Some characteristics of Canadian French are passed on through the oral tradition. It is often possible to establish relations between the cultural birthplaces of these characteristics, the time when they entered the language and the field to which these words belong.

This project ensued from the desire to create a link between secondary school students and university professor’s research groups, and to allow students to learn about a field of study that may be of interest to them. In the workshops, students were given the opportunity to look at some characteristics of Canadian French (pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar) by studying songs from two French-speaking regions of Canada. These songs speak of the departure and return of the soldiers to war.

Below, you will find the hyperlinks to download the PDF version of the guidebook as well as an activity booklet and its answer key for the two songs.

This project was directed by France Martineau from the University of Ottawa and Marcel Bénéteau, from the University of Sudbury.

Two students, Émilie Aubut and Sylvain Pelland, also contributed to the project.

This project was funded by the SSHRC Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI) “Modeling Change: The Paths of French”, directed by France Martineau, and the EducAction program of the Office of the Associate Vice-President Academic at the University of Ottawa.

We would like to thank the University of Sudbury’s Folklore Department, the Université Laval’s Folklore Centre and the Canadian Museum of Civilization for their participation in this project. The sound clip of the 3rd version of the song “Trois Enfants”, from New Brunswick, was provided by the Université Laval’s Folklore Centre. The sound clip of the 8th version of “Gens de par chez nous”, from Windsor, was provided by Marcel Bénéteau. We are very grateful to the Folklore Centre and Marcel Bénéteau for allowing us to use their corpus.

Finally, many thanks to the De La Salle High School in Ottawa and the Notre-Dame High School in Sudbury for welcoming us into their classrooms.

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