QUEBEC

French Qubec, city and port, seat of Qubec region and capital of Quebec province, Canada. It lies at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and Saint-Charles rivers, about 150 miles (240 km) northeast of Montreal. The first European to visit the area was Jacques Cartier, a French explorer, who in 1535 found on the site the Huron Indian village of Stadacona. In 1608 Samuel de Champlain installed the first permanent base in Canada at Quebec, which grew as a fur-trading settlement. In 1629 Quebec was captured by the British, who held it until 1632, when the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye restored Quebec to France. The colony was then able to develop rapidly. In 1690 the fleet of Sir William Phipps, governor of Massachusetts, attempted to take Quebec but was beaten back with troops led by its governor, the Count de Frontenac. In 1711 a second attempt to take the city also failed when a British armada crashed on the reefs of the St. Lawrence before reaching Quebec. The city fell to the British in 1759 and was ceded to Great Britain by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. During the U.S. War of Independence, the Americans, under Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold, failed in an attempt to capture the city. In 1791 Quebec was designated as the provincial capital of Lower Canada, which later became the province of Quebec. It was incorporated in 1832 and was given its actual charter in 1840. In 1864 Quebec was the seat of the conference of British North American colonies to plan the confederation of Canada. During World War II U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill twice met in Quebec to plan the invasion of Europe. Although Quebec is a major port of Canada, the largest employers in the city are the service and administrative industries. The leading manufactures include newsprint, milled grain, cigarettes, and garments; shipbuilding and tourism are also important. The majority of the residents of Quebec are Roman Catholic and French speaking. The city has a dual school systemone for Roman Catholics and one for Protestants; instruction is in French and English, respectively. Quebec's cultural life is concentrated on Laval University and its affiliated teaching institutions. Also notable are the concert hall, the Grand Thtre, and the numerous museums and libraries throughout the city. The principal historical buildings are religious in function, many dating from the 17th century. On the Place Royale stands the modest Church of Notre-Dame des Victoires (1688). Other old buildings include the Ursuline monastery, the seminary, the Anglican cathedral (the first such in Canada), and the Catholic basilica, where many of the bishops of Quebec are buried. Sports are very popular, especially hockey, baseball, Canadian football, golf, and skiing in the many centres in the Laurentian Mountains only a few miles from the city. The Mont Sainte-Anne centre has been the scene of World Cup skiing tournaments. Among the principal local events are the three-week-long winter carnival ending on the night of Mardi Gras and the Provincial Exhibition of late August. Pop. (1991) city, 167,517; (1986) metropolitan area, 603,267. The Chteau Frontenac overlooking Place Royale, Quebec city. Dating to the 17th century, French Qubec, 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. French Qubec, an eastern province of Canada. It is bounded by the Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay to the north, Newfoundland to the east, the Gulf of St. Lawrence and New Brunswick to the southeast, the United States to the south, and Ontario and Hudson Bay to the west. Its capital, Quebec city, is Canada's oldest city, and Montreal is one of the largest cities in the country. The original inhabitants of Quebec were members of three Indian peoples: the nomadic Algonquins and Montagnais, who lived by hunting and fishing north of the St. Lawrence River, and the Cree, who lived in the southwestern part of the territory. Inuit (Eskimo) peoples later settled in the north around Hudson Bay, where they lived mainly by fishing and hunting. Jacques Cartier, landing at Gasp in 1534, claimed the region for France, but not until 1608, when Samuel de Champlain built the first European structure at the spot the Indians called Quebec (site of modern Quebec city), did the settlement of the colony of New France begin. Establishing friendly relations with the Algonquins, who traded beaver pelts to them, the French became embroiled in the Algonquins' wars with their southern neighbours, the Iroquois. The English, settled to the south, sided with the Iroquois, and the conflict evolved into the French-British colonial struggle for mastery in North America culminating in the French and Indian War. French control of Quebec effectively ended after the successful British attack by General James Wolfe on Quebec city in 1759. The proclamation of 1763 ceded the colony to Britain, but the French settlers remained. A large influx of British Loyalists came to Canada from the south during the American Revolution and settled west of the French, across the Ottawa River in what is now Ontario, establishing the basic geographic dichotomy between the French and English. In 1791 Canada was split into Lower Canada (Quebec) and Upper Canada (the future Ontario), roughly following the Ottawa River boundary. Although throughout the province the rural population remained overwhelmingly French, Montreal became the domain of English merchants who were bitterly anti-French. These English merchants tried in 1822 to obtain an Act of Union that would give the English-speaking population a majority in the country as a whole. The reaction of the French-Canadians to this attempt at domination prepared the way for the 1837 rebellion led by Louis-Joseph Papineau. The rebellion was suppressed. A new Act of Union that was passed in 1841 joined the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, and in 1867 the British North American Act created the confederation of Canada by the federation of the four provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario. French-Canadian nationalism became a permanent feature of Canadian as well as Quebec politics. Quebec is a sort of land's end, almost separated from the rest of Canada by Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait. It can be divided into three major geographic areas that reflect its main geologic structure: the Canadian, or Laurentian, Shield; the populated lowlands of the St. Lawrence Plain; and the Appalachians. The sparsely populated and mineral-rich Canadian Shield covers about 80 percent of Quebec. This shield is composed of three main subdivisions: the tree-covered Laurentians, which have become a tourist area; the taiga, a region of stunted trees; and the tundra, which is covered with permafrost. The freshwater area of Quebec amounts to some 71,000 square miles (183,890 square km). Even outside the permafrost regions, Quebec's climate is often severely cold. The period that snow remains on the ground varies from 12 or 13 weeks on the Montreal plain to 23 weeks along the northern coast of the St. Lawrence. The majority of Quebec's population are of French descent. A low birth rate among French-Canadians, coupled with a high migration rate out of Quebec, have contributed to a slight relative decline in the population. The other nationalities represented are English and Irish, and there are also a growing number of Italians. Nearly 62,000 people identify themselves as Indian or Inuit. Mining, hydroelectric power, and forestry are the main industries. Until the 1940s agriculture was the largest sector but has since been exceeded by industry. Quebec's greatest economic potential lies with the Canadian Shield, containing one of the world's largest reserves of minerals, including copper, gold, zinc, iron, and asbestos. The government of Quebec created several corporations to survey mineral resources and stimulate their exploitation in terms of both extraction and manufacturing. Only a small part of Quebec's ore, however, is processed in the province. All electric power was nationalized in 1963, and the resulting company, Hydro-Qubec, is the largest producer of electricity in Canada. Quebec processes much of its annual forest harvest, which is second only to that of British Columbia in Canada, with more than 50 pulp and paper plants. Complete integration in the general transportation system of Canada and North America has promoted Quebec's economic development. The French-Canadian movement for national identity has asserted itself in terms of cultural and political struggle. Under the leadership of such men as Papineau, Louis Lafontaine, Henri Bourassa, and the abb Lionel Groulx, the province evolved its special vocation as the political home of French-Canadians, and the government assumed responsibility for the defense of French culture. Premiers Maurice Duplessis and Jean Lesage, during their administrations, politically promoted French-Canadian nationalism. The Front de Libration du Qubec was responsible for numerous acts of violence in the 1960s and '70s, including the assassination of Pierre LaPorte, the labour minister of Quebec in 1970. In 1968 Ren Lvesque defected from Lesage's Liberal Party and formed the Parti Qubcois, advocating independence for Quebec. Lvesque's party won the elections in 1976, and as premier he sponsored a legislative program to promote the use of the French language and curtail the use of English in government and commerce. Lvesque's independence program, however, was defeated in a referendum in 1980; he was also the only premier to oppose the Constitution Act of 1982, but the Quebec Supreme Court denied his request for power to veto it. Nevertheless, the Parti Qubcois remained in power until its defeat by the Liberals in the 1985 provincial elections, held after Lvesque's retirement. By 1990 Quebec nationalism was again on the rise. The Quebec provincial government consists of a unicameral National Assembly, elected by universal adult (age 18 and older) suffrage to a four-year term. The leader of the majority party in the assembly becomes the premier and selects the Executive Council. The lieutenant governor is selected by Canada's governor-general to represent the monarch. Judges are appointed by the federal government, but Quebec's civil law follows the French continental model. The province has its own police force, La Srte du Qubec. Primary and secondary education through grade 11 is free and compulsory; classes are taught in either French or English in separate schools. Quebec has a collegiate program divided into a two-year general-education course (required for university enrollment) and a three-year professional, technical, and vocational course. The French-language public University of Quebec in Montreal has several campuses, including those at Chicoutimi, Trois-Rivires, Rouyn, Hull, and Rimouski; it also administers research institutes and continuing-education schools as well as a television extension program. The Ministry of Cultural Affairs, created in 1961, provides financial assistance to museums and theatrical, ballet, and musical companies and to book publishing. Canada's National Theatre School, located in Montreal, promotes both traditional and modern French, English, and bilingual theatre, and Quebec city is a centre for the film industry. Quebec is renowned for folk singing (chansons) that has its roots in 17th-century New France. Famous chansonniers have included Flix Leclerc and Gilles Vigneault. Quebec's writers have included French-language novelists Anne Hbert, Roger Fournier, and Yves Thriault. English-language writers have included Mordecai Richler, Leonard Cohen, and Hugh MacLennan. Quebec's French painters have adopted Impressionism to express political and cultural themes. Quebec is also noted for wood carving, both Inuit and French traditional, the latter dating back to 17th-century artisans' efforts to decorate church interiors. The province is renowned for sportsnotably hockey, Canadian football, and baseballall of which have large popular followings. Area 594,860 square miles (1,540,680 square km). Pop. (1991) 6,895,963.