Encyclopedia
Quebec, or
Québec in
French, In 1898, the Canadian Parliament passed the first
Quebec Boundary Extension Act that expanded the provincial boundaries northward to include the lands of the aboriginal
Cree. This was followed by the addition of the
District of Ungava through the
Quebec Boundaries Extension Act of 1912 that added the northernmost lands of the aboriginal
Inuit to create the modern Province of Quebec.
The most populated region is the
St. 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 mountain range, and to the east are the
Appalachian Mountains which extend into the Eastern Townships and Gaspésie regions. Quebec's highest mountain is Mont D'Iberville, which is located on the border with
Newfoundland and Labrador in the northeastern part of the province. The
Gaspé Peninsula juts into the
Gulf of St. Lawrence to the east.
The northern region of
Nunavik is subarctic or
arctic and is mostly inhabited by
Inuit. A major
hydro-electric project is found on the La Grande and Eastmain rivers in the James Bay region and on the
Manicouagan River, north of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Climate
Quebec has three main climate regions. Southern and western Quebec, including most of the major population centres, have a humid continental climate with warm, humid summers and long, cold winters. The main climatic influences are from western and northern
Canada which move eastward and from the southern and central
United States that move northward. Due to the influence of both storm systems from the core of
North America and the
Atlantic Ocean, precipitation is abundant throughout the year, with most areas receiving more than 1,000 mm of precipitation, including over 300 cm of snow in many areas. Severe summer weather are far less common than in southern
Ontario, although they occasionally occur.
Most of central Quebec has a subarctic climate . Winters here are long and among the coldest in eastern Canada, while summers are warm but very short due to the higher latitude and the greater influence of
Arctic air masses. Precipitation is also somewhat less than farther south, except at some of the higher elevations.
The northern regions of Quebec have an arctic climate , with very cold winters and short, much cooler summers. The primary influences here are the
Arctic Ocean currents and continental air masses from the High Arctic.
Ten largest municipalities by population
History
First Nations: Before 1500
Algonkian,
Iroquoian and Inuit groups were the first peoples to populate what is now Quebec. Their lifestyles and cultures reflected the land on which they lived. Seven Algonkian groups lived nomadic lives based on hunting, gathering, and fishing in the rugged terrain of the Canadian Shield: and Appalachian Mountains .
St. Lawrence Iroquoians lived more settled lives, planting squash and maize in the fertile soils of St. Lawrence Valley. The Inuit continue to fish, whale, and seal in the harsh Arctic climate along the coasts of Hudson and Ungava Bay. These peoples traded fur and food, and sometimes warred with each other.
The name "Quebec", which comes from an Algonquin word meaning "strait" or "narrowing", originally meant the narrowing of the St. Lawrence River off what is currently Quebec City. There have been variations in spelling of the name:
- Quebecq — Levasseur, 1601
- Kébec — Lescarbot, 1609
- Québec — Champlain, 1613
Early European exploration: 1000–1600
Viking longboats from
Scandinavia carried the first
Europeans to the Arctic shores of the Ungava Peninsula around 1000 CE.
Basque whalers and fishermen traded furs with Saguenay natives throughout the 1500s.
The first French explorer to reach Quebec was
Jacques Cartier, who planted a cross either in Gaspé in 1534 or at Old Fort Bay on the Lower North Shore. He sailed into the
St. Lawrence River in 1535 and established an ill-fated colony near present-day Quebec City at the site of Stadacona, a St. Lawrence Iroquoian village.
Samuel de Champlain was part of a 1603 expedition from France that traveled into the
St. Lawrence River. In 1608, he returned as head of an exploration party and founded
Quebec City with the intention of making the area part of the
French colonial empire. Champlain's
Habitation de Quebec, built as a permanent fur trading outpost, was where he would forge a trading, and ultimately a
military alliance, with the Algonquin and Huron nations. Natives traded their furs for many French goods such as metal objects, guns, alcohol, and clothing.
Helen Desportes, born July 7, 1620, to French habitants Pierre Desportes and his wife Françoise Langlois, was the first child of European descent born in Quebec.
From Quebec,
Voyageurs,
Coureurs des bois, and Catholic missionaries used river
canoes to explore the interior of the North American continent, establishing fur trading forts on the
Great Lakes ,
Hudson Bay ,
Ohio and
Mississippi Rivers , as well as the
Prairies and
Missouri River .
After 1627, King
Louis XIII of France introduced the seigneurial system and forbade settlement in
New France by anyone other than
Roman Catholics. Sulpician and
Jesuit clerics founded missions in Trois Rivières and Montréal or Ville-Marie to convert
New France's Huron and
Algonkian allies to Catholicism. The seigneurial system of governing New France also encouraged immigration from the motherland.
New France became a Royal Province in 1663 under King
Louis XIV of France with a Sovereign Council that included intendant
Jean Talon. This ushered in a golden era of
settlement and colonization in New France, including the arrival of les "Filles du Roi". The population would grow from about 3,000 to 60,000 people between 1666 and 1760. Colonists built farms on the banks of St. Lawrence River and called themselves "Canadiens" or "
Habitants". The colony's total population was limited, however, by a winter climate significantly harsher than that found in France; by the spread of diseases; and by the refusal of the French crown to allow
Huguenots, or French Protestants, to settle. The population of New France lagged far behind that of the
13 Colonies to the south, leaving it vulnerable to attack.
Fall of New France
In 1753 France began building a series of forts in the British
Ohio Country. They refused to leave after being notified by the British Governor and in 1754
George Washington launched an attack on the French
Fort Duquesne in the
Ohio Valley in an attempt to enforce the British claim to the territory. This frontier battle set the stage for the
French and Indian War in North America. By 1756, France and Britain were battling the
Seven Years' War worldwide. In 1758, the
British mounted an attack on
New France by sea and took the French fort at
Louisbourg.
On 13 September 1759, General
James Wolfe defeated General Montcalm on the
Plains of Abraham outside Quebec City. France ceded its
North American possessions to
Great Britain through the Treaty of Paris . By the
British Royal Proclamation of 1763, Canada was renamed the Province of Quebec.
In 1774, fearful that the French-speaking population of Quebec would side with the rebels of the
Thirteen Colonies to the south, the British Parliament passed the Quebec Act giving recognition to French law, Catholic religion and French language in the colony; before that Catholics had been excluded from public office and recruitment of priests and brothers forbidden, effectively shutting down Quebec's schools and colleges. The first British policy of assimilation was deemed a failure. Both the petitions and demands of the Canadiens' élites, and Governor Guy Carleton, played an important part in convincing London of dropping the assimilation scheme, but the looming American revolt was certainly a factor. By the Quebec Act, the Quebec people obtained their first Charter of rights. That paved the way to later official recognition of the
French language and
French culture. The Act allowed
Canadiens to maintain French civil law and sanctioned the freedom of religious choice, allowing the
Roman Catholic Church to remain. It also restored the
Ohio Valley to Quebec, reserving the territory for the fur trade.
The act, designed to placate one North American colony, had the opposite effect among its neighbors to the south. The Quebec Act was among the
Intolerable Acts that infuriated
American colonists, who launched the
American Revolution. A 1775 invasion by the American
Continental Army met with early success, but was later repelled at Quebec City. However, the
American Revolutionary War was ultimately successful in winning the independence of the Thirteen Colonies. With the Treaty of Paris , Quebec would cede its territory south of the
Great Lakes to the new United States of America.
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. They made a Declaration of rights with equality for all citizens without discrimination, and a Declaration of Independence in 1838. 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, east of
Montreal.
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. The final report recommended that the population of Lower Canada be assimilated. Following Durham's Report, the British government merged the two colonial provinces into one Province of Canada in 1841. However, the union proved contentious. Reformers in both Canada West and Canada East worked to repeal restrictions on the use of the French language. The two colonies remained distinct in administration, election, and law. In 1849, Baldwin and LaFontaine, allies and leaders of the Reformist party, obtained the grant for responsible government and returned the French language to legal status.
Canadian Confederation
In the 1860s, the delegates from the colonies of British North America 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 divided into its two previous parts as the provinces of
Ontario and Quebec .
New Brunswick and
Nova Scotia joined Ontario and Quebec in the new Dominion of Canada.
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 liberals formed an intellectual opposition to Duplessis's 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 Anglo supremacy in the Quebec economy, the decline of the
Roman Catholic Church's influence, the nationalization of
hydro-electric companies under
Hydro-Québec and the emergence of a separatist movement under former Liberal minister
René Lévesque.
The Quiet Revolution has been described by some people as the time when everyone stopped going to church; so that by the end of 1963 the Catholic churches were virtually empty. Whether this is a factual comment or simply an expression of the felt change that Quebec was going through at the time, it provides a telling commentary to the widespread change that the people in Quebec underwent during the Quiet Revolution.
Beginning in 1963, a
terrorist group that became known as the Front de libération du Québec launched a decade of bombings, robberies and attacks on government offices, resulting in at least five deaths. In 1970, their activities culminated in events referred to as the October 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 will have to face reality; 100,000 revolutionary workers, armed and organized."
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 , 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 throughout Canada 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. The crisis ended after a few weeks after the death of Pierre Laporte at the hands of his captors. The fallout of the crisis marked the zenith and twilight of the FLQ which lost membership and public support.
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.
The Parti Québécois and constitutional crisis
Lévesque and his party had run in the 1970 and 1973 Quebec elections under a platform of separating Quebec from the rest of Canada. The party failed to win control of Quebec's National Assembly both times — though its share of the vote increased from 23% to 30% — and Lévesque himself was defeated both times in the riding he contested. In the 1976 election, he softened his message by promising a referendum on
sovereignty-association rather than outright separation, by which Quebec would have independence in most government functions but share some other ones, such as a common currency, with Canada. On November 15, 1976, Lévesque and the Parti Québécois won control of the provincial government for the first time. 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. The existing constitutional document, the British North America Act, could only be amended by the
United Kingdom Parliament upon a request by the Canadian parliament.
Sixty percent of the Quebec electorate voted against the proposition. Polls showed that the overwhelming majority of English and immigrant Quebecers voted against, and that French Quebecers were
