English-speaking Quebec are two said to have a “broad approach” and to be “exploratory” in nature (Campbell et al., 2023, p. 3), and thus to be salient to our needs. These are scoping reviews and mapping reviews.

While the scholarship is not always consistent in its terminology and definitions of these two types of evidence syntheses (Grant & Booth, 2009, p. 104), researchers have moved towards distinguishing between them. Scoping reviews are said to provide a more in depth examination of a smaller number of studies, usually under 80; mapping reviews are said to be less in depth, involve larger numbers of resources, and frequently present their findings in graphical terms (Campbell et al., 2023, pp. 3–4). Furthermore, scoping reviews may involve content and concept analysis (Tricco et al., 2018, p. 471), in contrast to mapping reviews that look at “what and where research exists on a particular area” (Campbell et al., 2023, p. 5).

We chose to conduct a mapping review, not a scoping review, of the literature on English-speaking Quebec. Our main reason is that the Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec allows us to amass data on a substantial array of resources. It would be impractical to conduct a scoping review on such a large corpus, and working from a smaller selection would not provide the global portrait that our research question calls for, or what we feel would be most useful for the development of the field. While the present study does not claim to have the calibre of the rigorous mapping reviews of, say, medical research as seen, for instance, in an article on AI and healthcare (Morley et al., 2020), it does systematically look at a large corpus and provides a rough guide, or map, of its contours to show where the evidence is, and when it was produced.

1.2 Generating Mapping Data From Brendan O’Donnell’s Bibliography on English-SpeakingQuebec

Brendan O’Donnell’s Bibliography offers detailed bibliographic metadata for each publication, including title, author, and publisher. This metadata often includes abstracts. The Bibliography also uses thematic facets that the bibliographer crafted in conjunction with librarian Claire Elliott and with QUESCREN staff support. These facets were constructed using the Canadian Subject Thesaurus as a foundational reference (Saskatchewan, Ministry of Education, 2008).[6]

We gathered data for our mapping review by using these thematic facets. The information we provide below details how these work, since we hope that it will encourage other researchers to validate our results or produce new research using this digital tool. References in the Bibliography are accessed by a search bar and facets that narrow down results. Users apply facets through a “refine by” menu on the left-hand side of the screen. Themes covered in the first level of facets are: subject, geographical area, period studied, ethno-religious group, type of resource, publication date, and hyperlinked resource, as shown in Figure 1.

First-Level Facets in Brendan O’Donnell’s Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec — *Figure 1*

*First-Level Facets in Brendan O’Donnell’s* Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec

These main facets have additional levels of sub-facets. For instance, “subject” has a second-level series of 35 facets from “age groups” to “women.” Some of these, in turn, have third-level facets. For instance, “age groups” has 4: “adults,” “children,” “seniors,” and “youth/adolescents,” as seen in Figure 2.

Second- and Third-Level Facets in Brendan O’Donnell’s Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec — *Figure 2*

*Second- and Third-Level Facets in Brendan O’Donnell’s* Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec

Beside each thematic facet is a number in parentheses. These numbers refer to the number of resources associated with each facet.

The numbers and the topics associated with them form the basis of most of our findings below. We transferred the corresponding numbers of resources for each selection filtered through facets into Excel sheets. We then organized and presented this data using various sorting methods.

In the case of topics not covered by these facets, we used the search bar to search through all fields. This approach searches for keywords in both titles and abstracts (when available).

We put phrases in quotation marks to identify titles with the exact phrase, as instructed in the “about” page of the Bibliography. These searches provided numbers of relevant publications, and these numbers and corresponding phrases comprised our data.

1.3 Limitations

There are limitations to our methodology. In confining our investigation to mapping rather than scoping, we forgo a deeper engagement with the rich contents of thousands of resources, something that the bibliographer Brendan O’Donnell himself did in 2009 (B. O’Donnell, 2009a). Also, by not describing or assessing in any detail who produced the resources and in what contexts—for instance, in what institutional settings, we forsake presenting readers with details of the research ecosystem generating the resources. While the overview could be criticized as superficial, its value, we suggest, lies in its ability to lead to other, more focused and in-depth studies.

Another limitation to the present article stems from the source of our data. By their very nature, bibliographies are incomplete. Scholars and authors are always producing new material, and it is challenging to keep up and list them all. Indeed, librarians have produced elaborate mathematical explorations on bibliographic incompleteness (Egghe, 1990). Field-specific factors can also affect bibliographic completeness; these include whether the field is interdisciplinary, or if its salient resources “are scattered in a lot of journals not specially devoted to the subject in question” (Egghe, 1990, p. 491).

These points are germane to the Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec. For one, the field of English-speaking Quebec is interdisciplinary. Moreover, results of any search in the Bibliography demonstrate that the resources are indeed dispersed, rather than restricted to one or two journals or publishers. Nevertheless, as noted above, the Bibliography is geared toward formal and scholarly publications, and relatively few non-scholarly resources are included.

Though broad and comprehensive, the Bibliography has additional limits, and these are mirrored in our present article. One relates to its thematic facets. Given the significant number of facets, one could question, for instance, whether Brendan O’Donnell has always applied them consistently. Quality in cataloguing is something librarians have addressed as an issue in other contexts (Abd Manaf & Abdul Rahman, 2006). If we consider digital datasets in general (that is, beyond only bibliographic ones), we are also faced with the challenge of ensuring quality in “non-standard data” (Mäkelä et al., 2020), a term that in our view covers a variety of resources, including reports produced by bodies other than publication houses. This is reflected in the dataset we are considering. The quality of the data we generated from the Bibliography is reliant on the quality of the cataloguing and classification. We justify our choice of methodology, however, in knowing that Brendan O’Donnell has been the bibliographer for the database from the start; our assumption is that this longevity ensures a high degree of consistency.

When it comes to obtaining data on the field from titles and abstracts, another limitation emerges: it is hard to get precise data. As will be seen below in the discussion of the numbers of resources examining English-speaking Quebec as an aggregate population, it is a challenge to precisely pinpoint subjects with keywords. Thus, the numbers generated in that section are approximative.

Another constraint is that the Bibliography, which targets an official language minority community, does not list resources that are specifically about Indigenous peoples.[9] As a Government of Canada webpage states, Indigenous peoples “is a collective name for the original peoples of North America and their descendants,” namely First Nations, Inuit and Métis (Canada, Government of Canada; Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, 2009). Most Indigenous people in Quebec speak English as their primary official language (CESFNCQ, 2018). Some Indigenous people organize on the basis of this language; for instance, there is a Coalition of English-Speaking First Nations Communities in Québec (CESFNCQ), which brings together 11 communities (CESFNCQ, 2018).[10] However, our understanding is that, while some Indigenous-led organizations may argue for access to services in English, this does not necessarily reflect their identity, or mean that Indigenous people in Quebec consider or organize themselves as part of “English-speaking Quebec.” We note, for instance, that no Indigenous organizations are members of the two main umbrella organizations for the official language minority community, the Quebec Community Groups Network and the Regional Development Network (Quebec Community Groups Network, n.d.; Regional Development Network, n.d.). The Government of Canada, for its part, distinguishes between official language minority communities and Indigenous peoples, as seen for instance in the way it organizes data on the Statistics Canada website (Subjects | Statistics Canada, n.d.). Arguably, this is also in keeping with the practices of the Quebec government, which does not recognize official language minority communities per se but which, in the preamble to its Charter of the French Language, distinguishes between the “English-speaking community of Québec” and “the First Nations and the Inuit in Québec, the first inhabitants of this land” (Charter of the French Language, 2023). Thus, following the Bibliography, and in keeping with organizational decisions of Indigenous groups and these examples from governments, our data and article do not address resources on Indigenous people in Quebec who use English.[11]

2. Findings and Discussion: The Field Map

This section provides a “map” of resources about English-speaking Quebec, according to the data gathered from Brendan O’Donnell’s Bibliography.[12] We will look at the following themes in turn: the timeframe during which the resources were produced, the period studied, geographical area, ethno-religious group, and other subjects covered in the Bibliography. In each case, after providing the data we generated (findings), we will offer some analysis or thoughts (discussion).

2.1 Variation in the Number of Resources

2.1.1 Findings

Figure 3 below provides the number of resources produced by decade.

Number of Resources Produced on English-Speaking Quebec by Decade, 1760‒2019, According to Brendan O’Donnell’s Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec — *Figure 3*

*Number of Resources Produced on English-Speaking Quebec by Decade, 1760‒2019, According to Brendan O’Donnell’s* Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec

It shows that there was a relatively constant increase in production per decade between the 1760s and the 1990s, and then a decline per decade in the 2000s and the 2010s.

2.1.2 Discussion

Various possible reasons can be given for the increase in production over the decades up until the 1990s. One is the growth in the research ecosystem during this period. The number of universities increased over time: there were 17 degree-granting institutions in the 4 founding provinces at the Confederation of Canada in 1867, 28 by 1939, and then, with the country’s post-World War II student and population boom, 8 new universities opened between the 1950s and the 1970s (Anisef et al., 2012). In the field of Canadian history, for instance, the Canadian Historical Review was founded in 1920 to accommodate the growing numbers and professionalization (in universities) of historians, who wanted to publish (Wright, 2005, p. 65). There was also the rise of Canadian Studies programs in Canada and abroad starting in the 1970s: the Canadian government funded a number of them between the 1970s and 2012 (Couture, 2021, pp. 99–100). Overall, research production on many Canadian topics, including English-speaking Quebec, increased in those decades.[13]

Another reason could be the political context. Pierre-Olivier Bonin found that the number of media articles on the Charter of the French Language, a topic of great concern to English-speaking Quebec, peaked in the late 1980s and mid-1990s (Bonin, 2021, p. 284). Chantal Lacasse, for her part, identified catalyzing moments (“moments catalyseurs”) building English speakers’ awareness of their québécité, including the Quiet Revolution, the election of the Parti Québécois, the adoption of the Charter of the French Language, and the first referendum on sovereignty association, a period she dates from 1963 to 1980 (Lacasse et al., 2022, p. 59). It is possible that interest in the political situation stimulated research production between the 1960s and the 1990s.

Finally, the lower number of publications in the 18th and even the 19th centuries may be due to the fact that some resources produced in the past have not been preserved, preventing their survival to the present day.

We will now turn to the subjects the resources cover.

2.2 Historical Focus of Resources

2.2.1 Findings

The first subject we looked at is the periods of time in which the resources were produced. Our question here was: Do the resources in the Bibliography study the past, or the present/recent past relative to their respective periods of publication?

To start, we looked at the centuries that were studied in the resources listed in the Bibliography (B. O’Donnell, 2023), as shown in Figure 4.[14]

Number of Publications Studying the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st Centuries in the Resources Listed in Brendan O’Donnell’s Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec — *Figure 4*

*Number of Publications Studying the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st Centuries in the Resources Listed in Brendan O’Donnell’s* Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec

It shows that most resources look at the 19th and 20th centuries. A proportionally large number also focus on the 21st century, given that we are only examining two decades of publications.

Next we asked: Do the resources examine a contemporary or recent period, or do they look at the past? To find out, we focused on resources since 1960. We linked the period they cover with their date of publication.[15] Results are in Figure 5.

Time Period Studied in Resources from the 1960s to the 2010s, According to Brendan O’Donnell’s Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec — *Figure 5*

*Time Period Studied in Resources from the 1960s to the 2010s, According to Brendan O’Donnell’s* Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec

This figure reveals the large numbers of resources whose subject is the past. This is understandable, since documents published in the late 20th century may well focus on the early 20th century and, if so, they, too, are historical in focus. Regardless, Figure 5 adequately demonstrates that most resources on English-speaking Quebec are historical in focus.

2.2.2 Discussion

We can only speculate on why the focus of many resources on English-speaking Quebec is historical. Starting in the late 19th century, there were efforts by English speakers to preserve local histories. These could emerge from a strong sense of pride; for instance, historian Louis-Georges Harvey argues that the English-speaking creators of early historical societies in the Eastern Townships were organized around “highlighting the role of the pioneers and the loyalty of this first generation and its descendants”[16] (Harvey, 2022, p. 18).

In contrast, in the 20th century, it could be that history-writing was for some a self-protective action. The 1977 Charter of the French Language made French the predominant language of Quebec’s economy and government. In response, English speakers became a “defensive minority,” in the words of a scholar (Levine, 1986, p. 11). Some English-speaking Quebecers apparently felt it important to document its past as a means of ensuring community voices and realities were preserved. Dorothy Williams makes this argument. She describes being repeatedly told at school and university that Black English-speaking Quebecers had no (written) history, and “thus, the crux of my pursuits was simple. I am a Black, female African Canadian historian impassioned by the need to recover a history that has been made unrecognizable or rendered insignificant” (Williams, 2023, p. 5). We wonder whether being a minority, dominant or not, tends to lead members of a population to write about aspects of its past more than other populations might. It is certain that the originators of the ethnolinguistic vitality concept identify “sociohistoric capital” as a key vitality element (Bourhis et al., 2019, p. 419). This, and “vitality of memory,” is something the community can “mobilize” strategically (L. O’Donnell et al., 2013, p. 164; Roy, 2021; Zanazanian, 2019).[17] That said, as mentioned below, no comprehensive history of English-speaking Quebec has been written since 1985.

2.3 Regions Studied in the Resources

2.3.1 Findings

Another question we asked is: Which geographical areas are the focus of the resources on English-speaking Quebec? Figure 6 looks at this.

Number of Resources per Region(s) Covered, According to Brendan O’Donnell’s Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec — *Figure 6*

*Number of Resources per Region(s) Covered, According to Brendan O’Donnell’s* Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec

This figure shows that the top three regions covered in the resources are Montreal, the Eastern Townships / Cantons-de-l’Est, and the Capitale-Nationale (Quebec City). The predominance of these three regions was also noted by Brendan O’Donnell in his survey, published a decade ago, of scholarship on the history of English-speaking Quebec (B. O’Donnell, 2013, p. 116).

We further reviewed the bibliographic data and found that, for every decade between the 1960s and 2010s, Montreal is by far the most studied; Eastern Townships / Cantons-de-l’Est and Capitale-Nationale are second and third for each decade, though the number of resources for all regions outside Montreal are far lower. Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Montérégie, and Outaouais always form the next three, though the order varies.

2.3.2 Discussion

The focus on these regions is probably because of demographics and political/economic power. The Montreal area has long been home to the majority of Quebec’s English-speaking population. In 2021, 80% of Quebec’s English-speaking population lived in the Montreal Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) (Auclair et al., 2023). In the 19th century, the Eastern Townships had the single largest regional concentration of English speakers in the province (Rudin, 1985, p. 34), and remains a popular location for second homes among the Montreal English-speaking elite. Although the English-speaking population in Quebec City is small today, 44% of its population was English-speaking in the mid-19th century (Rudin, 1985, 36). It was also the seat of British colonial power.

2.4 Ethno-Religious Groups Studied in the Resources

2.4.1 Findings

The resources in the Bibliography also cover a broad range of ethno-religious groups, as shown in Figure 7 below.

Number of Resources by Ethno-Religious Group Covered in Brendan O’Donnell’s Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec — *Figure 7*

*Number of Resources by Ethno-Religious Group Covered in Brendan O’Donnell’s* Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec

The largest number of resources are classified under linguistic group facets: Anglophones, Francophones, and Allophones. Some of the resources that Brendan O’Donnell classified under these facets are not about particular ethno-religious subgroups. This is the case, for just one example, of the article “‘It Was Always About Relationships and It Was Awesome’: Girls Performing Gender and Identity in an Out-Of-School-Time Science Conversation Club” (Gonsalves et al., 2022), which is about Montreal teenage girls identified by language in the abstract, but not religion or ethnicity (however, within the pages of the article, the authors do identify the ethnocultural background of the six girls studied [Gonsalves et al., 2022, p. 52]). Others classified under the “Anglophone” facet are also classified under other facets within the ethno-religious group section. For instance, a study of Tamil migrants is classified under the three language facets as well as under “Asians” and “South Asians” (Das, 2016). Thus, while the language facets are useful for reminding Bibliography users that the resources it lists are related to language groups, the ethnic (“Blacks,” etc.), religious (“Protestants,” “Muslims,” etc.), and geographical facets (“Asian,” “British,” “Italian,” etc.) provide richer data, in our view.

2.4.2 Discussion

Setting aside the three linguistic facets, Figure 8 shows that religious groups, particularly Jews and Protestants, are at the top of the list. While studies focusing on English-speaking Catholics are fewer in number, it is notable that the top geographical facet—the Irish—refers to a nation that is predominantly Catholic, where religion has always played a large role.

The Irish notwithstanding, what are the most frequent geographical origins of the English-speaking populations discussed in the Bibliography’s resources? Those most frequently featured refer to populations that, at the group level, mostly arrived in Quebec prior to the 1950s. Aside from Jews, who historically were largely from Central and Eastern Europe, the Bibliography’s resources are prominently skewed towards English speakers with origins in primarily English-speaking countries: the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States. While this may seem self-evident from a demographic standpoint, it is worth noting that the majority of Quebec English speakers are no longer of British origin (Donovan, 2015). Italians, Blacks, Asians, and the descendants of more recent waves of immigrants are covered less frequently by the resources. Figure 7 data thus supports the finding described above that resources on English-speaking Quebec have a strong historical focus. Also, once again, this is in keeping with a decade-old observation by Brendan O’Donnell. He said in 2013 that the focus of earlier scholarship on English-speaking Quebec history was initially on the Irish and Scots but, after 1980 and “especially after 1990,” it expanded to include Jews, Italians, Greeks, Asians, West Indians, and Americans (B. O’Donnell, 2013, p. 121). The Bibliography does not include English (from England) in its ethno-religious facets, though it does include a broader “British” category, which is lower on the list than the Irish and Scots.[20]

2.5 Subjects Studied in the Resources

2.5.1 Findings

We then asked: What themes and disciplines do the resources cover? These are identified as thematic facets in the Bibliography under the category “subject.” Figure 8 shows the number of resources falling under each facet.[21]

Number of Resources per Main Subject Facet in Brendan O’Donnell’s Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec — *Figure 8*

*Number of Resources per Main Subject Facet in Brendan O’Donnell’s* Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec

Further examination of the data above reveals that the same top three subjects have dominated resources on English-speaking Quebec since the 1960s: Arts/Culture/Media; Sociology/Anthropology; and Politics/Government. “Politics/Government” is relatively less frequent over time, but it remains in the top three.

We were curious to find out if the popularity of other topics also varies over time. We took as a case the topic “Women.” Table 1 identifies the number and relative frequency of resources about women since the 1960s.

Number and Relative Frequency of Resources on Women by Decade, According to Brendan O’Donnell’s Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec — *Table 1*

*Number and Relative Frequency of Resources on Women by Decade, According to Brendan O’Donnell’s* Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec

2.5.2 Discussion

Scholars have focused on a broad variety of topics relating to Quebec. The fact that the same top three subjects have dominated resources on English-speaking Quebec since the 1960s shows a sustained scholarly interest in similar topics.

This is not true across the board, however, and there have been small shifts. For instance, relatively more resources have discussed women since the 1960s, the frequency peaking in the early decades of the 21st century. This shows the validity of our methodological decision to look not only at the contours, but also at trends in the production of resources on English-speaking Quebec. In this case, we see more resources about women following a rise in the creation of women’s studies departments in Canada (Onuora et al., 2022).

Given the size and importance of the English-language health and social services sector in Quebec,[22] the fact that this subject falls in 10th position indicates that there is less scholarly output related to this field than one might expect given the considerable government funding going to this sector, for instance the Dialogue McGill project (https://www.dialoguemcgill.ca/en/home).

2.6 Resources on English-Speaking Quebecers as an Aggregate Population

2.6.1 Findings

How many resources in the Bibliography focus on the entire English-speaking population of Quebec as a distinct entity? To answer this question, we searched titles and abstracts using a list of phrases that refer to English speakers as an aggregate group,[23] since the existing facets did not allow us to address this directly.

Our search yielded 974 resources out of 14,438, or approximately 6.74% of the entries in the Bibliography. When restricting our search to titles only, there were 288 resources, all of which were published starting in 1967; this coincides with the start of a period marked by Francophone affirmation in Quebec that led to a minoritization of English-speakers and the consequent growth of language as a marker of identity. Some of these bibliographic entries include phrases identifying the language spoken by the official language minority community, such as “English-speaking Quebec,” or its French equivalent, “Québec d’expression anglaise.” Others refer to this linguistic population as a community, with phrases including “English-speaking community” and “Anglophone community.”

We recognize that this method of searching may not capture all resources. Of the latter group of resources having titles or abstracts containing the words “community” or “communities,” for instance, a number focus on specific regions rather than the whole province. Moreover, we know that some resources in the Bibliography are about the aggregate English-speaking Quebec population but do not happen to use any of the key phrases used in our search. For instance, this is the case for an article on perinatal care that uses the phrase “minority Anglophones” in its title (Auger et al., 2023). However, it is reasonable to say that there is a fairly small number of resources that identify English-speaking Quebec by commonly used phrases to describe this population.

2.6.2 Discussion

As far as we can determine with this method, the province-wide population of English-speaking Quebecers has not been a research priority. Brendan O’Donnell said this was the case for the field of the history of the population. He stated that, while “aspects” of history and society were covered in the literature, “academics seem to be of the view that the panoramic study of English Quebec is worthy of little attention” (B. O’Donnell, 2013, p. 114). He pointed out that the last historical overview of English-speaking Quebec as a whole was Ronald Rudin’s The Forgotten Quebecers, published in 1985 (B. O’Donnell, 2013, p. 114; B. O’Donnell, 2021, p. 472; Rudin, 1985).

Why would that be? We speculate that this might be due to relatively little awareness, among researchers and other knowledge producers, of English-speaking Quebec as an entity. This is compounded by the fact that many English speakers themselves do not consider the English language to be a principal marker of their identity; community consciousness and organizing around language is fairly recent (Donovan, 2015). In 2006, authors of a study for the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages reported:

[o]n the Anglophone side, apart from a small number of researchers, the networks have yet to take shape. Quebec’s Anglophone universities do not seem to give as much emphasis on research on the vitality of the province’s Anglophone minority as the community would like to see
Johnson et al., 2006, p. 55

Brendan O’Donnell, for his part, argues that Quebec’s English-medium universities play a role, noting that, while they may offer courses on aspects of the province’s Anglophone population such as an ethnic subgroup or English language arts, they do not offer a comprehensive “English-Quebec studies perspective.” He goes further to remark that it is up to “academics to stop acting as if it is politically incorrect to teach English Quebec studies” (B. O’Donnell, 2021, pp. 472–473).

In other words, the ecosystem to support and promote research on English-speaking Quebec, which includes CEGEPs, universities, research centres, scholars, and other elements (L. O’Donnell, 2022, p. 4), is possibly not doing all it could. One probable reason for this is the absence of bodies including research chairs on English-speaking Quebec and a shortage of research centres, with QUESCREN being the only one devoted to researching the Anglophone population as a whole (L. O’Donnell, 2022, p. 7).

Similarly, looking at this population as an official language minority community has not been a priority, judging from the relatively few resource titles and abstracts containing this phrase. This is despite the fact that the term English or French linguistic minority population(s) has been used in the public sphere since at least the 1982 adoption of the Constitution of Canada (Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 1982), building on concepts of minorities present in the British North America Act that brought about Canadian Confederation in 1867 (Canada & Great Britain, 2004). We wonder: Has there been a lack of efforts promoting knowledge of these concepts and the legislation?

We can further develop this examination in our roles as research associates at QUESCREN, the mandate of which is “to promote the understanding and vitality of Quebec’s English-language minority communities through research, . . . knowledge mobilization, [etc.]” (QUESCREN Mission/Structure/Activities, 2023). Is the apparent shortage of research focus on English-speaking Quebec as an aggregate group, and as an official language minority community, a problem for people in community organizations and government working with and supporting English-speaking Quebec? Do researchers, for their part, have adequate knowledge of the legal frameworks supporting English-speaking community organizations? Is there a disconnect between scholarly production and the community sector? Is there a disconnect between the community sector and the community itself? More research would be required to answer these questions.[24]

2.7 Bill 101 is the Language Law Most Identified in Titles and Abstracts

2.7.1 Findings

Is research on English-speaking Quebec focused on language laws? The answer is: yes and no. We feel that this topic is important. English-speaking Quebec has, since the adoption of the federal Official Languages Act, been identified as an official language minority community and, since 1977, the federal government made funding available to Quebec Anglophone groups under the Official Languages envelope (Prosperi, 1995, p. 44).

Analysis of thematic facets, titles, and abstracts shows that there is some focus on language laws in the Bibliography, but that resources mostly focus on the provincial Charter of the French Language and Bills 63 and 22, the earlier Quebec language laws, rather than on federal legislation. Specifically, as of August 2023, there were 608 resources categorized under the secondary facet “Charter of the French Language” and 784 under the secondary facet “Language Policy”—respectively representing 4.2% and 5.4% of the total number of resources at that time.[25] Based on titles and abstracts, Table 2 shows that 93.6% of all resources related to major language laws deal with the Charter of the French Language. Only 5.4% refer to the Official Languages Act, and 3.3% refer to the CanadianCharter of Rights and Freedoms, which deals with education rights of official language minorities in section 23.

Incidence of Resource Titles and Abstracts Referring to Major Language Laws in Brendan O’Donnell’s Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec — *Table 2*

*Incidence of Resource Titles and Abstracts Referring to Major Language Laws in Brendan O’Donnell’s* Bibliography on English-Speaking Quebec

2.7.2 Discussion

Previous research found that the provincial Bill 101 had profound, and often negative, effects on the English-speaking communities of Quebec, including contributing to massive provincial outmigration, serious enrolment decline in schools, and feelings of fear and frustration (L. O’Donnell, 2023, pp. 57–63; L. O’Donnell et al., 2021, pp. 2–5, 477–481). Is it possible that concerns over this watershed law have had the effect of trumping awareness of federal language legislation?

3. Summary “Map” of the Field of English-Speaking Quebec

*Figure 9*

***“Map” of the Scholarly Field of English-Speaking Quebec: Key Features***

Conclusion

In this article, we have presented a bird’s-eye view of the field of English-speaking Quebec, as shown in Figure 9. Our method was to generate data from thematic facets and from keywords found in titles and abstracts of resources listed in Brendan O’Donnell’s Bibliographyon English-Speaking Quebec. We found that there are many resources, and that the number produced increased for decades before slowing starting in the 1990s. Many of them focus on history, the province’s populous regions more than other regions, and on prominent ethnocultural groups, namely people with origins among the Jewish diaspora and in Britain, Ireland, and the United States, rather than on other groups. We also found some key gaps: relatively few of the resources focus on English-speaking Quebec as a province-wide collective, and even fewer on this group as an official language minority community. Few focus on the Official Languages Act or the language provisions in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In conclusion, we contend that “English-speaking Quebec” is a flourishing field of study, but also that it is patchy, due to these gaps. We feel that the identified gaps are important, and that it would be valuable for scholars to address them looking at regional realities beyond the Montreal/Quebec/Townships regions, at a more diverse range of ethnocultural communities, on English-speaking Quebec as a collectivity, and all of these topics from contemporary as well as historical perspectives. Furthermore, it would help if the ecosystem that generates research, including universities and colleges, would support more research production. Lastly, scholars, government, and communities should consider collaborating more to determine research agendas reflecting shared priorities, to ensure sustained relevance of the scholarship.

Resources on English-Speaking Quebec: A Field Map

Abstract

Résumé

Introduction[1]

1. Methodology

1.1 Justification of the Mapping Review as Our Evidence Synthesis Method