It evolved from the Société Aide-toi et le ciel t'aidera ("help yourself and heaven will help you"), which was founded by Duvernay on March 8, 1834.

At the end of the 19th century, recognizing that the custom had become established, it adopted the tricolor flag of France with a maple leaf at the center (in the white part) in 1888.

The Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society was established to promote French-Canadian interests within Canada and to preserve the French language and culture, as well as the Roman Catholic religion.

Initially, the society adopted the maple leaf as its emblem, and its Quebec City branch was the first promoter of the song "O Canada" as a symbol of the French-Canadian nation, together with the Carillon Sacré-Coeur flag.

The society had local branches in all the major French-Canadian communities in Quebec, the other Canadian provinces, and the United States.

The group, however, was not anti-royalist; for instance, the society's President in 1959 requested, with the support of the Mayor of Quebec City, that Elizabeth II, Canada's queen, light the main bonfire on the eve of Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day; though the petition was rejected by Howard Graham, the Queen's Canadian Secretary at the time.

Despite the timid position on the Canadian Royal Family they once held, in 2009 the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society and Réseau de Résistance du Québécois (RRQ) mounted demonstrations and threw eggs at Canadian soldiers during the visit of Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, to the Black Watch Regiment in Montreal, on Remembrance Day, requiring the intervention of riot police.