The Eastern Townships region of southwestern Quebec is an area of unique culture and history. Surrounded by a French-speaking majority, yet predominantly settled by Americans and British emigrants, the area has historically been distinguished by its anglo-protestant character. In The Other Quebec, J.I. Little – one of the foremost scholars on the Eastern Townships and on rural society in Canada – assembles seven of his essays and one by Marguerite Van Die on this unique region into one volume.

The collection examines the role and influence of religion in the Eastern Townships. Little uses a microhistorical method, focusing on individuals who left behind informative and revealing diaries or personal letters, including those of a religious ecstatic, an Anglican clergyman, a genteel Englishwoman, and an entrepreneur.

Through intimate glimpses into the lives of ordinary people, The Other Quebec explores some of the complex ways that religious institutions and beliefs affected the rural societies in which the majority of Canadians still lived in the nineteenth century. Little provides an intimate look at both a time and a place of singular importance and unique character in Canadian history.

J.I. Little is a professor in the Department of History at Simon Fraser University, author of Loyalties in Conflict: A Canadian Borderland in War and Rebellion, 1812–1840, and co-author of An Illustrated History of Quebec: Tradition and Modernity.

J.I. Little's profile page