In the United States, the French of l’académie française and the culture of France (referred to as Standard French in this paper) has been valued by language educators to the near exclusion of North American French and culture. I construct a historiographical sketch by analyzing 1) primary sources written by French Canadians and their descendants in the United States, 2) secondary sources consisting of the historical accounts of French Canadian immigrants, linguistic descriptions of North American French, and historiography of language ideology in the United States, 3) artefacts produced by and for French language teachers in the United States including French textbooks and articles in the professional journals, 4) research investigating French Canadian influence in French language teaching, and 5) my experience in interacting with descendants of French Canadians in the United States. I illustrate how I used this range of resources to begin to construct a historiography that sheds light on the origin, resilience, and effects of standard language hegemony in French language teaching in the United States.