The Life Course of Seventeenth-Century Immigrants To Canada

Abstract

Using the register of the early French Canadian population, the "Pro gramme de recherche en démographie historique "(Université de Montréal) has set out to identify the demographic parameters behind the individual life course of the cohorts of immigrants which founded the country. The authors selected for their study all the individuals born outside of Canada who settled in Canada before 1680. The analysis covers not only the timing of the marriages and births of children of the immigrants, from their arrival to their death, but also the intensity of the phenomena that character ize their family life. The idea is to identify the proportion of individuals who lived through the main phases of the family life cycle (pre-parental, parental, post-parental) and to measure their timing. So as to avoid hiding the diversity of demographic behaviors behind broad averages, the study takes into account such basic variables as sex, length of life, number of marriages contracted, and number of children born.