Quebec

Québec (or "Quebec" in English) is a province of Canada with more than 8 million people. The provincial government considers Québec to be a "distinct society" within Canada, a status that the federal government recognized in a statement by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in November 2006. That status is reflected in many provincial policies, such as the stringent language laws that vigorously protect the use of French as the sole official language of the province. Québecois culture has also manifested itself in unique cultural, religious and legal institutions. The Quiet Revolution of the 1960s cast off Catholic traditionalism and modernized and secularized Quebec, and also set off a demand for equality within, or even independence from, Canada; in referenda, voters twice narrowly rejected seeking 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.

French Colonial Era

In 1602, King Henry IV of France gave a monopoly of the Canadian fur trade to a Rouen business group. This charter company, the first of several that were to rule New France for the next 60 years, appointed Samuel de Champlain chief agent for its overseas adventure. Champlain possessed qualities that were needed for the founding of New France. Ardently religious, he was, like the king himself, a Catholic with a Protestant background. Adventurous, a skilled seaman and cartographer, Champlain was also patriotically eager to help expand French power in the new imperial age.

In 1608 Champlain sailed up the St. Lawrence to Cape Diamond, where he built the fur-trading fort of Quebec. From there, Champlain began to explore and map systematically the whole upper St. Lawrence region from Georgian Bay in the northwest to Lake Champlain in the south. In order to maintain friendly relations with the local Algonquin and Huron Indians, who controlled the fur-trading routes to the interior, Champlain was also forced to support them in their bloody feud with the Five Nations of the Iroquois confederacy. As a result, the Iroquois became implacable and dangerous enemies of the French.

Trappers and woodsmen such as Etienne Bruléand Jean Nicolet pushed further into the interior. Known as coureurs-de-bois, they extended both the fur trade and French imperial claims as far as the headwaters of the Mississippi. Their success encouraged the charter companies to concentrate on the fur trade rather than build a solid agricultural base in the St. Lawrence Valley and induced many intrepid young colonists to leave the settlements and became coureurs-de-bois. Moreover, with France involved in the Thirty Years War ( 1618-1648), little encouragement or support came from overseas.

What settlement did occur after Champlain's death (1635) was controlled by the Jesuits (Society of Jesus). Inspired by the missionary spirit of the Counter-Reformation, they sought to convert the Indians to Christianity and to keep New France Catholic. Traveling with the coureurs-de-bois, Jesuit priests established missions as far west as Georgian Bay. Under François Laval, who was named head of the colonial Church in 1659 and Bishop of New France in 1674, Protestants were not permitted to settle in Canada. This policy strengthened a feeling of common purpose and even a nascent nationalism in New France.

Because of their involvement with the French fur trade, the missionaries were exposed to attacks by the Iroquois, who were allied with rival Dutch traders in the Hudson River valley. The Jesuits were particularly active among the Hurons, who were the chief suppliers of furs from the interior. In 1648 the Iroquois, seeking to wipe out the Hurons and divert the flow of northern furs to the Dutch at Fort Orange (now Albany, New York), invaded the Huron country, massacred its inhabitants, and destroyed the Jesuit mission post of Ste. Marie on Georgian Bay. Father Jean Brébeuf and several other Jesuit priests were tortured and burned at the stake, martyrs to the cause of Christianity and French Canada. The Iroquois then carried their assault into the center of New France. Montreal, which had been founded in 1642 on an island near the junction of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence rivers and had become the principal control center for the interior fur trade, was especially endangered. For 12 years the post was subjected to constant Iroquois harassment, and its defense to the death by men like Adam Dollard added to the list of legendary heroes.

In 1663 King Louis XIV abolished the private fur-trade monopoly. New France was made a royal province with a superior council to carry out the king's edicts. Three officers dominated the council: the governor, with responsibility for defense; the intendant, to administer justice and promote economic growth; and the bishop, who wielded great power through his control of the church. Despite chronic feuding among its leaders, conciliar government was efficient. At the same time, it fostered a more authoritarian political culture than that which was emerging in the English colonies to the south. Without an elected assembly, French Canadians were far more dependent on appointed officials.

Under the leadership of dedicated intendants such as Jean Talon, the first to hold the office, New France began to flourish. Population grew from 2,000 in 1663 to 6,000 in 1672. In addition, nearly 1,000 members of the veteran French regiment, the Carignan-Salières, were stationed in the colony to ensure its safety. Talon's policies encouraged the growth of large families, domestic industries, and stable farming communities. The French seigneurial landholding system was instituted, but its effects were vastly modified by colonial frontier circumstances. Since wealth was scarce, differences in landed rank meant little, and feudal dues were never a serious burden on the habitants (tenant farmers). Under Bishop Laval (1659-1688), the Church secured huge seigneurial land grants as well as heavy endowments for the Jesuit order. Education was in the hands of the clergy. The Church insisted on the right to regulate the colony's morals, but it was unable to prevent the sale of brandy to Indians by the fur traders.

In 1672 the Comte de Frontenac was appointed governor of the increasingly threatened colony. Although he was later celebrated by the American historian Francis Parkman as the Fighting Governor, Frontenac in fact antagonized many colonists by his corruption and earned the distrust of the pro-French Indian tribes by failing to keep his promises to support them against the Iroquois. Recalled in 1682, Frontenac left an internally divided and poorly defended colony to his successors. However, new Iroquois attacks and the outbreak of war between England and France led to his reappointment as governor in 1689. Mixed Indian and French raiding parties were sent out from the St. Lawrence. They fell upon settlements in New England and New York, often treating their Protestant inhabitants with great savagery. The Iroquois were quickly pacified, but the enraged English colonists retaliated in force. In 1690 a fleet from Massachusetts captured Port Royal in Acadia. English attacks on Quebec and Montreal were defeated, however, and the French seized most of the Hudson's Bay Company posts. Peace was concluded with the Iroquois in 1701, but by then it was clear that the outcome of French-English conflicts in North America would depend as much on events in Europe as on the actions of the colonists.

In the early 18th century the British colonies experienced a population explosion, accompanied by rapid economic growth. The shortage of land and the profits to be had on the frontier made westward expansion more alluring. During the American phase of the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713) the British again captured Port Royal, which had been returned to France in 1697, and attacked Quebec. By the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, reflecting the defeat of Louis XIV in Europe, the French recognized British possession of Hudson Bay and Acadia, which was henceforth known as Nova Scotia.

Having lost all approaches to the St. Lawrence except Ile Royale (Cape Breton Island) and Ile St. Jean (Prince Edward Island), the French strengthened their defenses. An elaborate fortress was built as Louisbourg on Isle Royale and garrisoned with 1,400 seasoned troops. Since Louisbourg threatened Nova Scotia and the Newfoundland fisheries, the English responded by intensifying their pressure all along the frontier. Fort Oswego, on the south shore of Lake Ontario, challenged French territorial claims in that region and menaced the St. Lawrence fur trade. French forts at Crown Point and Ticonderoga, south of the St. Lawrence, were designed to prevent a British invasion of New France by way of Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River. In the far northwest Pierre La Vérendrye built a string of fur trading posts in the 1730s that stretched across the prairies as far as the Saskatchewan River, challenging the Hudson's Bay Company's westward thrusts.

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.