Quebec

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Quebec (Québec in the French language) is the largest province in Canada geographically, and the second most populous after Ontario. The capital is Québec City and the largest city is Montreal. Quebec entered Confederation in 1867 and has a total area of 1,540,680 km². The population of Quebec was 7,546,131 in 2006, approximately 23.4% of the national total.^[1]

Quebec traces its roots to French colonization of North America prior to the British conquest of Canada in 1760 during the French and Indian Wars. Quebec still retains a unique French-language culture, although it has had little connection with France since the conquest. The "Quiet Revolution" of the 1960s dramatically changed the province; it modernized rapidly and the Catholic Church lost much of its innfluence, along with a large portion of its membership. A new sense of French nationalism emerged, calling for an independent nation, and meanwhile forcing out most of the great business and banking corporations that were run by English Canadians (they moved to Toronto).

The official language of the province is French, although many residents are bilingual, speaking both French and English. Laws and regulations must be written in both English and French as per the Constitution Act of 1867. The provincial government has severely restricted the use of English in public documents, signage and schools. The French-only provincial laws enacted in 1974 and 1977 were thought to violate the Canadian government's bilingual policy, a major tradition in the country's history of the Francophone (or French-speaking) presence, for all its' 10 provinces and territories to be equally printed in English and French.

Economy[edit]

The per capita provincial income in 2001 was $28,756 (Cdn).^[2] This has lagged behind the overall growth of Canada, in part because of the successive separatist governments who did not create a stable environment and their policies of large government intervention. The economy has a large aerospace and manufacturing sector, however mineral extraction and forestry also play a large role.

Recent history since 2000[edit]

The separatist movement waned over the first decade of the 2000s, and from 2003-2012 Québec was governed by a pro-federalist party. On March 26, 2007, the Liberal Party of Québec, led by Jean Charest, was elected to a minority government, with Mario Dumont's Action Démocratique Québec forming the official opposition. The former official opposition, the Parti Québecois led by André Boisclair, finished the election in third place. A 2008 election restored the Liberals to a majority position. In 2012, the separatist Parti Québecois was elected to a minority government, with the newly formed Coalition Action Québec holding the balance of power.

History[edit]

The history of Quebec stretches from the French explorers and settlers of the 17th century to a modern secular province of Canada in the 21st century that stresses a commitment to the French language and asks whether it should be independence of Canada. The official name is "Quebec" since Confederation in 1867; previous names include "New France," (1534 to 1763), "Province of Quebec" (1763–91), "Lower Canada" (1791-1841), and "Canada East" in the Province of Canada (1841–67). From 1783 to 1867 it was part of the British Empire informally called British North America.^[3]

New France[edit]

For a history of Quebec prior to 1763, see New France.

British Colonial rule[edit]

The Anglo-French imperial rivalry, particularly the French and Indian War of 1754-1763, (the Seven Years War) found France and Britain at war yet again. The key to control of North America was the fortress at Quebec, which the British were determined to capture. In 1759 Major General James Wolfe, exploiting Britain's superior navy, seized Quebec City after a long and destructive siege. Montreal surrendered in 1760, and three years later the Treaty of Paris transferred New France to British control.

The British renamed the colony the Province of Quebec as British officials replaced royal officials who returned to France. Otherwise there was little change. Merchants prospered in the towns, while the seigneurs as a class declined slightly. The habitants prospered for they had a hungry new market for their wheat in London. A few sent sent their sons to the seminaries in Quebec and Montreal or to the collèges classiques. These private schools, established after 1800, prepared young men for careers as priests, teachers, lawyers, and doctors, thereby creating for the first time an intellectual class that proved central to Quebec's political development. Some French Canadians took minor government posts; most remained in agriculture. Entrepreneurial immigrants from America and England came to monopolize trade and commerce, which centered in Quebec City and Montreal.

London's plan was to assimilate the 80,000 or so French-speaking Canadiens, attract English settlers from America, introduce English laws and procedures, create freehold tenure (by which farmers would own land not merely rent it), impose anti-Catholic oaths, and set up an elected legislature. But the Americans did not arrive and the French wanted no part of British legal or political forms. The first governor, Sir James Murray, recognized reality, allowed Mgr Jean-Olivier Briand to become the Catholic bishop (1766) and provided lower courts where Canadiens could be jurors and lawyers.

A central theme in French Canadian historiography, especially as developed by the scholar Abbe Lionel Groulx in the mid-20th century, was the British Conquest of 1759. France abandoned Quebec, and rejected its own past by its anti-Catholic French Revolution. The Quebeckers became victims of British oppression and were targeted for assimilation. The short and long range goals of the people became simply "La Survivance", the survival of the nation. Groulx argues the energies of the people had to be fully mobilized for this struggle, with the Church taking the lead as an anti-colonial and passive resistance movement dedicated to the preservation of the true religion in North America.^[4]

Quebec Act, 1774[edit]

For a more detailed treatment, see Quebec Act.

In 1774 the British Parliament, threatened by restless American colonies, sought Canadiens' loyalty by passing the Quebec Act. It became the Magna Carta of French-Canadian liberties, for it guaranteed basic rights, with an oath of loyalty to the Crown replacing the anti-Catholic oaths. The Roman Catholic Church gained official recognition, and the Act enabled it legally to collect the tithe (a 10% tax on farm produce). Government was vested in a governor and a legislative council, which had full power of internal legislation and taxation. The French civil law was restored in place of English common law, although English criminal law was retained. In addition, the French language received official approval. Finally, the boundaries of Quebec were extended to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. British concessions strengthened conservative Canadiens and made them loyal to the British Crown at the moment when revolution was sweeping the American colonies. Indeed, the Americans were especially angry with the Quebec Act because it gave Catholics generous new rights while Britain was cutting back on the rights of Americans.

When the Americans went to war with Britain in 1775 they called upon Canadians to revolt, and sent small armies in 1775-76 to remove British power. Many habitants sympathized with the Americans and formed regiments that fought under George Washington. Others supported the British; most remained neutral. The British repulsed the Americans, who retreated home. Quebec then became a base for the invasion of New York that was decisively defeated with the surrender of the main British army at Saratoga in 1777.

Loyalists settle the Eastern townships[edit]

After the victory of the American Revolution, 50,000 or so Loyalists (American colonists loyal to the British Crown), migrated north to Canada. They brought along several thousand black slaves, for slavery was legal until 1833. Most Loyalists went to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, but about 6,000 arrived in Quebec, especially in the "Eastern townships" south of Montreal.^[5] Their demands for a separate colony and English law led to the division of 1791, with Upper Canada" (later Ontario) separated from Quebec, which became Lower Canada.

The Anglican Church launched a well-funded initiative to build churches and support missionaries in the Eastern townships, thereby building loyalty to the Empire. The are enjoys abundant rainfall, numerous water mill sites, accessible conifer forests, plentiful supplies of fire wood, good grazing land, and rich mineral deposits. However, the growing season for crops is short, and much of the soil is also generally thin and rocky. Most of the best land fell into the hands of absentee proprietors by 1800, and they fought incessantly with squatters. Outside markets were relatively inaccessible before the arrival of the railway around 1850. The English-speaking agricultural and entrepreneurial elite began to transfer its capital and skills westward, replaced by French speaking farmers and Irish Catholics fleeing the Potato Famine in the 1840s. The "bonne entente theory" of sociologist Leon Gerin argues that the new Francophone arrivals were influenced by their enterprising and independent-minded Yankee neighbours. By 1870 Anglophones were a majority in Quebec alike the rest of Canada (only one million Francophones in the dominion when it was formed in 1867), and by the 21st century only 10% of Quebecers are Anglophone (and most of them are Irish). In the 1840s, school reforms required compromise with the strong localist traditions of the Eastern Townships region. The inhabitants displayed strong lingering American traditions. Local fund-raising for schools was a hotly contested issue throughout the 1840s, with many prominent citizens actively opposing levying taxes for that purpose. School taxes diminished the role of affluent individuals who supported local schools and made possible the subsidization of poorer, neighbouring schools. Educational control remained local despite legislation enacted in 1846, which repealed prior acts and required school commissioners to assess property.^[6] In the late 1840s Yankees felt that union with the United States would end their economic isolation and stagnation as well as remove them from the growing threat of French-Canadian political domination. Leading proponents of this genuinely bipartisan movement were careful not to appear disloyal to Britain, however, and they actively discouraged popular protest at the local level. Fearful of American-style democracy, the local elite also expressed revulsion toward American slavery and militaristic expansionism. Consequently, the movement died out in the Eastern Townships as it did in Montreal after Britain expressed its official disapproval and trade with the United States began to increase thanks to the opening of the Grand Trunk Railway.^[7]

Besides the Eastern townships, the western portions of Quebec (which later became Ontario) were attractive to many thousands of nonpolitical Yankees from New England. Most French habitants were content with their location along the St. Lawrence, and few moved west throughout the country. French-Canadian emigration to the USA occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with over 500,000 French Canadians moved south into New England, Midwest and Northern states. They were employed as miners, timbermen, factory workers, truck drivers and farmers whom sought a better life in the United States.

Catholic Church[edit]

Hardy (2007) examines the period from 1760 to 1840, showing the Catholic Church at all times exerted considerable influence in parishes and that Catholic habitants were respectful of the demands of their faith. By 1800 the Church adopted new ways to transform religious practice. It received the state's support, and after 1840 it benefited from the support of elites that emerged from the failed rebellions. From that date forward, the Church was given responsibility for the public education system. Consequently, the school became the most effective way to indoctrinate the populace, disseminate Catholic values, and transmit the Church's new directions in religious practices. The religious culture that gradually emerged from this vast acculturation offensive was a direct result of the continuation and outcome of actions undertaken by the clergy during the first half of the 19th century. The new religious culture was defined by the respect of mandatory religious practices; the enticement of indulgences used to soften the fires of purgatory; the wealth of devotion and religious ceremonies, which now covered the entire year and dictated a rhythm to the social calendar; and the manifestation of faith through processions, pilgrimages, actions, postures, and behaviors, which were visible testimonies of faith. This behavioral model quickly became the norm during the second half of the 19th century, and any deviation from it brought the community's sharp disapproval.^[8]

Province within Canada[edit]

Ignace Bourget, Bishop of Montreal from 1840 to 1876, played a central role in strengthening French Canadian culture once Quebec became part of the English-dominated Canadian Federation, at the same time assuring the Catholic Church a dominant position in French Canadian cultural identity.^[9] Deliberately drawing on Rome rather than France for inspiration, he presided over the expansion of the Church's activities in Quebec, seeking to make religion more accessible to the people through an emotional appeal. By helping to create a network of religious, social, and even economic institutions for the Quebecois, Bourget contributed to the emergence of a traditional culture in a modern, urban space which would define French Canadian identity until the Quiet Revolution at the end of the 1960s.^[10]

Political culture[edit]

From 1840 to 1873 Montreal politics were dominated by wealthy English Protestants who also participated in provincial and federal politics. From 1873 to 1914 was a transition period with French Canadians generally in the majority in the city council, and with the mayors drawn from a wider variety of backgrounds. A new political type emerged after 1914, his power based on popularity rather than wealth, on social appeal rather than status, who views politics as a career.^[11]

From 1867 to 1940, the Catholic Church played the primary role in Quebec in the development of both public education and family assistance, and the church actively promoted a virulent form of antistatism that opposed any government involvement in social affairs. A theological justification for antistatism explained that only the father, as head of his family, should be directly concerned with his family's welfare and with his children's education, which was controlled by the Catholic Church. Conservative politicians were content to ally themselves with the Church against any forms of liberal social interventionism. While there were some exceptions to the rule - primarily the social legislation passed by the Liberal government of Adélard Godbout during World War II - the role of the state did not really begin to change until 1945, when the national government of William Lyon Mackenzie King passed family assistance legislation.^[12]

Progressivism[edit]

While scholars often emphasize traditionalism, ruralism, and antistatism as the dominant factors of Quebec's political culture prior to the 1960s, some Quebecois embraced progressivism early in the 20th century. Municipal government reform, one of the hallmarks of the progressive movement, cropped up in Canada's largest city, Montreal. It was led by Anglophones and remnants of Quebec's Parti Rouges, but support for reform came from a wide section of Montreal's French-speaking population.^[13]

Urbanization[edit]

The first decades of the 20th century saw an accelerated urbanization, which made anonymity possible and facilitated an escape from social constraints for those individuals who so wished. Emigration to New England also offered a safety valve, as hundreds of thousands moved there permanently, finding work in the textile factories. This freedom from religious retribution and constraints played an important role and became a mitigating factor in the decline of the religious culture, a culture that slowly unraveled before being swept away by the Quiet Revolution.

Verge of civil war[edit]

Quebec City, and indeed the entire province—was on the verge of civil war in 1918, as shown by the violent Easter Riots in Quebec City between 28 March and 1 April 1918. The riots demonstrated French-Canadian anger with the national war effort in World War I and the introduction of conscription. The French of Quebec refused to join the army and rejected the draft. The riots raised nationwide fears that a state of rebellion existed in the French-speaking province of Quebec. The Canadian government's reaction was immediate and firm; martial law was proclaimed, habeas corpus was suspended, and over six thousand English-speaking soldiers were deployed to Quebec during and after the riots to maintain order and enforce conscription, the last of these troops leaving the province in early 1919. The Easter Riots were extremely violent, causing important destruction of property and over 150 civilian and military casualties, including at least four dead when soldiers opened fire on rioters.^[14]

Duplessis era[edit]

Maurice Duplessis^[15] was premier of Quebec during 1936-39 and 1944–59 and leader of the National Union Party (UN). Until his death in 1959 he ran an authoritarianism government, with antilabor policies. He feared communism, cared little for industry, and promoted agriculture, which he considered a panacea for industrial evils. A Catholic and a French Canadian nationalist, he was a provincial conservative.

The most prominent nationalist spokesman in the era was Lionel Groulx (1878-1967), a Catholic priest whose histories of Quebec presented a conservative mission for the province.^[16] As professor of Canadian history at the Université de Montréal (1915-1949) he directly influenced the intellectual leaders of the era. The true Quebec, he argued, was based on the supremacy of the Church and family that challenged liberalism at all points. His organicist concept of the nation, in which the nation is understood as a "collective individual" with structured thought, brought Groulx to treat the individual as subordinate to the societal group. From this outlook, Groulx defended tradition and promoted a conception of education that aimed to foster the development of the national feeling of belonging. His conception of the state was also antiliberal, particularly because it rejected the distinction between the political and religious spheres. Groulx found Duplessis distasteful, and welcomed the economic developments of the Quiet Revolution, realizing too late that it would destroy the Church's central role.

In the 1940s, the Catholic-dominated provincial government went after a small growing religious sect, Jehovah's Witnessess for their political neutrality during World War II. Peaked in 1943, about thousands of members in Quebec were jailed, tried in court or placed into military internment camps. Jehovah's Witnesses were nearly banned in the province until a Canadian court hearing in 1944 declared it was a violation of religious freedom and civil rights, even though the sect doesn't hold their allegiance to political rulers during wartime. Within a decade (1954), the national concern of retaining a degree of separation of church and state from the Jehovah's Witnesses of Quebec case brought a formal end to Quebec's 350-year old religious laws, and soon, Roman Catholicism was no longer the state church of Quebec.

The Quiet Revolution of the 1960s[edit]

The Quiet Revolution (Révolution Tranquille) of the 1960s saw a radical nonviolent transformation in the politics, society and economy of Quebec. A traditional people modernized the economy and the social structure, threw off Church control, rejected Anglo control of Quebec's economy, and finally sought, but failed, to gain independence from Canada. The Revolution was strongly promoted by the governments of Liberal Premier Jean Lesage (1960–66) and Premier Daniel Johnson (1966–68) of the opposition Union Nationale party. Other more militant or outspoken leaders like Rene Levisque came to the scene in the early 1970s, he later became the leader of the Bloc Quebecois founded in 1974.

Many French-Canadian leaders and Quebec separatists were war veterans and well-established civic leaders, despite they preached ethnic loyalty as Francophones or Quebecois not Canadians, and their reaction of English being the "lingua franca" in the professions will destroy the Quebecois/French cultural integrity. Interestingly, many thousands of French-Canadian draft dodgers fled to the USA during World War II, whom felt the war was against Francophone interests, and brought an end to the country's military conscription in 1942. Quebec has a history of opposition and resistance to the national military draft in the Boer War of 1890's and the first World War in the 1910s.

With an increased involvement of the Francophone majority's political affairs, the Canadian government nationalized hydroelectric utilities, created crown corporations whom were owned by Quebecois businessmen of French not British descent, and undertook to provide the educational, health care, and social services formerly under Church control. The provincial government began to make further demands as a "nation" not a province of being a culturally separate people, and that all of the provincial economy should be under the Francophone/Quebecois people's control. The Quiet Revolution has resulted in the ascendency of an enormous civil service in Quebec that is directed by a middle class technocracy allied with business interests to insure control of the state.

Political upheaval[edit]

In the 1950s Duplessis came under attack from a small but influential group of well-educated young French Canadian reformers, who took over and revived the Quebec Liberal Party.

In 1960 reformers defeated the Union Nationale and formed a government under Liberal Jean Lesage^[17] with the slogan "Maitres chez nous" (Masters in Our Own Home). Reelected in 1962 by promising to nationalize the giant hydro-electricity industry, the Quebec Liberals initiated the Quiet Revolution--a program of economic, political, and educational reforms aimed at both modernizing the province and intensifying its French characteristics. In response to their demands for greater autonomy, Ottawa conceded an "opting-out" formula whereby Quebec was not required to participate in such federal welfare programs as the Canada Pension Plan,^[18] but could instead receive an amount of federal money equal to that which would have been spent in the province under the Pension Plan. This "special status" for Quebec irritated many English-speaking Canadians, although it fell far short of satisfying the rapidly growing French Canadian separatist movement, which advocated complete independence for Quebec. Some separatist leaders began to resort to terrorism, and in 1963 there was a series of bombings in the English-speaking districts of Montreal.

Faced with a serious crisis, the national government of Prime Minister Lester Pearson appointed a royal commission to investigate the problems of bilingualism and biculturalism in Canada. The commission's report documented the economic disadvantages suffered by French Canadians and recommended full recognition of both French and English as equal official languages at the federal level and in the provinces of Quebec, New Brunswick, and Ontario. Further bilingualism policies were adapted in more conservative Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. In administrative policy the Pearson government favored "cooperative federalism," meaning continuous consultation between federal and provincial departments of government, as well as fairly frequent full-scale federal-provincial conferences.

In 1966 the Lesage government in Quebec was defeated by the Union Nationale under Daniel Johnson,^[19] which claimed to be even more vigorously nationalist than its opponents.^[20] Meanwhile, the Liberal government in Ottawa, which had been reelected in 1965, secured the final adoption of a distinctive national flag featuring the maple leaf as the nation's symbol. Another important piece of legislation was the National Medicare Act, which provided for joint federal-provincial financing of universal health care insurance.

Quebec's "psychological secession" from Canada came in five stages: the Quiet Revolution of 1960, the 1980 sovereignty-association vote, the constitutional process of 1980-82, the Meech Lake Accord process of 1987-90, and the 1992 Charlottetown Accord referendum. The 1995 referendum for independence, saw the narrow victory for the "no" side. Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien^[21] announced three policy initiatives that promised to change unemployment insurance, to recognize Quebec as a distinct society, and to empower Quebec and certain other Canadian regions to veto changes to the federal constitution. French-speaking Quebecois gradually replaced ethnic consciousness by allegiance to a "national state" on the territory of the province of Quebec. The Parti Québécois (PQ) emerged as a dominant nationalist party, formed in 1968.^[22] PQ succeeded in passing two important charters, the Québec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms (1975),^[23] and Bill 101, Charte de la langue française (1977),^[24] marked this significant evolution of Quebecois collective identity. Bill 101 made French the official language of the government and of the courts in Quebec; more controversially it made French the normal language of the workplace, of instruction, of communications, of commerce and of business. Education in French became compulsory for immigrants, even those from other Canadian provinces. The failure of the 1980 referendum on independence, and the 1982 economic crisis, led to the return to power of Robert Bourassa's Liberals in 1986.

The national government in Ottawa refused to countenance independence. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau,^[25] himself a leader in the Quiet Revolution, Ottawa countered with the concept of a single Canadian nation. Trudeau's actions culminated with the 1982 Constitution and the national Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which Quebec never endorsed and still is considered illegitimate by many Quebecers. The root problem is that Canada, as it is conceived by Anglophone Canadians, does not seem compatible with an enduring Quebec identity.^[26]

Quiet Revolution: Social upheaval[edit]

In social terms, the Quiet Revolution undercut the authority of the Catholic Church in taking away the schools and indeed the unquestioned authority of parish priests. The Union Nationale, the political party of Duplessis, together with the Catholic clergy, had actively propagated an ideology of conservatism: the Quebecois were destined to be peasants, to guarantee the survival of the Catholic religion and of the French language in North America. Gauvreau (2005) however reveals also a positive role that minority elements of the Church played in the origins of Quebec's Quiet Revolution. He argues that Catholic youth movements played a major positive role in the origin of the most profound of Quebec's multiple "quiet revolutions," beginning with the Catholic youth movements in the 1930s. They introduced "personalism", a philosophical movement from France that was a kind of neo-Thomism. In creating an active youth movement reformers inside the Church in effect repudiated much of the historic traditionalism of a peasant society, such as patriarchal families and sexuality focused solely on producing large families rather than companionate marriages.^[27]

The exodus from Catholicism began by 1960, with church attendance in Montreal plunging in half in the decade of the 1960s, with even faster declines in rural parishes. Young couples rejected the Church's renewed opposition to birth control. The Quebec independence movement focused on language and culture, and no longer saw Quebec as the stronghold of Catholicism. Once having the developed world's highest birth rate in the 20th century, Francophones of Quebec now have a birth rate akin to Anglophones and other "slow/low or no growth" Western countries.

The Parent Report on education in the province of Quebec (1963–66) was a key part of the Quiet Revolution that modernized and democratized education in Quebec. The report's attempt at democratizing manifested itself through its recommendations to open access to all levels of education; to create the Ministry of Education as a central authority responsible for all aspects of education; to replace local, religion-based educational authorities with local and regional authorities whose members would be elected directly by the parents rather than the general public; and to reorganize education finance in order to make it more equal. The article assesses the degree to which these recommendations were implemented.

The Quiet Revolution moved the socialization of youth from private and social milieus, primarily the Church and family, to the public sphere, shaped by government policy, resulting in a more self-conscious socialization process. This process includes an emphasis on a shared francophone history and culture and on the importance of the French language to that culture. With new challenges to the institutionalization of the société distincte the state increasingly operates as a key agent of socialization.

FLQ[edit]

see also FLQ The most dramatic episode was the "October Crisis" in 1970 as Canada faced down a home grown terrorist threat of the FLQ (Front de Liberation du Québec). For several years separatist desires were rising in the predominantly French-speaking province, and the FLQ tried to remove Quebec from Canada by force. In October 1970, Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act. This gave the state broad powers of arrest and detention in a time of crisis. When asked how far and how long he would take the measures, Trudeau famously replied "Just watch me".

On 16 October 1970 the Trudeau Cabinet passed the War Measures Act and Regulations (WMA) which immediately sent the Canadian army into Montreal. The army summarily dragged 497 people out of their beds and into jail. Of these, 435 were released within two days, while 62 were charged and 32 held without bail. There was near-unanimous public support for these drastic measures at the time.

Although the FLQ kidnappings would end with the death of Quebec cabinet minister Pierre Laporte, the FLQ had its back broken by military presence in the province who arrested a handful of radicals. The general public overwhelmingly supported the emergency powers and the presence of the military in Quebec. When the crisis was over, Trudeau revoked the powers of the War Measures Act.

Politics[edit]

Quebec's proposed secession from Canada was successfully thwarted by anti-separatist Francophone politicians, such as prime minister Pierre Trudeau born and raised in Montreal in a family known to been part of the city's elite assumed to be Anglophone, but Trudeau is a French-Canadian and was raised to be bilingual. Attempts for Quebec to secede was blocked by Trudeau and the parliament during the 1970s when the separtists movement in Quebec was in its peak.

On May 20, 1980 a separatist government held a referendum on declaring independence from Canada. This was defeated by a 60% to 40% vote. A second referendum was held on October 31, 1995 and saw the separatist side lose again, but by less than two percentage points (49% vs. 51%, a very close margin) identicated how far the Quebec separatist cause has nearly ended the 128-year old dominion of Canada.

In the 1993 national elections the Progressive Conservative Party collapsed and the official opposition became the avowedly separatist Bloc Québécois, a new party formed in 1991 for the national parliament.^[28] Inside Quebec the PQ regained power in 1994 under the resolutely nationalist leader Jacques Parizeau, and called for a referendum in 1995 it was convinced would lead to immediate independence. Preparations were made for diplomatic recognition and an army, but the "no" votes prevailed by 1%, largely because of the intense opposition of non-Francophones.^[29]

The separatists were narrowly defeated in the 30 October 1995 referendum by 53,500 votes. Anglophones (English-speakers) and immigrants voted "no" as they vigorously sought to maintain Quebec's allegiance to the Canadian government. Francophones, using language with racial undertones, continue to foster the cause of an independent Quebec. Led by charismatic Lucien Bouchard, the separatists displayed an insensitivity toward those outside their ethnic group and ignored the difficulties independence would place on the debt-ridden, economically depressed province.^[30]

In 2018, the moderately-conservative and right-wing populist Coalition Avenir Québec won a majority in Quebec's general election.^[31][32]

Economy[edit]

Before the 1960s the business and banking of Montreal and smaller cites was Anglophones; but by 2000 the business community was largely Francophone, particularly in management and the elite. Some large corporations relocated their headquarters to Toronto and retained their Anglophone character. Globalization strengthened the use of French. Foreign investment in new business increased, but the majority of foreign investment was in existing businesses. The provincial government implemented policies that supported successful exporting as well as other measures to stimulate an entrepreneurial business class. The Quebec government established offices across the U.S. to promote trade, direct investment and tourism. The Parti Québécois has always experienced a lack of American support in its struggle for sovereignty, especially during the Bill Clinton administration in the 1990s. Agriculture, mining, and forestry declined, however.^[33]

Current situation[edit]

The Quebec secession issue and how the Canadian parliament made deals to keep Quebec intact with bribery and corruption, was part of the country's 2006 parliamentary crisis rocked Canada's core on being the most stable democracy in the world, leading the resignation of the entire parliament and several hundreds of political officials. The Parti Quebecois continued to speak of threats of secession with less public support in the last 5 years and declines well in the 2010s.

Most Quebecers and Francophones in Canada no longer support any idea of an independent Quebec from Canada, with the majority suggest special autonomous status similar to the establishment of the Inuit majority territory of Nunavut in 1999. The Canadian government promotes an idea of multiculturalism and preserved diversity known as the "cultural mosaic" of anyone can preserve their own cultural, ethnic and racial distinction. When applied, that means Francophones will remain a "separate but equal" as well a not-so-assimilated and perhaps back to being a marginalized minority within an Anglo/British descent-dominant society.

Quebec's urban core, Montreal is no longer a mostly Francophone, nor bilingual city, it is now home to a high percentage of immigrants from around the world and ethnic groups of European descent, whom oppose Quebec separatist causes and policies. It is believed separatists such as leader Rene Levisque hold racist, nativist or xenophobe tendencies, such as incidents and acts of Anti-semitism towards the province's sizable Jewish population, and the obsession with ethnocultural purity of French-Canadian "blood" (or references from Quebecois militants of their people belong to a "Nordique"/"Gaullique"/"Latine" race) falls in the line of racial nationalism, has lost credibility and respect among politically active Francophones and Quebecers alike.

Bibliography[edit]

Surveys[edit]

• The Dictionary of Canadian Biography (1966-2006), thousands of scholarly biographies of notables who died by 1930
• Canadian Encyclopedia (2008) reliable detailed encyclopedia, on-line free
• Armstrong, Robert. Structure and Change: An Economic History of Québec (1984)
• Dickinson, John Alexander, and Brian Young. A Short History of Quebec (2003) excerpt and text search
• Eccles, W. J. The Canadian Frontier, 1534-1760 (1983) online edition
• Heintzman, Ralph. "The Political Culture of Quebec, 1840-1960," Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 16, No. 1. (Mar., 1983), pp. 3–59. in JSTOR
• Lanctot, Gustave. A History of Canada 3 vol Toronto. 1963. Volume One: From its Origins to the Royal Régime, 1663; online, Volume Two: From the Royal Régime to the Treaty of Utrecht, 1663-1713, online
• Linteau, Paul-André, René Durocher, Jean-Claude Robert, and Robert Chodos. Quebec: A History 1867-1929 (1983) Quebec Since 1930 (1991), standard 2 vol textbook.
• Moogk, Peter. La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada a Cultural History (2000) to 1763 online edition
• Trofimenkoff, Susan Mann. Dream of Nation: A Social and Intellectual History of Quebec (1982)
  • Mann, Susan Mann. Dream of Nation: A Social and Intellectual History of Quebec (2nd ed, 2009)
• Wade, Mason. The French Canadians, 1760-1945 (1955), standard history, 1136pp online edition
• Young, Brian and Dickinson, John A. A Short History of Quebec: A Socio-Economic Perspective. (3rd ed. 2002) 238 pp.

Before 1867[edit]

• Brecher, Frank W. Losing a Continent: France's North American Policy, 1753-1763 (1998) excerpt and text search
• Creighton, Donald G. The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence, 1760-1850 (1937) online edition
• Dechêne, Louise. Habitants and Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Montreal (1974; English ed. 2003), highly influential study from Annales School
• Egnal, Marc. Divergent Paths: How Culture and Institutions Have Shaped North American Growth. (1996). 304 pp. economic historian compares Quebec to U.S. 1750-1850
• Gossage, Peter. Families in Transition: Industry and Population in Nineteenth-Century Saint-Hyacinthe. (1999). 299 pp.
• Greer, Allan The people of New France (1997)
• Greer, Allan. The patriots and the people: the rebellion of 1837 in rural Lower Canada (1993)
• Greer, Allan. Peasant, Lord and Merchant: Rural Society in Three Quebec Parishes, 1740- 1840. (1985)
• Innis, Harold A. The Fur Trade in Canada (1930)
• Jaenen, Cornelius. Friend and Foe (1976) brief survey of French-Indian relations in the 16th & 17th centuries.
• Manning, Helen Taft; The Revolt of French Canada, 1800-1835: A Chapter of the History of the British Commonwealth (1962) online edition
• Miquelon, Dale. New France, 1701-1744: A Supplement to Europe (1989)
• Moogk, Peter. La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada a Cultural History (2000) to 1763 online edition
• Ouellet, Fernand. Lower Canada, 1791-1840: Social Change and Nationalism (1980), synthesis by leading scholar
• Pritchard, James. In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670-1730. (2004). 484 pp. includes Louisiana, the Caribbean, etc.
• Trudel, Marcel. The Beginnings of New France 1524-1663 (1973)
• Wrong, George McKinnon. The Fall of Canada: A Chapter in the History of the Seven Years' War (1914), 272pp full text online
• Young, Brian, George-Etienne Cartier: Montreal bourgeois (1981)

Since 1867[edit]

• Armstrong, Elizabeth H. The Crisis of Quebec, 1914-1918 (1937)
• Betcherman, Lita-rose Ernest Lapointe: Mackenzie King's Great Quebec Lieutenant (2002) 438pp
• Behiels, Michael D. Prelude to Quebec's Quiet Revolution: Liberalism Versus Neo-Nationalism, 1945-1960 (1985)
• Black, Conrad. Duplessis. (1977). 743 pp.
• Bothwell, Robert. Canada and Quebec: One Country, Two Histories. (1995). 269 pp.
• Clarkson, Stephen, and Christina McCall. Trudeau and our times (2v., 1990–94)
• Cohen, Andrew, and J. L. Granatstein, eds. Trudeau's shadow: the life and legacy of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. (1999).
• Couture, Claude, and Vivien Bosley. Paddling with the Current: Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Etienne Parent, Liberalism, and Nationalism in Canada (1998)
• Gagnon, Alain-G., ed. Quebec, State and Society (3rd ed. 2004) 500pp; readings by experts
• Gagnon, Alain-G. and Montcalm, Mary Beth. Quebec beyond the Quiet Revolution. (2000) 221 pp.
• Gauvreau, Michael. The Catholic Origins of Quebec's Quiet Revolution, 1931-1970 (2005)
• Grace, Robert J. The Irish in Quebec: An Introduction to the Historiography. (1992)
• Langlois, Simon, ed. Recent Social Trends in Quebec, 1960-1990. (1992). 606 pp.
• McRoberts, Kenneth. Quebec: Social Change and Political Crisis. (1988).
• Neatby, H. Blair. Laurier and a Liberal Quebec: A Study in Political Management (1973) online edition
• Quinn, Herbert F. The Union Nationale: A Study in Quebec Nationalism (1963) 254 pgs. online edition
• Robinson, Gertrude. Constructing the Quebec Referendum: French and English Media Voices. (1998). 262 pp.
• Saywell, John. The Rise of the Parti Québécois 1967-76 (1977) online edition
• Stevenson, Garth. Community Besieged: The Anglophone Minority and the Politics of Quebec. (1999). 363 pp.
• Thomson, Dale C. Jean Lesage and the Quiet Revolution. (1984). 501 pp.
• Young, Robert A. The Struggle for Quebec: From Referendum to Referendum? (1999). 210 pp.

Montreal[edit]

see also Montreal

• Atherton, William Henry. Montreal, 1535-1914 (1914) complete text online
• Baillargeon, Denyse. Making Do: Women, Family and Home in Montreal during the Great Depression. (1999). 232 pp.
• Germain, Annick and Damaris, Rose. Montréal: The Quest for a Metropolis (2000). 306 pp.

Historiography[edit]

• Gagnon, Serge. Quebec and Its Historians, 1840-1920. (1982). 161 pp.
• Havard, Gilles, and Cécile Vidal, "Making New France New Again: French historians rediscover their American past," Common-Place (July 2007) v 7 #4 online version
• Ouellet, Fernand. Economy, class & nation in Quebec: Interpretive essays (1991), historiography
• Rudin, Ronald. Making History in Twentieth-Century Quebec (1997) excerpts and text search
• Vidal, Cécile. "The Reluctance of French Historians to Address Atlantic History," The Southern Quarterly 43:4 (2006): 153-189;

Primary sources[edit]

• Cameron, David R., ed. The Referendum Papers: Essays on Secession and National Unity. (1999). 430 pp
• Cook, Ramsay, ed. French-Canadian Nationalism: An Anthology (1969)
• Lamonde, Yvan and Corbo, Claude, eds. Le Rouge et le Bleu: Une Anthologie de la Pensée Politique au Québec de la Conquête à la Révolution Tranquille (1999). 576 pp.
• Lévesque, René. "For an Independent Quebec." Foreign Affairs 1976 54(4): 734-744. The author was president of the Parti Québécois. Issn: 0015-7120 Fulltext: Ebsco
• Primary sources--texts
• Primary sources--statistics

External links[edit]

• Quebec Tourism

References[edit]