II.

History

Although only about 10,000 Frenchmen immigrated to France’s Canadian colonies, for many decades French Canadians had one of the highest birthrates in the world. By 1901 French Canadians accounted for 30 percent of Canada’s population. French Canadian communities traditionally perceived themselves as highly distinct societies within Canada. Their Catholic religion, their French culture and language, and their sense of being a predominantly rural and agricultural minority set them apart from other Canadians.

The French Canadian Roman Catholic Church, headquartered in Québec City, served as the dominant institution in the lives of all French Canadians from the 1840s to the 1960s. The Catholic Church recruited large numbers of men and women to administer and staff its health, social welfare, and educational institutions. The Québec provincial government was controlled by church-educated, French Canadian professionals and a small but powerful group of Anglo-Canadian businessmen based in Montréal.

Following the end of World War II in 1945, leading Québécois intellectuals and political activists began to redefine their society. The French Canadian majority in Québec increasingly thought of itself as secular, predominantly urban, and middle-class. During the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, politicians and bureaucrats helped redesign the political, social, and educational institutions of Québec to reflect this new self-image.

Spurred on by their new identity, many Québécois abandoned the Catholic Church as their guiding institution in the 1960s. In its place, the emerging French-speaking middle class of state bureaucrats and state-supported businessmen created a dynamic civil society dedicated to government support for the economy and culture of Québec. Other Francophone communities across Canada also lessened their reliance on the Catholic Church. These communities turned to the federal and provincial governments for financial support to build modern educational and social institutions.

Beginning in the 1960s many Québécois became convinced that they constituted a separate people whose nation-state of Quebec was no longer part of Canada. The Parti Québécois, a political party endorsing independence for the province, became the champion of Québécois nationalism in the 1970s. Led by René Lévesque, the Parti Québécois was elected to govern Québec in 1976.

French Canadian communities throughout Canada began to stress the central importance of the French language in the preservation and expansion of their communities. In 1977 the Parti Québécois government instituted the Charter of the French Language, known as Bill 101, declaring French as the province’s only official language. Bill 101 required all children of immigrant families to attend French-language schools. It also created the Office de la langue française (Office of the French Language) to oversee the expansion of French as the language of the workplace in the private sector. This highly intrusive and controversial language legislation effectively achieved its main objectives. However, the laws alienated many English-speakers and immigrant communities. As the impact of the language laws became apparent and the economy faltered, many English-speakers chose to leave the province. In 1980 the Parti Québécois held a public referendum on independence for the province. Although Québec voters chose to remain with the Canadian federation, feelings continued to run high on both sides of the debate.

Responding to the plight of linguistic minorities—English-speakers in Québec and French-speakers elsewhere in Canada—the federal government implemented a bilingual policy for all of its departments and government-controlled corporations. The Constitution Act of 1982, which included a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, gave both the French and English languages official status. It also established the right of primary and secondary school students from both official linguistic minorities to be educated in their own language. All English-speaking provinces now offer a variety of French-language educational systems controlled by French-speaking parents.

Proposed constitutional amendments in the Meech Lake Accord of 1987 and the Charlottetown Accord of 1992—that would have recognized Québec as a distinct society—were defeated by Canadian voters. The failure of these amendments led to a revival of the separatist movement among French Canadians. In 1995 another referendum on Québec sovereignty failed by an extremely close margin, 50.6 percent opposed and 49.4 percent voted in favor.