Quebec

:This article describes the Canadian province. For other usages, see Quebec (disambiguation).

History

Main article: History of Quebec

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Discovery and exploration

The name Quebec, which comes from an Algonquian word meaning "strait" or "narrowing", originally meant the narrowing of the St. Lawrence River off what is currently Quebec City.

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The first European explorer of what is now Quebec was Jacques Cartier, who planted a cross either in the Gaspé in 1534 or at Old Fort Bay on the Lower North Shore and sailed into the St. Lawrence River in 1535.

Related Topics:
Jacques Cartier - Gaspé - Old Fort Bay - Lower North Shore - St. Lawrence River

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New France

Quebec City was founded near the site of Stadacona, a village populated by Iroquoians when Jacques Cartier explored Canada. However, the village was no longer there when Samuel de Champlain established the Habitation de Quebec in 1608.

Related Topics:
Quebec City - Stadacona - Iroquoian - Samuel de Champlain - 1608

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After 1627, King Louis XIII of France introduced the seigneurial system and forbade settlement in New France by anyone other than Roman Catholics, ensuring that welfare and education was kept firmly in the hands of the church. New France became a royal province in 1663 under King Louis XIV of France and the intendant Jean Talon.

Related Topics:
Louis XIII of France - Seigneurial system - New France - Roman Catholic - Louis XIV of France - Jean Talon

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Change of colonial powers

Great Britain acquired Canada by the Treaty of Paris (1763) when King Louis XV of France and his advisers chose to keep the territory of Guadeloupe for its valuable sugar crops instead of New France, which was viewed as a vast, frozen wasteland of little importance to the French colonial empire. By the British Royal Proclamation of 1763, Canada (part of New France) was renamed the Province of Quebec.

Related Topics:
Treaty of Paris (1763) - Louis XV - Guadeloupe - French colonial empire - British Royal Proclamation of 1763

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In 1774, the British Parliament passed the Quebec Act that helped ensure the survival of the French language and French culture in the region; since it did not hinder Catholicism in Quebec, it was deemed as one of the Intolerable Acts that spurred the American Revolution. The Act allowed Quebec to maintain the French civil law as its judicial system and sanctioned the freedom of religious choice, allowing the Roman Catholic Church to remain.

Related Topics:
1774 - Quebec Act - French language - French culture - Intolerable Acts - American Revolution - Roman Catholic Church

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Quebec retained its seigneurial system and civil law code after France's giving of the territory to England. Owing to an influx of Loyalist refugees from the US Revolutionary War, the Constitutional Act of 1791 saw the colony divided in two at the Ottawa River (a small portion west of the Ottawa/St. Lawrence River confluence, which had the westernmost seigneuries, was retained in Lower Canada); the western part became Upper Canada and changed to the British legal system. The eastern part was named Lower Canada.

Related Topics:
Civil law - Loyalist - Revolutionary War - The Constitutional Act of 1791 - Upper Canada - Lower Canada

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The Patriotes Rebellion in Lower Canada

Like their counterparts in Upper Canada, in 1837, English and French speaking residents of Lower Canada, led by Louis-Joseph Papineau and Robert Nelson, formed an armed resistance group to seek an end to British colonial rule. Their actions resulted in the Lower Canada Rebellion. An unprepared British Army had to raise a local militia force and the rebel forces were soon defeated after having scored a victory in Saint-Denis, Quebec, south of Montreal.

Related Topics:
Upper Canada - 1837 - English - French speaking - Louis-Joseph Papineau - Robert Nelson - Lower Canada Rebellion - British Army - Militia - Saint-Denis, Quebec - Montreal

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Act of Union

After the rebellions, Lord Durham was asked to undertake a study and prepare a report on the matter and to offer a solution for the British Parliament to assess. Following Durham's Report, the British government merged the two colonial provinces into one Province of Canada in 1841. However, the union proved contentious.

Related Topics:
Lord Durham - Report - Province of Canada - 1841

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Canadian Confederation

In the 1860s, the delegates from the colonies of British North America (Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland) met in a series of conferences in Charlottetown, Quebec City and London to discuss a broader union. As a result of those deliberations, in 1867 the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the British North America Act, providing for the Confederation of most of these provinces. The former Province of Canada was again divided into its two previous parts as the provinces of Ontario (Upper Canada) and Quebec (Lower Canada). New Brunswick and Nova Scotia joined Ontario and Quebec in the new Dominion of Canada (Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland entered Confederation later, in 1873 and 1949, respectively).

Related Topics:
1867 - Ontario - New Brunswick - Nova Scotia

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The "Quiet Revolution"

The conservative government of Maurice Duplessis and his Union Nationale dominated Quebec politics from 1944 to 1960 with the support of the Catholic church. Pierre Trudeau and other intellectuals and liberals formed an intellectual opposition to Duplessis' repressive regime setting the groundwork for the Quiet Revolution under Jean Lesage's Liberals. The Quiet Revolution was a period of dramatic social and political change that saw the decline of the Roman Catholic Church's influence, the nationalization of Hydro-Québec and the emergence of a separatist movement under former Lesage minister René Lévesque.

Related Topics:
Conservative - Maurice Duplessis - Union Nationale - Pierre Trudeau - Quiet Revolution - Jean Lesage - Liberals - Roman Catholic - Nationalization - Hydro-Québec - René Lévesque

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Beginning in 1963, a terrorist group that became known as the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) launched a decade of bombings, robberies and attacks on government offices and at least two murders by FLQ gunfire and three violent deaths by bombings. Their activities culminated in events referred to as the October Crisis http://www.mcgill.ca/maritimelaw/history/crisis/ when James Cross, the British trade commissioner to Canada, was kidnapped along with Pierre Laporte, a provincial minister and Vice-Premier, who was murdered a few days later. In their published Manifesto, the terrorists stated: "In the coming year Bourassa (Quebec Premier) will have to face reality; 100,000 revolutionary workers, armed and organized."

Related Topics:
Terrorist - Front de libération du Québec - October Crisis - James Cross - Pierre Laporte

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At the request of premier Robert Bourassa, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act. Once the War Measures Act was in place, arrangements were made for all detainees to see legal counsel. In addition, the Quebec Ombudsman http://www.protecteurducitoyen.qc.ca/en/index.asp, Louis Marceau, was instructed to hear complaints of detainees and the Quebec government agreed to pay damages to any person unjustly arrested. On February 3, 1971, John Turner, the Minister of Justice of Canada, reported that 497 persons had been arrested under the War Measures Act, of whom 435 had been released. The other 62 were charged, of which 32 were crimes of such seriousness that a Quebec Superior Court judge refused them bail. A federal government inquiry later revealed that some Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) agents infiltrated the group to gain evidence of the group's willingness to commit terrorist acts.

Related Topics:
Robert Bourassa - Pierre Trudeau - War Measures Act - Quebec - Ombudsman - John Turner - Minister of Justice of Canada - Royal Canadian Mounted Police

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In 1977, the newly elected Parti Québécois government of René Lévesque introduced the Charter of the French Language.Often known as Bill 101, it defined French as the only official language of Quebec. To this day it remains controversial, and widely misunderstood both inside and outside Quebec.

Related Topics:
Parti Québécois - René Lévesque - Charter of the French Language - Bill 101

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Quebec and the Canadian constitution

Lévesque and his party had run in the 1970 and 1973 Quebec elections under a platform of separating Quebec from the rest of Canada. His party was defeated both times, with 23% and 30% of the vote respectively, and Lévesque himself was defeated in his own riding (electoral district). In the 1976 election, he softened his message by promising a referendum (plebiscite) on sovereignty-association rather than outright separation, by which Quebec would have independence in most governement functions but share some other ones, such as a common currency, with Canada. Though many Quebecers, especially English-speaking Quebecers, viewed sovereignty-association as thinly-veiled separation, Lévesque and the Parti Québécois were swept into power with 41% of the popular vote on November 15, 1976. The question of sovereignty-association was placed before the voters in the 1980 Quebec referendum. During the campaign, Pierre Trudeau promised that a vote for the NO side was a vote for reforming Canada. Trudeau advocated the patriation of Canada's Constitution from the United Kingdom, as the existing constitutional document, the British North America Act, could only be amended by the United Kingdom Parliament.

Related Topics:
Sovereignty-association - 1980 Quebec referendum - Pierre Trudeau - Patriation - United Kingdom - British North America Act - United Kingdom Parliament

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Sixty percent of the Quebec electorate voted against the proposition. Polls showed that the ovewhelming majority of English Quebecers voted against, and that French Quebecers were almost equally divided, with older voters less in favor, and younger voters more in favor. After his loss in the referendum, Lévesque went back to Ottawa to start negotiating a new constitution with Trudeau, his minister Jean Chrétien and the nine other provincial premiers. The negotiations quickly reached a stand-still. Then on the night on November 4 to November 5 1981, called in Quebec the 'Night of the Long Knives' (La Nuit des Longs Couteaux'), Jean Chrétien secretly met all the provincial premiers except René Lévesque to sign the document that would eventually become the new Canadian constitution. The next morning, they put Lévesque in front of the "fait accompli." Lévesque refused to sign the document, and returned to Quebec. In 1982, Trudeau had the new constitution approved by the UK, with Quebec's signature still missing (a situation that persists to this day).

Related Topics:
Jean Chrétien - René Lévesque

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In subsequent years, two attempts were made to gain Quebec's approval of the constitution. The first was the Meech Lake accord of 1987, which was finally abandoned in 1990 when the provinces of Manitoba and Newfoundland refused to vote on it. This led to the formation of the new Bloc Québécois party in Ottawa, led by Lucien Bouchard (formerly of the Progressive Conservative Party). The second attempt, the Charlottetown Accord of 1992, was rejected by 56.7% of all Canadians and 57% of Quebecers. This result caused a split in the Quebec Liberal Party that led to the formation of the new Action Démocratique (Democratic Action) party led by Mario Dumont and Jean Allaire.

Related Topics:
Manitoba - Newfoundland - Bloc Québécois - Ottawa - Lucien Bouchard - Charlottetown Accord - Quebec Liberal Party - Action Démocratique - Mario Dumont

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On October 30, 1995, with the Parti Québécois back in power, a second referendum on sovereignty took place. This time, it was rejected by a slim majority (50.6% NO to 49.4% YES).

Related Topics:
Parti Québécois - Second referendum

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The same night, Jacques Parizeau, then premier, declared that the loss was due to money and the ethnic vote. A media frenzy around these comments forced Parizeau to resign. Lucien Bouchard became Quebec's new premier in 1996.

Related Topics:
Jacques Parizeau - Lucien Bouchard

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After winning the next election, Bouchard retired from politics in 2001. Bernard Landry was then appointed leader of the Parti Québécois and premier of Quebec. In 2003, Landry lost the election to the Quebec Liberal Party and Jean Charest.

Related Topics:
Bernard Landry - Parti Québécois - Quebec Liberal Party - Jean Charest

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