Quebec

Administrative division of Canada
Also known as Province du Québec
Total area: 1,540,680 square kilometres (594,860 square miles)
Population: 6,895,963 (1991)
 

Quebec, province in eastern Canada, bordered on the north by Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay; on the east by Labrador (a part of Newfoundland), the Strait of Belle Isle, and the Gulf of St Lawrence; on the south by New Brunswick, Ontario, and the American states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York; and on the west by Ontario, James Bay, and Hudson Bay. The Ottawa River forms part of the boundary with Ontario.

Quebec became part of the Canadian Confederation on July 1, 1867, as one of the four original provinces. The great majority of Quebec's inhabitants today use French as their first language. The name of the province is derived from an Algonquian term for "place where the river narrows", referring to the St Lawrence River near the site of present-day Quebec City, the provincial capital.
 

Land and Resources

Quebec is the largest of the Canadian provinces. Its vast area of 1,540,680 sq km (594,858 sq mi) accounts for 15.5 per cent of Canada's total area and includes 183,890 sq km (71,000 sq mi) of inland freshwater surface. The province, which includes a wide range of physical landscapes, vegetation zones, and climates, has a maximum northern to southern extent of about 1,930 km (1,200 mi) and a maximum eastern to western distance of about 1,610 km (1,000 mi).
Elevations range from sea level to 1,622 m (5,322 ft), atop Mont D'Iberville in the Torngat Mountains in the north-east. Anticosti Island and the Magdalen Islands, all in the Gulf of St Lawrence, are part of Quebec, which has a tidal shoreline of some 13,775 km (8,560 mi).
 

Physical Geography

Quebec can be divided into three contrasting geographical regions. These are a vast section of the Canadian Shield, the Appalachian Region, and the St Lawrence Lowland. The Canadian Shield, which makes up about 90 per cent of Quebec, is mostly composed of ancient fractured rocks of granite and gneiss. The shield is generally flat and lake-studded. The heavily dissected southern part forms a major subdivision called the Laurentian Mountains, which rises to 968 m (3,176 ft) atop Mont-Tremblant. The uniformity of the shield also is interrupted by belts of slates and quartzites, such as those found in the Labrador Trough, a narrow series of low eroded ridges running south from Ungava Bay. Because of low temperatures, permafrost-permanently frozen ground-underlies the northern quarter of the shield area in Quebec.

The Appalachian Region, which is an extension of the Appalachian Mountains of the United States, is mostly made up of parallel ridges of folded and eroded sedimentary rocks. The Notre Dame Mountains form the chief mountain system of the region. Glacial sands and clays fill the deep valleys between the ridges. Mount Jacques-Cartier (1,268 m/4,160 ft), on the Gaspé Peninsula, is the highest point in the Appalachian Region.

Between the Canadian Shield and the Appalachian Region and mostly straddling the St Lawrence River is the narrow St Lawrence Lowland. This is underlaid by limestone and covered by marine clays and glacial sands. Around Montreal, the flat lowlands are interrupted by the Monteregian Hills, a series of isolated peaks, the highest being Brome Mountain (533 m/1,749 ft).

Quebec's network of rivers and lakes may be grouped into two major drainage systems, one trending east via the St Lawrence to the Atlantic Ocean and the other west, north, and east into James Bay, Hudson Bay, and Ungava Bay. Ranked among the world's great rivers, the St Lawrence has its source west of the Great Lakes and is 3,058 km (1,900 mi) long. The Canadian Shield region is drained west into Hudson and James bays. The Canadian Shield region contains many lakes, the largest of which include Lake Mistassini, Réservoir Gouin, Lac à l'Eau Claire, Lac Bienville, and Lac Saint-Jean.
 

Climate

The climate of Quebec is characterized by striking regional variations, by long, cold winters and short, cool summers, and by ample year-round precipitation. The northern Canadian Shield region has an arctic climate, and a more moderate humid continental climate dominates the Laurentian Highlands, the Appalachian Region, and the St Lawrence Lowland. Only the last-named area is warm enough for extensive agriculture. Fort-Chimo, in the north, has a mean January temperature of about -23° C (-10° F) and a mean July temperature of about 11° C (52° F); Montreal, in the south, has an average January temperature of about -9° C (16° F) and an average July temperature of about 22° C (72° F). As a rule, annual precipitation in Quebec increases towards the south. Fort-Chimo receives about 484 mm (19 in) per year, and Montreal about 1,000 mm (39 in).
 

Plants and Animals

The regional patterns of vegetation in Quebec correspond closely to the main climate zones. The Ungava Peninsula, in the north, is covered by tundra, with low bushes, mosses, and lichens. A broad transition zone of tundra and open coniferous woodland covers the subarctic northern half of the central plateau of the Canadian Shield region. Black and white spruce and tamarack are the main species in this area. Farther south are great forests composed of such trees as spruce, balsam fir, hemlock, and jack pine. Along with the conifers, hardwoods are found in the southern part of the Laurentian Mountains and are dominant in the warmer St Lawrence Lowland and the Appalachian Region. The main hardwood species are maple, beech, oak, elm, poplar, aspen, and birch. Altogether, forest covers about 69 per cent of Quebec's land area. The province has many other plants, including such flowering species as aster, buttercup, goldenrod, trillium, and violet.

Quebec contains a rich variety of wildlife. In the far north, seal, polar bear, arctic fox are common. In the coniferous woodlands and forests, wolf, black bear, caribou, deer, and moose are numerous. Large numbers of beaver, marten, muskrat, otter, and mink also live in the province. There are game birds, such as duck, goose, and partridge, and freshwater fish, such as trout, pickerel, pike, and bass. salt-water fish such as cod, herring, and redfish form the basis for commercial fisheries.
 

Products and Industries

Manufacturing leads the economic sector in Quebec, and service industries, agriculture, mining, and tourism are also important. The province typically ranks fourth in annual Canadian mineral production, behind Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia, contributing about 8 per cent of the total value of the nation's yearly mining output. Metallic minerals account for two-thirds of Quebec's annual production, with iron ore, gold, copper, and zinc predominating. Quebec is a world leader in the production of asbestos, and it is also important in the world market for the production of mineral fuels.

More than 75 per cent of Quebec farmers' income is derived from sales of livestock and livestock products, with the rest from the sale of crops. Dairying is the leading agricultural activity, followed by the production of hogs, poultry, beef cattle, and eggs. Leading crops include corn, potatoes, hay, oats, barley, wheat, sugar beet, tobacco, apples, strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. Quebec is the leading Canadian producer of maple syrup and maple sugar. About three-quarters of the forest harvest is made up of softwoods, which are used principally to make paper and timber plants. Fishing is only locally important in the Gaspé Peninsula and the Magdalen Islands; the catch being made up of cod, herring, redfish, lobster, crab, and shrimp. Quebecois produce about 248,000 fur pelts each year, made up principally of beaver, marten, muskrat, otter, fox, and seal.

Quebec is the leading manufacturing province of Canada after Ontario. The province's chief manufactures include processed food, paper and paper products, textiles and clothing, primary metals, transport equipment, chemicals, electrical and electronic equipment, fabricated metal items, refined petroleum, printed materials, and wood products.
 

Population

According to the 1991 census, Quebec had 6,895,963 inhabitants, an increase of 5.6 per cent over 1986. The overall population density in 1991 was about 4 people per sq km (12 per sq mi). French was the sole native language of about 81 per cent of the people; about 9 per cent had English as their only native language. More than 75,000 Native Americans lived in the province, as did 11,400 Métis.
 

Education and Cultural Institutions

The first schools in Quebec were established by missionaries in the early 17th century. In 1846 the legislature provided for two separate school systems under Church control, one for Roman Catholics and the other for Protestants. Both systems were headed by the superintendent of education. In 1964 the provincial government merged the two systems and created a ministry of education. In 1967 collèges d'enseignement general et professional (general and professional colleges), similar to United States junior colleges, replaced many classical colleges, normal schools, schools of nursing, and technical schools. Most students must attend a collège before entering a university. In 1992 and 1993 Quebec had approximately 2,940 public elementary and secondary schools with a combined enrolment of 1,149,600 students. The oldest university in Quebec is Laval University, near Quebec City, which was founded as a seminary in 1663 and established as a university in 1852. The province has seven universities. Four of these-Laval, the University of Montreal, the University of Sherbrooke (1954), and the University of Quebec (1968)-use French, and three-McGill University and Concordia University (1974), in Montreal, and Bishop's University (1843), in Lennoxville-use English. Total annual enrolment in Quebec's 97 postsecondary institutions was about 300,700 students in the early 1990s.

Quebec contains a number of excellent museums and other cultural facilities, many of which are located in Montreal and Quebec City. Montreal is the home of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; the McCord Museum, with exhibits dealing with Canadian history and art; and the Museum of Contemporary Art. In Quebec City are the Museum of Quebec, displaying paintings and sculpture, and Musée de la Civilisation (1988), designed by Israeli architect Moshe Safdie. Also of note is the Canadian Museum of Civilization, in Hull.
 

Places of Interest

Quebec has a number of noteworthy historical places. In Quebec City are National Battlefields Park, which contains the site of the decisive British victory over the French in 1759, and Cartier-Brébeuf Park, which includes the area where the French explorer Jacques Cartier spent the winter of 1535 and 1536. Fort Chambly National Historic Site in Chambly encompasses the remains of a stone fort built by the French from 1709 to 1711, and Fort Lennox National Historic Site on Île-aux-Noix in the Richelieu River includes the ruins of a 19th-century British fort and naval station. Les Forges du Saint-Maurice National Historic Site in Trois-Rivières contains remains of Canada's first iron-making industry, established in 1729. Also of historical interest is the childhood home in Laurentides of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who was the first French-Canadian prime minister of Canada.
 

Sports and Recreation

Quebec's mountains, parks, long coastline, lakes, and rivers provide ideal conditions for hiking, camping, mountain climbing, hunting, fishing, swimming, golfing, and boating, as well as skiing, ice hockey, and other winter sports. A number of popular ski resorts are situated in the Laurentian Highlands. Three professional sports teams are located in Quebec-two ice hockey and one baseball.
 

Government and Politics

Quebec has a parliamentary form of government. The chief executive of Quebec is a lieutenant-governor, who is appointed by the Canadian governor-general in council to serve a term of five years. The lieutenant-governor holds a position that is mostly honorary. The premier, typically the leader of the majority party in the Quebec legislature, is the actual head of the provincial government and presides over the executive council (cabinet). Executive councillors are chosen by the premier from among the members of the legislature. The unicameral Quebec legislature, called the National Assembly, is made up of 125 members, including the premier and other members of the executive council. Legislators are popularly elected to a term of up to five years. Quebec had a bicameral legislature until 1968. Quebec is represented in the Canadian Parliament by 24 senators, appointed by the Canadian governor-general in council, and by 75 members of the House of Commons, popularly elected to terms of up to five years.
 

History

The region known today as Quebec was first occupied by the Algonquian, Huron, and Iroquois peoples. In 1534 the French explorer Jacques Cartier landed on the Gaspé Peninsula and claimed the land for France. The following year he sailed up the St Lawrence River, where he visited the large aboriginal villages of Stadacona and Hochelaga.

Colonization of New France, as the region was called, was begun by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain. In 1608 he founded a European settlement at Stadacona, which later became Quebec City. Colonization was slow because the French were more interested in the profitable fur trade with the indigenous people than in settling down to farm. By 1628 the colony had only 76 people. In France, however, in 1627, Cardinal Richelieu, minister of Louis XIII, had organized the Company of One Hundred Associates, a joint-stock company empowered to grant seigneuries (large tracts of land) to seigneurs (men who would find suitable French colonists to settle it). The first grant was made in 1634. Settlement increased; Trois-Rivières was founded in 1634 and Montreal, on the site of Hochelaga, in 1642, both for the fur trade. Roman Catholic religious orders set strict moral standards for the colonists and converted some of the natives.

In 1663 Jean-Baptiste Colbert, chief minister of Louis XIV, made New France a royal colony rather than a private one. Under the seigneurial system the St Lawrence Valley rapidly became a rich agricultural area for grain, tobacco, hemp, and flax. The seigneuries were subdivided into narrow lots extending back from the river, an important means of transport in a country of few roads. In 1683 France ended its policy of colonial encouragement, which it saw as a drain on French population and a threat to French commerce.

During the French and Indian War (1754-1763) between the French and British for supremacy in North America, New France was a battleground. The struggle culminated in the siege and capture of Quebec City by the British in 1759. The French forces in Montreal surrendered in 1760, and by the Treaty of Paris (1763) France ceded the colony of New France, or Quebec, to Britain.

To govern its new subjects, Britain passed the Quebec Act (1774), which granted certain privileges to the Roman Catholic Church, guaranteed the continued use of French, and established French civil law and English criminal law. It also extended the boundaries of Quebec to include lands now occupied by Ontario and by the American states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. During the American War of Independence, American forces invaded Quebec in 1775 but were driven out the next year. Although its southern portions became US territory in 1783, Quebec remained a British colony. It received United Empire Loyalists, who settled along the upper St Lawrence.

The Constitutional Act of 1791 divided Quebec along the Ottawa River into Lower Canada (present-day Quebec), which was mostly French, and Upper Canada (present-day Ontario), which was mostly English. The act also granted Lower Canada a colonial legislature, although executive power remained in the hands of a British governor-general. During the War of 1812 (1812-1815) an invasion from the United States was repulsed by British troops and Quebec militia.
Some Lower Canadians, both French-speaking and English-speaking, dissatisfied by their lack of autonomy and resentful of the rigid, mainly English, political establishment, rebelled in 1837 and 1838. They were suppressed by British troops. In an effort to subdue them the British Parliament passed the Act of Union (1841), which united Upper and Lower Canada into a single province with a joint legislature. By 1849 the province had achieved self-government in internal affairs, but its equally balanced sections, English Upper Canada and French Lower Canada, were in political deadlock. To resolve the problem provincial leaders from both sections, supported by Britain, urged a union of all British colonies in North America. The British North America Act (1867) created the Dominion of Canada, a federation of which Quebec was a constituent province. In 1912 its borders were extended north to include the huge, mineral-rich wilderness of Ungava.

Quebec's government was dominated until 1897 by the Conservative party. From 1897 to 1936 it was controlled by the Liberals, who promoted industrialization and investment in addition to the traditional occupations of agriculture and the professions. From 1936 to 1960, except for one Liberal interlude (1939-1944), Quebec was ruled by a new party, the Union Nationale, made up of Progressive Conservatives and dissident Liberals. During the 1960s many Québécois became increasingly concerned about the influence of the federal government on provincial affairs. French-speaking Québécois (about 80 per cent of the population) resented the use of English as the language of big business, mostly under non-French-Canadian control. They also feared the loss of their French culture. The provincial government secularized French education and encouraged industrial growth in the Revolution Tranquille (Quiet Revolution); support increased for an independent Quebec. Less quietly, extremists in the small Quebec Liberation Front (FLQ) planted bombs in Montreal. The separatists received support in 1967, when visiting President Charles de Gaulle of France used their motto, "Vive le Québec libre" ("Long live free Quebec"). Moderates joined the Parti Québécois, founded in 1968 by former Liberal minister René Lévesque, favouring a sovereign Quebec in economic association with Canada. A resurgence of FLQ terrorism, including a kidnapping in 1970, led to the federal government's assumption of emergency powers.

In the elections of 1970 and 1973 the Liberals under Robert Bourassa defeated the Union Nationale and the PQ largely by opposing separatism. The PQ then won an unexpected victory in 1976, making the incompetence of the Bourassa government, rather than separatism, the election issue. In 1977 Lévesque's government made French the only official language in previously bilingual Quebec. French was to be the language of business and everyday life. In May 1980 Quebec voters rejected a proposal that would have begun separation from Canada. The PQ nevertheless won the provincial elections in 1981.

In the 1985 election campaign the Liberals routed the PQ, winning 99 seats to 23. Several court decisions ruled against provisions of the language bill, and the Bourassa government suspended prosecutions under the law. In 1987 Quebec, the only province that had not consented to Canada's 1982 constitution, agreed to accept that document by signing the Meech Lake accord, which required a series of amendments that recognized the province as a distinct society. The Liberals won the 1989 elections, leaving Bourassa to deal with the crisis that developed when two other provinces did not ratify the Meech Lake amendments.
Another attempt at reform, drafted at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, was rejected by voters in Quebec and most other provinces. In the October 1993 elections, a new separatist force, Bloc Québécois, won 54 seats in the Canadian House of Commons. Bourassa announced his retirement in late 1993, citing failing health. Treasury Board President Daniel Johnson was subsequently selected as the new Liberal Party leader, and was sworn in as Quebec's premier on January 11, 1994.