Quebec

Quebec is a province of Canada with more than 8 million people. The official language is French, which is vigorously protected by the provincial government. The Quiet Revolution of the 1960s cast off Catholic traditionalism and modernized and secularized Quebec, and also set off a demand for more equality or even independence from Canada; in referenda voters have narrowly rejected independence.

History

The first explorers

The first European explorer to reach the province of Quebec was Jacques Cartier from France. Sailing into the St. Lawrence River, he planted a cross in Gaspé, on the south shore. The Cross officially gave France control over what would become Nouvelle France, its North American colony. Traveling up-river, Cartier established a settlement at Stadacona, near present-day Quebec City. The settlement was however abandoned in the following years, partly due to the cold winters. Another French explorer, Samuel de Champlain, would found the next settlement in 1608. From that day forward, the French presence in Quebec has continued until the present.

Catholic Church

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.

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. 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.

20th century

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.

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.

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.

The Quiet Revolution

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. The government nationalized hydroelectric utilities, created crown corporations, and undertook to provide the educational, health care, and social services formerly under Church 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

In the late 1950s Premier Maurice Duplessis' authoritarianism and antilabor policies had come under attack from a small but influential group of well-educated young French Canadian reformers, who took over and revived the Quebec Liberal Party.

Duplessis died in 1959 and in 1960 reformers defeated the Union Nationale and formed a government under Liberal Jean Lesage with the slogan "Maitres chez nous" (Masters in Our Own Home). Reelected in 1962, the Quebec Liberals initiated the so-called 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, 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. 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, which claimed to be even more vigorously nationalist than its opponents. 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. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien 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. Two important charters, one on rights and freedoms (1975), the other on the French language (1977), marked this significant evolution of Quebecois collective identity.

The national government in Ottawa refused to countenance independence. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 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 Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Since the Quebec National Assembly did not and could not approve a constitutional scheme that totally ignored Quebec as a people, the Canadian constitution was and still is illegitimate for Quebecers. Efforts at rectifying this anomaly were in vain, in great part because the very spirit of Canadianism resulting from the application of the charter did not allow for the full recognition of a distinct society in Quebec. This is why Quebecers, who are strong believers in federalism, may be led to sovereignty. Canada, as it is conceived by most Canadians, does not seem compatible with an enduring Quebec identity.

Social upheaval

In social terms, the Quiet Revolution undercut the authority of the 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.

The exodus 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 couple 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.

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 recommnedations 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.

Economy

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 US support in its struggle for sovereignty, especially during the Bill Clinton administration in the 1990s. Agriculture, mining, and forestry declined, however.

Language and identity

Unlike the rest of Canada, which is anglophone, the majority of Quebec's population speaks French - although due to immigration there are important communities speaking English, Italian, and Spanish. The issue of language has been a central political concern for over a century, and has heightened in intensity in recent decades as the provincial government has restricted the use of other languages in schools, business and signage.

Quebec has distanced itself from a Canadian identity, and businesses have followed suit. For example, in 2007 Bombardier's new national TV ad campaign extols the plane-and-train maker's Canadian identity, but omits any such reference in the French-language version. "Planes. Trains. Canadian Spirit" becomes "Planes. Trains. A Source of Pride" in the French TV spots ("Des avions. Des trains. Une fierté"). Advertisers have long realized that many of Quebec's francophone speakers are hostile to ads containing pro-Canada sentiments. Wal-Mart Canada's Quebec communications chief explains, "In many cases, if you have a prominent reference to Canada, half the population won't listen or will be irritated." Labatt's popular Blue brand of beer sports a Maple Leaf on its label, but in Quebec it is replaced with a red wheat sheaf. Molson Coors beer company did not run the famous "I Am Canadian" TV ads in Quebec; it sells its Molson Dry brand in Quebec while the Canadian brand is its flagship brew in the rest of Canada.

Geography

Cities

The ten largest cities by population in Quebec are:

1. Montreal
2. Quebec City
3. Laval
4. Gatineau
5. Longueuil
6. Sherbrooke
7. Saguenay
8. Levis
9. Trois-Rivieres
10. Terrebonne

Bibliography

• Frommer's Montreal & Quebec City 2008 (2007) excerpt and text search
• Kokker, Steve. Lonely Planet Quebec (2002) excerpt and text search

History

Surveys

• The Dictionary of Canadian Biography (1966-2006), thousands of scholarly biographies of notables who died by 1930
• 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)
• Wade, Mason. The French Canadians, 1760-1945 (1955), standard history, 1136pp online edition

Specialized studies

• Armstrong, Elizabeth H. The Crisis of Quebec, 1914-1918 (1937)
• Behiels, Michael D. Prelude to Quebec's Quiet Revolution: Liberalism Versus Neo-Nationalism, 1945-1960 (1985)
• Brecher, Frank W. Losing a Continent: France's North American Policy, 1753-1763 (1998) excerpt and text search
• Cohen, Andrew, 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)
• Dechêne, Louise. Habitants and Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Montreal (2003)
• 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)
• Greer, Allan The people of New France (1997)
• Greer, Allan. The patriots and the people: the rebellion of 1837 in rural Lower Canada (1993)
• 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
• McRoberts, Kenneth. Quebec: Social Change and Political Crisis. (1988).
• Moogk, Peter. La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada a Cultural History (2000) to 1763 online edition
• Neatby, H. Blair. Laurier and a Liberal Quebec: A Study in Political Management (1973) online edition
• Saywell, John. ; The Rise of the Parti Québécois 1967-76 (1977) online edition
• Thomson, Dale C. Jean Lesage and the Quiet Revolution. (1984). 501 pp.
• Trudel, Marcel. The Beginnings of New France 1524-1663 (1973)
• Young, Brian, George-Etienne Cartier: Montreal bourgeois (1981)

Primary sources

• 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