Encyclopædia Britannica

“Introduction” to article on Quebec

Quebec

French QUÉBEC, eastern province of Canada. With a total area of 594,860 square miles

(1,540,680 square kilometres), it is the largest Canadian province in size and is second only to

Ontario in population. Its capital, Quebec city (see photograph), is the oldest city of Canada;

and its metropolis, Montreal, is the second largest city in Canada. It is bounded on the north by

Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay, on the east by Labrador, on the southeast by the Gulf of St.

Lawrence and New Brunswick, on the south by the United States (Maine, New Hampshire,

Vermont, and New York), and on the west by Ontario and by Hudson Bay.

To understand present-day Quebec one must see the province against a background that goes

back to the creation of the French colony in North America during the 16th century. Most

observers would agree that the single most important theme in Quebec's history since the British

acquisition of New France in 1763 has been the continuous attempt to achieve an

accommodation between the numerically dominant French-speaking population and the

economically dominant English-speaking one. Whatever changes in geographic size or political

institutions have taken place in the province, life in Quebec has always been marked by a

collective effort to maintain a distinct French-speaking society. This characteristic in the second

half of the 20th century was at the core of debates over the federal structure of all Canada.

The present Province of Quebec was created in 1867, after being the colony of New France for

more than two centuries until it was ceded to Britain in 1763. Named the Province of Quebec

between 1763 and 1791, it then became the Province of Lower Canada until 1841, and then the

District of Canada East until 1867. During these earlier periods its geographic boundaries were

changed arbitrarily, and only in the 20th century, with the reacquisition of the northern part of

Quebec, did it acquire its present size. Even today, however, there are problems about the

eastern boundaries, because no Quebec government has accepted a 1927 decision of the British

Privy Council to award Labrador to Newfoundland.

Quebec's size and its boundaries are not the most important influences on its life. The province

was profoundly marked by 18th-century wars between France and Britain over their North

American territories and by difficulties between the two linguistic groups since 1763, creating

tensions that the social, economic, and political institutions of Canada and of Quebec have been

unable to resolve. Because only in Quebec, New Brunswick, and at the level of the federal

government is French an official language, French Canadians have felt that they are threatened as

a minority group in Canada. In the past, control by the English minority in Quebec of most

economic activities of the province had generally led to exclusion of the French Canadians from

opportunities of economic advancement. In Quebec, where they constitute about 82 percent of

the population, they maintain that the situation remains discriminatory.

Although people of goodwill on both sides have tried to find a lasting solution, the economic and

social inequalities have created a growing nationalism among French Canadians and a feeling

among some of them that only the separation of Quebec from Canada can solve their problems.

Events since the late 1960s have shown, however, that neither extreme nationalism nor

separatism is accepted by the majority of French speakers who live in Quebec, although there

was a resurgence of nationalism in 1990.