History of Quebec

Encyclopædia Britannica

Quebec

History

When in 1534 the French explorer Jacques Cartier landed at present-day Gaspé and took

possession of the land in the name of the king of France, he brought with him the traditions of

mercantile expansion of 16th-century Europe to this land where Indians and Inuit had been living

for some thousands of years. There is a debate among historians, however, as to when the real

history of Quebec should begin. Because the Province of Quebec as a political and geographic

entity was created by the proclamation of 1763, the notion is sometimes also advanced that its

real history should start with the capitulation of the French army in 1760, although Quebec city

was founded in 1608.

The various definitions given by historians are not simply semantic questions, for they contain

diverse assumptions concerning the political identity of the Quebec government. For example,

there is a political tradition among French Canadians that the government of Quebec is also the

government of the French Canadian people, and, therefore, they are heir to what was New

France. The 1966-67 Annuaire du Québec (Québec Yearbook) states this claim most clearly:

Quebec is a state with limited responsibilities that belongs to the Canadian Federation as a

province. It is also the national state of the French-Canadians and exercises its governmental

prerogatives, in the areas of its responsibilities, on the majority of the heirs of those who

colonized New France.

To this, some authorities have replied that the territories covered by New France and those now

included in the Province of Quebec cannot be equated. Although New France began with the

founding of three cities--Quebec city in 1608, Trois-Rivières in 1616, and Montreal in 1642--it

finally included territories that extended west in what is now the United States to the Ohio and

Mississippi rivers. Even if the British government, by the Quebec Act of 1774, did in fact include

practically all the territories of New France in the new Province of Quebec, this situation lasted

only briefly.

Some English-speaking historians assert that the Quebec Act created what is now Quebec as

well as the practice of trying to fuse British and French institutions in the new political entity. The

new British colony was, thus, to be administered by a governor and a council, using British

criminal law and French civil law. Whatever the British government intended, however, when the

composition of Quebec's population gradually changed as a result of increasing English-speaking

immigration, it became increasingly difficult to carry out a policy that could give satisfaction to

both the English- and French-speaking groups. In 1775, the year the American Revolution

broke out, Quebec city was besieged by American troops, and Montreal was occupied. When

peace was restored in 1783, the loyalists who had fled from the United States were settled west

of Ottawa River, in what became the province of Ontario. This was the beginning of the basic

geographic dichotomy in Canada between French and English. In 1791, Canada was split into

Lower Canada (Quebec) and Upper Canada (the future Ontario).

Furthermore, although throughout the province the rural population remained overwhelmingly

French, Montreal became the domain of the English merchants, who were bitterly anti-French.

The metropolis of Canada was to have an English-speaking majority until the middle of the 19th

century, and, even after that, it took nearly a century before French speakers gained control of

its economic life. Discrimination existed between the two groups not only in economic, political,

and religious activities but also in such other fields as education. Gradually, two different

educational systems came into being. English-speaking McGill University was opened in 1821,

but it was not until 1852 that the French-speaking Quebec Seminary, founded in 1668, became

Laval University.

During the first part of the 19th century, the causes for conflict between the two groups

increased with the rapid growth of the English-speaking population in Canada. The English

merchants of Montreal tried in 1822 to obtain an Act of Union that would have united Lower

and Upper Canada and given them an English-speaking majority in the country as a whole. The

reaction against this attempt among French Canadians was strong and prepared the way for the

1837 rebellion. This rebellion, the first major manifestation of political nationalism among French

Canadians, was led by Louis-Joseph Papineau, whose Patriote Party became a centre for

radical politics. After the rebellion was put down, the British government sent out the Earl of

Durham to investigate; his report, published in 1839, offended French Canadians by referring to

them as a people without a history or culture and by characterizing the situation in Lower

Canada as "a war between two races." The report also suggested the setting up of responsible

government in Canada as a solution to the tensions between the two groups. In 1841 a new Act

of Union joined the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, and, in 1867, the British North

American Act created the confederation of Canada by the federation of the four provinces of

Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario.

From then on, French Canadian nationalism became a permanent feature of Canadian as well as

Quebec politics. Doctrines of papal supremacy over national authority introduced the idea of the

religious mission of French Canadians in North America. Under the leadership of such men as

Henri Bourassa and the abbé Lionel Groulx, the province evolved its special vocation as the

"political home" of French Canadians, and the government of that province assumed special

responsibility for the defense of French culture. This situation also resulted in the doctrine of

provincial autonomy that was used by Prime Minister Maurice Duplessis between 1936 and

1957.

French Canadian nationalism also led to the "quiet revolution" of the Liberal government under

Jean Lesage, who took office in 1960, and to the not-so-quiet revolution of a terrorist group

known as the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ), which was responsible for sporadic

violence and the murder in 1970 of Quebec's labour minister, Pierre Laporte. The creation of the

Parti Québécois in 1970 brought into being a new forum of Quebec nationalism, one that is no

longer strictly French Canadian: it has English-speaking members as well as members of other

ethnic groups, and its advocacy of separation from Canada is based on issues of economic and

social development. In 1976 the party won the general elections and control of the provincial

parliament, under the premiership of René Lévesque. In a referendum held in May 1980 the

Quebec electorate rejected the opportunity to negotiate with the national government for

sovereignty-association status (see above Canada since 1920). In elections held the following

year the Parti Québécois maintained its majority in the provincial parliament, but in 1985 it was

defeated and a Liberal Party government was installed. From that time the appeal of the political

ideology of separatism declined steadily, although some revival occurred in 1990 when the

Meech Lake accords, which would have recognized Quebec as a distinct society, failed to be

ratified by the Canadian Parliament. (P.Ga.)