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Quebec (pronounced "keh-beck"; French: le Québec) is a Canadian province with a population of 7,410,504 (Statistics Canada, 2001), primarily speakers of the French language. It is surrounded by over 300 million English speakers in the US and the rest of Canada, and yet it manages to keep its unique culture and language.

Geography of Quebec

Quebec is located in eastern Canada, bordered by Ontario and Hudson Bay to the west, Atlantic Canada to the east, the U.S. (Vermont and New York State) to the south, and the Arctic Ocean to the north. The province, Canada's largest, occupies a vast territory (six times the size of France), most of which is very sparsely populated.

The most populated region is the Saint Lawrence River Valley in the south, where the capital, Quebec City, and the largest city, Montreal, are situated. North of Montreal are the Laurentians, a range of ancient mountains, and to the south, the Appalachian Range extends into the Eastern Townships. The Gaspé Peninsula juts into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the east. The Saint Lawrence River Valley is a fertile agricultural region, producing dairy products, fruit, vegetables, maple sugar (Quebec is the world's largest producer), and livestock.

Northern Quebec has extremely rich resources in its coniferous forests, lakes, and rivers - pulp and paper, lumber, and hydroelectricity are some of the province's most important industries. The extreme north of the province, called Nunavik, is subarctic and is home to Inuit communities.

Inhabitants of Quebec are called Quebecers or Quebeckers; the term Québécois (pronounced "keh-bek-wah") refers to the French-descended people of Quebec.

History of Quebec

Quebec was inhabited by a range of First Nations before the arrival of the French, and still is today - the Inuit in Nunavik, the Cree in the coniferous forests, the Huron and Iroquois (Mohawks) in the river valley, and the Mi'kmaq in the east, to name the most prominent peoples.

The first European explorer of Quebec was the Frenchman Jacques Cartier, who planted a cross in the Gaspé in 1534 and sailed into the Saint Lawrence in 1535. Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec City in 1608; it would become the nucleus of New France and the origin of French exploration of North America. New France became a royal colony in 1663 under Louis XIV and the intendant Jean Talon.

The French allied themselves with the Huron against the Iroquois, who were allied to the English. The wars between England and France in Europe and North America came to a head in 1759 when the English general James Wolfe defeated Louis-Joseph de Montcalm at the Plains of Abraham near Quebec City. Although Great Britain acquired New France at the Treaty of Paris, it passed the Quebec Act in 1774, allowing the colony to retain its language, religion, legal system, semifeudal system, and customs. This act of tolerance was one of the grievances listed by the Americans in the Declaration of Independence.

After Loyalists fleeing from the American Revolution settled in Quebec, the Constitutional Act of 1791 divided the region at the Ottawa River, creating Upper Canada (now Ontario) and Lower Canada (now Quebec). The first elected legislature was created in the same year.

Partisans in both Upper and Lower Canada revolted against the British Empire in 1837; in Quebec, the revolt was led by Louis-Joseph Papineau and the Patriotes. The rebellions were crushed, but they achieved their goal when Lord Durham's report recommended responsible government for the colonies. This was instituted in 1849, under the guidance of Robert Baldwin from Upper Canada and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine of Lower Canada.

Lord Durham's report recommended that the French-Canadians be assimilated, and an attempt at this was made by merging the Canadas into the Province of Canada in 1841; what is now Quebec became Canada East. This was unstable, however, and when the Province of Canada joined with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in Confederation (1867), it divided into Ontario and Quebec once more.

20th Century History

When Quebec became one of the four founding provinces of Confederation, provisions for the maintenance of its language, culture, and religion were specifically written into the constitution; English and French were made the official languages of Quebec and of the Canadian parliament; and dual school systems were established. However, attempts to curtail Catholic education in Manitoba and Ontario increased the Quebecois' feeling of isolation within the British colony, and they stood firmly opposed to conscription in the First World War, provoking an angry debate.

Quebec had been strongly Catholic throughout its history; this came to a head in the 1950s under the Union Nationale government of Maurice Duplessis, who maintained religious control over social services such as schools and hospitals. In return, the clergy used its influence to exhort voters to stay with the conservative government, who also took firm stands against social reform and unionism. However, after the party left office, the power of the church fell away. Quebec became a very progressive society in the 1960s, a social sea-change called the Quiet Revolution (Révolution tranquille). It has maintained its progressive nature to this day, having been the first province to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation, one of the first to permit gay civil unions and adoption, and ratifying the Kyoto Protocol.

Nationalist feelings flowered into sovereignism in the 1960s. The sovereignist movement burst onto the scene with the October Crisis of 1970, when a terrorist group, the Front du Libération du Québec, kidnapped a British diplomat, James Cross, and the Quebec minister of labour, Pierre Laporte. Cross was released, but Laporte was murdered. Although the FLQ were fringe extremists, Prime Minister Trudeau's invocation of the War Measures Act, suspension of civil liberties, military intervention in Montreal, and arrest of dissidents promoted grievances in the general population.

1970 also saw the formation of the sovereignist Parti Québécois under René Lévesque. This party won the 1976 provincial elections and instituted a series of laws discouraging the use of English and promoting the use of French. (French had been made the sole official language in 1974.) This was blamed for an emigration of English speakers and their companies, mainly to Ontario.

In 1980, Lévesque's plan for an independent Quebec, called sovereignty-association, was rejected by voters in a referendum. However, the PQ was reelected in 1981, and rejected the newly repatriated constitution in 1982. From 1985 to 1994, the federalist Parti libéral du Québec governed under Robert Bourassa and Daniel Johnson; progress on the constitutional issue resulted in the Meech Lake Accord in 1987, but it collapsed in 1990. Another constitutional deal, the Charlottetown Accord, was rejected by countrywide referendum in 1992.

The PQ reentered office in 1994 under Jacques Parizeau, and held another referendum on sovereignty. On October 30, 1995, the measure was rejected by an extremely slim margin, less than one percent, for which the federal Liberal party under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien came under sharp criticism.

Parizeau announced his resignation and was replaced by the head of the federal Bloc Québécois, Lucien Bouchard. Under Bouchard, Quebec's status as a distinct society was recognized by Parliament, and was granted a veto over constitutional amendments. Since then, support for secession has shrunk to some 40%; moreover, nearly 70% of the population are simply not interested in holding a referendum, be they federalist or sovereignist. The PQ, currently led by Premier Bernard Landry, has seen its support drop critically, especially relative to the popularity of a new right-wing party, the Action Démocratique under Mario Dumont.

At this point, the national question is on the back burner. On a day-to-day basis, Quebecers, especially in Montreal, live in a relatively stable state of cultural equipoise. Much more pressing political concerns include the state of education and the health-care system. Quebec City hosted the Summit of the Americas in April 2001, attracting huge anti-globalization protests with activists from everywhere in the province and the rest of the hemisphere.

Provincial Symbols

The motto of Quebec is Je me souviens (I remember)

The emblem of Quebec is the fleur de lis, usually white on a blue background, as in the provincial flag (above), called the Fleurdelisé.

The provincial flower of Quebec is the blue flag iris. It was formerly the Madonna lily, to recall the fleur de lis, but has been changed to the iris which is native to Quebec.

The provincial bird of Quebec is the snowy owl.

The patron saint of Quebec is Saint John the Baptist. La Saint-Jean-Baptiste, June 24, is the Quebec official holiday, now called the Fête nationale du Québec.

See also Canada, Canadian provinces and territories, Canadian cities, List of Quebec counties, Quebecois French, Quiet Revolution.