Québec

Locator map for the Canadian province of Québec.

The most widely-used provincial flag is the Fleurdelysé of French-speaking Québec. It is based on the fleur-de-lis emblem commonly used in France, and also bears a white cross of St George.

Québec City, on the banks of the Lawrence River, is the capital of Québec province, Canada. Buildings in the city, such as this house, often show hints of French style, and about 80% of the province's inhabitants are of French ancestry.

French-style architecture can still be seen in the Québec countryside. Under the heavy snowfall that each winter brings, this house has steeply pitched roofs and deep porches, reflecting the nationality of the original settlers.

Street in Montreal, in the province of Québec, Canada. Montreal, the second-largest city in Canada, was founded as a base for explorers and traders in 1642. Since 1958, with the development of the modern city centre of skyscrapers, businesses, restaurants, and theatres, it has become one of the most vibrant and cosmopolitan cities in North America.

Montreal, the second-largest city in Canada, is a major seaport along the St Lawrence River and Seaway, which links the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean. The region was originally occupied by the Huron Indians, and was given the name Mount Royal by Jacques Cartier in 1535.

High-rise buildings, Montreal, in the province of Québec, Canada. A major seaport on the St Lawrence River and Seaway, Montreal is the second-largest city in Canada. It is one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the world, and is the second-largest French-speaking city in the world (after Paris).

Notre Dame Basilica, Montreal, Québec, Canada. When it opened in 1829, the Roman Catholic parish church of Notre Dame was the largest church building in North America. Built by the Sulpicians, the church was designed by New York architect James O'Donnell. Its blue and gold interior of polychrome, stained glass, and painted wood was redecorated in the 1870s by the Québec architect Victor Bourgeau, and the high altar was carved by French sculptor Henry Bouriche.

Province of eastern Canada; the largest province, second only in area among the nation's administrative subdivisions to the Northwest Territories. Québec is bordered on the northeast by Labrador, on the east by Newfoundland, on the southeast by New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and on the west and southwest by Ontario. On its southern border lie (west-east) the US states of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine; area 1,540,700 sq km/594,900 sq mi; population (1991) 6,811,800. The capital is Québec. Industries include mining (iron, copper, gold, zinc), fishing, and the production of paper, textiles, and maple syrup (70% of world output). Cereals and potatoes are grown.

Features Québec has an extensive western coastline on James and Hudson bays. To its north lie the Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay. Its southeastern seaboard is on the Gulf of St Lawrence, which contains its territories of L'Île d'Anticosti and the Îles de la Madeleine (Magdalen Islands). Except in the southeast, the province occupies part of the Canadian Shield, a domelike, largely forested expanse of hard Precambrian rock, on which lie thousands of lakes, and from which flow numerous rivers. The Shield areas of northern Québec have little arable land (the Clay Belt of the southwest, in the Abitibi region, is an exception), and are sparsely populated, with scattered mining towns and hydroelectric complexes, and Cree and Inuit settlements around the edges. The Nottaway, Eastmain, Grande Rivière, Great Whale (Grande Rivière de la Baleine) and other rivers drain the Shield west toward James and Hudson bays. The Caniapiscau-Mélèzes-Koksoak system drains north, to Ungava Bay. On the southeast, the Manicouagan, Outardes, Saguenay, and Saint-Maurice are among rivers that drain from the Shield into the St Lawrence River valley. The Laurentian Mountains (Laurentides), actually an edge of the Shield, are a popular resort area just northwest of Montréal. In the north, where the Torngat Mountains, on the Labrador border, comprise another edge of the Shield, Mount D'Iberville (1,588 m/5,210 ft) is the province's highest point. The Ottawa River rises on the Shield in the southwest and swings around its south edge; near Montréal it joins the St Lawrence. The latter, the most important river in Québec's (and Canada's) history, then drains northeast to the Atlantic, widening gradually into the Gulf of St Lawrence below (northeast of) Québec city. In the St Lawrence valley are fertile lowlands, mostly on the river's southern shore. Most of Québec's cities are in this valley. The Monteregian Hills, which rise from the lowlands near the confluence of the Ottawa and St Lawrence, include Mount Royal, around which the city of Montréal and its suburbs developed. Cap-Diamant, on which Québec City's Upper Town is built, represents the intersection of the Shield with the St Lawrence; this locality gave its name (Algonquian, ‘where the river narrows’) to the province. Along the south of the St Lawrence valley, extending through the Gaspé Peninsula, at the river's mouth, run a series of Appalachian mountain ranges, including the Notre Dame and Shickshock mountains; this is a region of small farming and industrial communities; Sherbrooke is the largest city.

Other towns and cities include Laval, Verdun, Hull, and Trois Rivières.

Economic activities The population of Québec, and hence most of its economic activity, is concentrated in the lowland region around the St Lawrence and Ottawa rivers. The Montréal area is one of Canada's major commercial, institutional, and industrial complexes. Among its products are transportation equipment, metals, textiles, chemicals, refined oil, processed foods, and sugar. Other centres of industrial production include the Outaouais Urban Community (including Hull and Gatineau) near Ottawa, the region around Trois-Rivières and Shawinigan, the Québec city-Lévis-Lauzon area, and the Chicoutimi-Jonquière district on the Saguenay and Lake St Jean. Elsewhere in the province, pulp and paper, lumber, and metals are among the leading manufactures. Mining takes place in the mountains of the Canadian Shield, at Rouyn-Noranda and Val-d'Or, and in the area east of the St Lawrence valley, at Asbestos and Thetford Mines, and at Murdochville in the Gaspé. In the north, hydroelectric power generation is a major industry. Hydro-Québec, the provincial power authority, has developed massive dams and diversions on the Grande Rivière (the James Bay project), Manicouagan, and other rivers.

History In the 16th century, when Europeans first arrived, the Algonquian and Huron peoples who inhabited the region were at war with the Iroquoians in the southwest. In 1534-35, Jacques Cartier founded villages at Stadacona (later Québec city) and at Hochelaga (later Montréal), near the Lachine Rapids, the head of navigation on the St Lawrence. The French first settled on Chaleur Bay and islands of the Gulf of St Lawrence. In 1608 ‘New France’ was established at Québec city by Samuel de Champlain (making this the oldest city in Canada). Settlement soon spread to Trois-Rivières and Ville Marie (Montréal). Early communities grew up around ‘Seigneuries’, semifeudal landholdings along the St Lawrence. Outside the agricultural settlements, the fur trade, especially in beaver pelts, played a vital role, tempting explorers to venture up the St Lawrence, Ottawa, Saguenay, and other routes into the interior.

French and British settlers in eastern North America first came into conflict through their trading involvement with rival American Indian groups, the French supporting the Algonquin and Hurons, the British the Iroquois. In the 18th century, this intensified into a direct struggle for supremacy in the region. During the French and Indian War (part of the Seven Years' War, 1756-63), the British captured French-held cities and took complete control of the province, which at that time extended to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Its name was changed from New France to Québec. Although the British passed laws protecting many rights of the French inhabitants, at the same time they established an economic hegemony that was to survive until the 1970s. For example, Montréal's North West Company, controlled by Scottish merchants, epitomized the concentration of wealth in the hands of English speakers. After the American Revolution, United Empire Loyalists settled in the Eastern Townships and the Gaspé, as well as in the western part of the province; in 1791, their concentration north of Lake Ontario led to the creation of Upper Canada (later Ontario). The remainder of the original Québec province - Lower Canada - eventually became today's province of Québec; its boundary with Upper Canada lay roughly along the Ottawa River. Following a rebellion in 1837 against British dominance by French speakers (‘Patriotes’) led by Louis-Joseph Papineau, the British passed an Act of Union that made Upper and Lower Canada into a single political structure (the Province of Canada) in 1841, in which Québec was known as Canada East. At Confederation, in 1867, Québec became a province in the new Dominion of Canada. Its territory increased considerably in 1912, when Nouveau-Québec (New Québec), comprising a large part of the Ungava region, was added to it from the Northwest Territories. There was no clear demarcation of Québec's border with Labrador until a British Privy Council ruling in 1927.

English Québecers, their capital at Montréal, remained dominant in the province's life until the 1960s, when the ‘Quiet Revolution’ awakened dormant French political and cultural forces. Despite the confederation's safeguards for Québec's French-derived civil law, customs, religion, and language, there was a groundswell of support for separatism. The independence movement was given a boost by French president Charles de Gaulle's exclamation ‘Vive le Québec libre/Long live free Québec’ on a visit to the province. To focus nationalist aspirations, the Parti Québécois was founded by René Lévesque in 1968. In parallel with these developments, militants representing an extreme separatist position, the Québec Liberation Front (Front de Libération du Québec; FLQ) undertook terrorist acts, such as a bombing campaign in the 1960s, and the assassination of the province's labour minister in 1970. In this climate, anglophone Québecers left the province in large numbers in the 1970s, and their businesses relocated with them, largely to Toronto.

The Parti Québécois won power in the province in 1976, but despite its strong lobbying for independence, a referendum in 1980 on ‘sovereignty-association’ (separation) was defeated. In 1982, when Canada severed its last legal ties with the UK, Québec opposed the new Constitution Act as denying the province's claim to an absolute veto over constitutional change. The right of veto was proposed for all provinces of Canada in 1987, but the agreement was not ratified by its 1990 deadline and support for Québec's independence grew. In 1989 the Parti Québécois was defeated in the province by the Liberal Party. However, support for independence remained strong; in 1995, another referendum only narrowly rejected separation, by 50.6% to 49.4%. Jacques Parizeau was succeeded as leader of the Parti Québécois by Lucien Bouchard in January 1996.

In August 1998, the supreme court ruled that if Québec votes to secede, it can only do so with the federal government's consent, and in December 1999, the federal government published a bill that would make secession even more difficult. In November 2000, the ruling Liberal Party, which opposes secession, was elected for a third term, and two months later Lucien Bouchard resigned as leader of Parti Québécois and premier of Québec after clashing with hardline separatists in the party. He was replaced by Bernard Landry.

Transport and tourism Tourism and recreational visits focus on such varied sites as the shrine at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, distant coastal communities such as Baie-Comeau, ski resorts like Mt Tremblant (in the Laurentians), the Forillon National Park in the Gaspé, the provincial Gatineau Park, and the historic Ile d'Orléans, as well as on the major cities.

People and culture The predominance of French culture in Québec has seen French established as the only official language since 1974, despite the fact that 17% of the province's inhabitants speak English. They live mostly in Montréal; outside of this cosmopolitan metropolis, there are few concentrations of English speakers. Further language laws enacted in the province in 1989 prohibit the use of English on street signs.

Echoing the calls by francophone Québécois for independence from the rest of Canada, the American Indian Cree people of Nouveau-Québec have voiced a desire to secede from the province.

The province's main academic centres are Montréal, Québec city, Sherbrooke, and Lennoxville.