The Hughes in Drummondville, or how to enter the field
This article offers a description of the conditions under which Everett Hughes and Helen Hughes MacGill conducted their landmark study about the Quebec town of Drummondville, which led to the publication of the book French Canada in Transition in 1943. These conditions have hardly been examined or commented on to date, despite the fact that discussion of them, including, in particular, the precise duration of the study, would be of great value when undertaking similar studies. French Canada in Transition was the subject of Everett Hughes’ long-term natural history research on French Canada; however, it was not a history of the fieldwork that led to the book. In this article, I describe Hughes’ field research methods by using unpublished archival material that sheds light, in particular, on the means of “getting one’s foot in the door” as well as the more subtle ways of establishing contact with key informants. This includes the defining of specific roles for observers, allowing the local inhabitants of the community to “define the situation” concerning them; and the “deal” made with certain informants from the local industrial world in exchange for confidentiality about the name of the town. The article also discusses the sharp sociological “eye” of the Hughes couple with regard to their routine observations and the observation of local routines.