Screen Quality PDF (1.9MB)
Print Quality PDF (6.6MB)
(for personal use only!)


TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Role of the Dutch in the Iroquois Wars
by Peter Lowensteyn




Methodology

 

To gather basic facts essentially two tools have been used: (a) documentary evidences and (b) oral history.

Documentary Evidence

Liberal use has been made of statistics provided by Statistics Canada and its predecessor, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics. In addition, some statistics were culled from those available in the Netherlands. Research done by Ganzevoort (1975) on Dutch Immigration before the Second World War has been useful in this regard. Through Kralt (1981-821, who prepared special bulletins for Statistics Canada on the issue of "01 d" versus "new" Dutch, a better understanding of the complex issues surrounding the determination of what constitutes" Dutch" immigration, was obtained.

Especially for the earlier history of the Dutch in Quebec, research reported in the publication of the Holland Society of New York, "De Halve Maen", has been immensely helpful, as has been the work of the Missisquoi County Historical Society.

For the pre-World War II period, Ganzevoort's work, an unpublished doctoral thesis, was the single most useful source of solidly researched material. Some books have been written on the subject, but the pre-World War II Dutch, although numerous enough in Canada if one includes descendants of Loyalists, Mennonites, and others, did not constitute an important immigration movement from the Netherlands and did not warrant much attention for that reason.

The situation is entirely different for the post-war War II period. Important works, such as Petersen's Planned Migration (1955), Beijer's Characteristics of Overseas Migrants (1961), and a host of scholarly and less scholarly articles and books shed light on the situation. In addition, there are the many works on immigration and ethnicity that make reference to the Dutch.

One problem encountered is that, while there is a fair amount of material on the Dutch in Canada, this cannot be said about the Dutch in Quebec. Because the size of the group is so small, they are often ignored in comparative studies. Other works, such as Tuinman (1951, 1956) deal with farmers only, of which there are very few in Quebec. A major anecdotal work, To All Our Children, focusses on orthodox Calvinists, who are underrepresented in Quebec. A happy exception is the research done under the aegis of the Concordia University Ethnic Research Project (1981-1982), which compared a number of groups, including the Dutch.

Good sources of documentary evidence were the manuscrips, dossiers, and reports in the files of the Catholic Immigrant Services (C.I.S.), stored in the Ontario Archives. Unfortunately, these documents are so numerous that only a selection could be perused. A former official of the C.I.S. was extremely useful in helping to verify statements made in some of the interviews, and to give the interviewer a better understanding of certain situations. The same condition applied to files belonging to one of the more active Dutch voluntary associations in Montreal, to which this interviewer had access.

Oral History

The Multicultural History Society of Ontario has about 150 interviews on tape with Dutch immigrants. Among them were some interviews with persons who had lived in Quebec before moving to Ontario. These were used in addition to the author's own interviews.

As far as the latter are concerned selecting respondents presented a particular problem, because of the difficulty in obtaining a representative cross section of the population (including those not involved in institutions). The proportion of "invisible" Dutch is very high in contrast to, for example, the Greeks or Jews, and these Dutch are extremely difficult to locate. With the small number of interviewees required for a qualitative study, it is actually possible to get representatives from the "invisible group" too.

Under the auspices of the Oral History Montreal Project of Concordia University, 18 persons were interviewed. Selecting candidates from one or more residential areas was considered, but found unsuitable. What residential concentration there is, is found in the West Island area of Montreal, particularly in the Beaconsfield/Pointe Claire, and the Pierrefonds/Dollard- des-Ormeaux (DDO) areas, but both areas would yield skewed samples, because the Christian Reformed Church is situated in DDO, and its adherents are highly concentrated there, while they represent no more than five percent of the Dutch population in the Montreal CMA. The Beaconsfield/Pointe Claire population would have been too selectively upper income. It was, therefore, decided to use the snowballing technique, while observing the following criteria in order to get all or most categories of the Dutch in Quebec represented:

  • maximum number of interviews to be twenty (the maximum this researcher expected to be able to handle);
  • within this group a minimum of two persons to represent each one of the following categories to allow cross checking of information received (overlap possible):

 Categories

 Actual number of interviewees

Number of women included

those who arrived before World War II

 4

 0

those who arrived just after World War II (1945-1950)

 5

 2

those who arrived during peak immigration years (1959-1968)

 6

 2

those who arrived after 1968

 1

 1

adherents to Christian Reformed faith

 3

 1

adherents to Roman Catholic faith

 7

 3

adherents to other faiths or no religion

 7

 1

integrated in francophone sector (balance integrated in anglophone sector)

 6

 3

strongly involved with other Dutch (balance somewhat involved with other Dutch)

 5

 1

not involved with other Dutch

 5

 0

farming

 4

 2

business

 4

 0

service sector

 6

 2

manual work

 0

 

no occupation (including homemakers, excluding farm wives)

 2

 2


In one case two persons (the widow and a former employee) were interviewed regarding the same deceased person. In four cases both husband and wife were present, although only in one case the wife was interviewed also. In one case the daughter was interviewed as well as the father. One person was interviewed on three separate occasions as he had been involved in the Dutch community over a long period of time. One other person was interviewed twice. The rest was interviewed once. Interviews averaged 110 minutes and ranged from 30 minutes to 4 l/2 hours.

Except for a few where this was not possible, interviews were held in the person's own home. Interviews were kept as unstructured as possible in order to allow the interviewee to bring up those points that seemed of greatest importance to him or her, and to aid in the process of trust formation. An interview schedule was kept for reference by the interviewer (see appendix) to ensure that, ultimately, all points would be covered in each case. In only a few cases some points had to be dropped due to time limitations. Historical and maturation problems were not encountered as there was only brief contact with each respondent.

In retrospect, the selection process has worked quite well. Various categories in the Dutch community and outside of it, in the ethnic group at large, are represented more or less in the proper proportions. The only area not represented is the manual work one. Perhaps not surprisingly because only 15 percent of Dutch in Montreal worked in that category in 1981. Then there are only one war bride and one person who arrived after 1968. The war bride had no occupation (housewife), but the husband was working class. The recent arrival was a farm wife, perhaps somewhat unfortunate, since by far most of the recent arrivals are urban people (artists, professionals, businessmen). On the whole, all persons in the sample were distinct, in the sense that, except for couples, none of them were either neighbours, relatives, or close friends (although they sometimes knew each other).

The most difficult part was to find people who are not involved with other Dutch. After all, the snowballing method relies on a network. Some of these contacts were obtained through non-Dutch.


1 Two of the interviewees (now in business), had started with manual work upon arrival.

2 One of the housewives is also a war bride.

To gather basic facts essentially two tools have been used: (a) documentary evidences and (b) oral history.


 

Documentary Evidence

Liberal use has been made of statistics provided by Statistics Canada and its predecessor, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics. In addition, some statistics were culled from those available in the Netherlands. Research done by Ganzevoort (1975) on Dutch Immigration before the Second World War has been useful in this regard. Through Kralt (1981-821, who prepared special bulletins for Statistics Canada on the issue of "01 d" versus "new" Dutch, a better understanding of the complex issues surrounding the determination of what constitutes" Dutch" immigration, was obtained.

Especially for the earlier history of the Dutch in Quebec, research reported in the publication of the Holland Society of New York, "De Halve Maen", has been immensely helpful, as has been the work of the Missisquoi County Historical Society.

For the pre-World War II period, Ganzevoort's work, an unpublished doctoral thesis, was the single most useful source of solidly researched material. Some books have been written on the subject, but the pre-World War II Dutch, although numerous enough in Canada if one includes descendants of Loyalists, Mennonites, and others, did not constitute an important immigration movement from the Netherlands and did not warrant much attention for that reason.

The situation is entirely different for the post-war War II period. Important works, such as Petersen's Planned Migration (1955), Beijer's Characteristics of Overseas Migrants (1961), and a host of scholarly and less scholarly articles and books shed light on the situation. In addition, there are the many works on immigration and ethnicity that make reference to the Dutch.

One problem encountered is that, while there is a fair amount of material on the Dutch in Canada, this cannot be said about the Dutch in Quebec. Because the size of the group is so small, they are often ignored in comparative studies. Other works, such as Tuinman (1951, 1956) deal with farmers only, of which there are very few in Quebec. A major anecdotal work, To All Our Children, focusses on orthodox Calvinists, who are underrepresented in Quebec. A happy exception is the research done under the aegis of the Concordia University Ethnic Research Project (1981-1982), which compared a number of groups, including the Dutch.

Good sources of documentary evidence were the manuscrips, dossiers, and reports in the files of the Catholic Immigrant Services (C.I.S.), stored in the Ontario Archives. Unfortunately, these documents are so numerous that only a selection could be perused. A former official of the C.I.S. was extremely useful in helping to verify statements made in some of the interviews, and to give the interviewer a better understanding of certain situations. The same condition applied to files belonging to one of the more active Dutch voluntary associations in Montreal, to which this interviewer had access.



Oral History

The Multicultural History Society of Ontario has about 150 interviews on tape with Dutch immigrants. Among them were some interviews with persons who had lived in Quebec before moving to Ontario. These were used in addition to the author's own interviews.

As far as the latter are concerned selecting respondents presented a particular problem, because of the difficulty in obtaining a representative cross section of the population (including those not involved in institutions). The proportion of "invisible" Dutch is very high in contrast to, for example, the Greeks or Jews, and these Dutch are extremely difficult to locate. With the small number of interviewees required for a qualitative study, it is actually possible to get representatives from the "invisible group" too.

Under the auspices of the Oral History Montreal Project of Concordia University, 18 persons were interviewed. Selecting candidates from one or more residential areas was considered, but found unsuitable. What residential concentration there is, is found in the West Island area of Montreal, particularly in the Beaconsfield/Pointe Claire, and the Pierrefonds/Dollard- des-Ormeaux (DDO) areas, but both areas would yield skewed samples, because the Christian Reformed Church is situated in DDO, and its adherents are highly concentrated there, while they represent no more than five percent of the Dutch population in the Montreal CMA. The Beaconsfield/Pointe Claire population would have been too selectively upper income. It was, therefore, decided to use the snowballing technique, while observing the following criteria in order to get all or most categories of the Dutch in Quebec represented:

  • maximum number of interviews to be twenty (the maximum this researcher expected to be able to handle);
  • within this group a minimum of two persons to represent each one of the following categories to allow cross checking of information received (overlap possible):

 Categories

 Actual number of interviewees

Number of women included

those who arrived before World War II

 4

 0

those who arrived just after World War II (1945-1950)

 5

 2

those who arrived during peak immigration years (1959-1968)

 6

 2

those who arrived after 1968

 1

 1

adherents to Christian Reformed faith

 3

 1

adherents to Roman Catholic faith

 7

 3

adherents to other faiths or no religion

 7

 1

integrated in francophone sector (balance integrated in anglophone sector)

 6

 3

strongly involved with other Dutch (balance somewhat involved with other Dutch)

 5

 1

not involved with other Dutch

 5

 0

farming

 4

 2

business

 4

 0

service sector

 6

 2

manual work

 0

 

no occupation (including homemakers, excluding farm wives)

 2

 2


In one case two persons (the widow and a former employee) were interviewed regarding the same deceased person. In four cases both husband and wife were present, although only in one case the wife was interviewed also. In one case the daughter was interviewed as well as the father. One person was interviewed on three separate occasions as he had been involved in the Dutch community over a long period of time. One other person was interviewed twice. The rest was interviewed once. Interviews averaged 110 minutes and ranged from 30 minutes to 4 l/2 hours.

Except for a few where this was not possible, interviews were held in the person's own home. Interviews were kept as unstructured as possible in order to allow the interviewee to bring up those points that seemed of greatest importance to him or her, and to aid in the process of trust formation. An interview schedule was kept for reference by the interviewer (see appendix) to ensure that, ultimately, all points would be covered in each case. In only a few cases some points had to be dropped due to time limitations. Historical and maturation problems were not encountered as there was only brief contact with each respondent.

In retrospect, the selection process has worked quite well. Various categories in the Dutch community and outside of it, in the ethnic group at large, are represented more or less in the proper proportions. The only area not represented is the manual work one. Perhaps not surprisingly because only 15 percent of Dutch in Montreal worked in that category in 1981. Then there are only one war bride and one person who arrived after 1968. The war bride had no occupation (housewife), but the husband was working class. The recent arrival was a farm wife, perhaps somewhat unfortunate, since by far most of the recent arrivals are urban people (artists, professionals, businessmen). On the whole, all persons in the sample were distinct, in the sense that, except for couples, none of them were either neighbours, relatives, or close friends (although they sometimes knew each other).

The most difficult part was to find people who are not involved with other Dutch. After all, the snowballing method relies on a network. Some of these contacts were obtained through non-Dutch.


1 Two of the interviewees (now in business), had started with manual work upon arrival.

2 One of the housewives is also a war bride.