In 1850 Quebec was called Canada East (Lower Canada in some official documents) and was governed under the Act of Union (1841). The number of its inhabitants, initially 890,261, would rise to one and a half million by the turn of the twentieth century. More than three-quarters were of French origin. The birth rate was high: 43.2 births per 1,000 inhabitants between 1866 and 1876, and 38 per 1,000 between 1906 and 1916. Unfortunately, the infant mortality rate was also very high, particularly in Montreal. In 1859 almost a third of infants did not survive beyond the first year,1 and, in 1911–15 the average annual infant mortality rate was 165.6 per 1,000 in all of Quebec and 209 per 1,000 in Montreal.2 Some sought comfort in the idea that they were “getting little angels in Paradise,”3 while others, in Canada as in the United States, attempted to defeat this scourge. L’Association québécoise de la Goutte de lait, inspired by a French model, was created for this purpose in Montreal at the very beginning of the century, and in Quebec City in 1915.4
Eighty-five per cent of Québécois were Roman Catholics. Furthermore, some historians consider the years between 1840 and 1896 to be the period when the influence of the clergy was strongest in the province. In 1871 77.2% of the population was rural, and 66.4% in 1891.5 This meant that the children of farm families — in other words, the majority — began to contribute to the family’s subsistence by their labour as soon as they grew strong enough.
The same situation prevailed in the other rural regions of Canada, as Neil Sutherland has shown.6 In the poorest milieus children as young as twelve could be placed in domestic service to earn a living. According to the 1911 census, children aged between ten and fourteen who were in employment, most of them boys, represented 3.7% of that age group.7
In the mid-nineteenth century less than a third of the population (29.1%) was literate, with, naturally, considerable variations depending on the social group. Thanks to educational legislation that during the 1840s created a system of rural schools, the écoles de rang, the literacy rate had reached 74.4% by the end of the century.8 Three-quarters of the population therefore became theoretically able to read textbooks, family magazines, and especially the mass circulation newspapers that appeared in the last quarter of the nineteenth century: La Patrie in 1879, La Presse in 1884, and Le Petit Journal in 1920. It goes without saying that those unable to read could learn about the contents of these media from the more educated members of the family and the parish, beginning with the parish priest.
The laws of the time did take violence against children into consideration. The Traité sur les lois civiles du Bas-Canada of 1832 stated that fathers and mothers had a right to punish their children in moderation.9 This article was reproduced in the Civil Code of Lower Canada: “The father and, in his default, the mother of an unemancipated minor have over him a right of moderate correction, which may be delegated to and exercised by those to whom his education has been entrusted.”10 The adjective “reasonable” was added in 1885,11 and the article remained in force until 1991.
English criminal law, which was in force in Canada from 1763, expressed exactly the same idea, which is only to be expected considering the universal practice of corporal punishment. British citizens were protected against physical violence by laws punishing “assault and battery,” but a treaty of 1842 specified that if a master beat his servant, a schoolmaster his pupil, etc., the assault and battery were justifiable as long as the limits prescribed in each case by moderation and necessity were observed.”12 In 1888 Judge Taschereau added, “A parent may in a reasonable manner chastise his child.”13
The same idea of “reasonable” punishment appeared in Section 55 of the 1892 Criminal Code: “It is lawful for every parent, or person in the place of a parent, schoolmaster or master, to use force by way of correction towards any child, pupil or apprentice under his care, provided that such force is reasonable under the circumstances.”14
However, if an adult inflicted excessive punishment he was liable to a charge of assault and battery, illegal homicide [sic], or manslaughter, and even of murder.15 Subsequently, other legal measures were taken to protect children from adults who abused their right to punish. In 1912, a Quebec law made it possible to send any child who was habitually beaten or cruelly treated by his parents, or by those with whom he resided,16 to an industrial school, originally intended for homeless children with no means of support. It was up to judges to distinguish between reasonable punishment and abuse, and their decisions would necessarily be influenced by the theories of child-rearing and practices of their time and milieu.