Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The Musée de l'Emigration française au Canada, located in Tourouvre in the department of Orne and the Normandy region, is a place dedicated to the memory of the percheron emigrants who left to settle in Canada. This project, sponsored by the Perche-Canada Association and supported by the Canadian government, was launched in 2006 to mark the fourth centenary of the beginning of French colonization in Canada.

This museum is part of the Muséales de Tourouvre, a museum complex managed since 2010 by the community of communes of Haut-Perche, then integrated in 2017 into the community of communes of Hauts du Perche. It shares its premises with other spaces, such as the Museum of Trades and Brands, opened in 2011.

Among its notable events, the museum hosted the exhibition Du Perche au Nouveau-Monde in 2009, describing the reasons for the exodus of Percherons to Canada, with the support of the Orne department. In 2010, the exhibition Haches de guerre, organized with the departmental archives of Orne, highlighted historical aspects of this migration. In 2011, a screening presented documentary films, including Pierre Boucher, seigneur in New France, produced by the Perche-Canada association.

The museum is part of a network of transatlantic partnerships, as evidenced by links with associations such as Perche-Québec and genealogical initiatives such as Migrance, which explore the history and memory of French emigration to the Americas. Its role is both cultural, educational and memorial, aimed at preserving and transmitting this common heritage between France and Canada.

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