Jack Kerouac, Lowell and P'tit Canada

AL spent an afternoon in Lowell, Mass. this spring and will go back to dig deeper into a fascinating community. We also had a chance to visit UMAss Lowell's Kerouac archive. Lowell was a textile town, from the 1840s into 1950s when the New England  textile industry began moving down South, at first, and then offshore to Asia. French Canadian immigrants were always a large component of the labor force in most of these redbrick mills. Starting during the Civil War, emigration from Quebec and New Brunswick continued into the 1950s and 60s and faced the usual bigotry and paranoia directed at those from away. (See The French Canadian Conspiracy to Invade the United States )Cambodian immigrants settled in Lowell starting in the 1970s. (See photos of a Buddhist temple, below). Kerouac's first language was French. He grew up in a couple of neighborhoods--Pawtucketville and P'tit Canada––that were heavily French Canadian back in the day. Ti-Jean had a complicated relationship to everything, including his French Canadian identity, which doesn't really figure in his "Lowell" novel, The Town and the City. We've posted on P'tit Canadas in other New England cities like Biddeford Maine and Lewiston, Maine so have a look, please. It's a big part of New England's history that has been largely ignored.

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