Over the years I have had the opportunity to rub shoulders with Kebecois, Acadiens and Canadiens who all lay claims to being French, when any validity to such outrageous claims had long since ceased.
In my personal correspondence with the French Government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, I was then made aware that France did not recognize the above groups as French at all. Thus they applied and were denied French citizenship.
There was only one group that did have French citizenship and that was the descendents of those French/Cajuns in Louisiana that had any real claim to it.
When the Napoleonic France sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States of America in 1803, which is called the Louisiana Purchase by Americans, there was a proviso to the Franco-American Treaty which gave the right to all those French citizens in Louisiana who wanted to retain their status as Citizens of the French Republic, to register with the French government. But only 6,000 chose to do so and many of their descendants though born in Louisiana, USA, still retain their French citizenship today.
Thus France no longer recognizes the Kebecois, Canadiens or Acadiens as French at all. But the reasons for this have been made quite clear. That the Acadiens whose territory was ceded to Great Britain by King Louis IV of France in April 1713, by the Treaty of Utrecht, ceased to be French citizens, and were expected by France to become British subjects. That automatically applied to all the citizens of New France which was ceded to Great Britain September 1760, by the last French governor of New France the Marquis de Vaudreuil. That, the colons or Metis of New France were given a choice to either find their way to another French colony or remain in what was the British colony of Kebec, and become British subjects, which they did.
Now, those persons having become British subjects who were supposedly of Franco-Native American Indian origins had lost all claims to ever being FRENCH.
So now, residents of Canada be it Kebec or Acadia (New Brunswick/ Nova Scotia) have no other citizenship but CANADIAN to their name.
Thus all those who lived in what was British North America on July 1, 1867 had no claims to France or its culture. But as British subjects they now accepted the English language as the national language without question.
Then along came the Dream-Weavers and Tale-Spinners who like the fake weavers of the Kings New Clothes, decided to write their own garbled version of Canadian history. They were the Likes of Lionel-Adolphe Groulx, Pierre-Elliott Trudeau, Rene Levesque, J.M. Nadeau, and Jolly Jacques Parizeau of Ethnics and money fame. It was almost like a bunch of rubes attempting to compete with fabulists Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm of Fairy Tale fame.
Kenneth T. Tellis