Quiet Revolution
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The Quiet Revolution (French: Révolution tranquille) refers to a significant period of socio-political and socio-cultural transformation in French Canada, particularly in Quebec, following the election of 1960. This period was marked by the secularization of the government, the establishment of a state-administered welfare state known as the état-providence, a shift in political alignment toward federalist and sovereigntist (or separatist) factions, and the eventual election of a pro-sovereignty provincial government in the 1976 election. While the Quiet Revolution is often associated with the efforts of the Liberal Party of Quebec's government led by Jean Lesage (elected in 1960) and, to some extent, Robert Bourassa (elected in 1970 after Daniel Johnson of the Union Nationale in 1966), its profound impact has influenced the policies of most provincial governments since the early 1960s.
A primary change was an effort by the provincial government to assume greater control over healthcare and education, both of which had previously been under the purview of the
The Quiet Revolution ushered in a period of significant economic and social development not only in Quebec but also in French Canada and Canada as a whole. This transformation coincided with similar developments occurring in the
On March 28, 1969, a significant street demonstration took place in Montreal, known as Operation McGill français. The primary objective of this protest was to advocate for McGill University to become a French-speaking educational institution.
Origins
The 1950s tenure of Quebec Premier
Prior to the 1960s, the government of Québec was controlled by the conservative Duplessis, leader of the
Prior to the Quiet Revolution, the province's natural resources were developed mainly by foreign investors,[citation needed] such as the US-based Iron Ore Company of Canada. In the spring of 1949, a group of 5,000 asbestos miners went on strike for three months against a foreign corporation. They were supported by Monsignor Charbonneau (Bishop of Montreal), the Québécois nationalist newspaper Le Devoir, and a small group of intellectuals.[6] Until the second half of the 20th century, the majority of Francophone Québec workers lived below the poverty line,[citation needed] and Francophones did not join the executive ranks of the businesses of their own province.[citation needed] Political activist and singer Félix Leclerc wrote: "Our people are the waterboys of their own country."
In many ways, Duplessis's death in 1959, quickly followed by the sudden death of his successor
It is generally accepted that the revolution ended before the October Crisis of 1970, but Québec society has continued to change dramatically since then, notably with the rise of the sovereignty movement, evidenced by the election of the sovereigntist Parti Québécois (first in 1976 by René Lévesque),[7] the formation of a sovereigntist political party representing Québec on the federal level, the Bloc Québécois (founded in 1991 by Lucien Bouchard),[7] as well as the 1980 and 1995 sovereignty referendums.[8][9] Some scholars argue that the rise of the Québec sovereignty movement during the 1970s is also part of this period.[7]
Secularization and education
The Canadian Constitution of 1867 made education of an area the responsibility of the province. Québec set up a Ministry of Public Instruction in 1868 but abolished it in 1875 under pressure from the Catholic Church. The clergy believed it would be able to provide appropriate teaching to young people and that the province should not interfere. By the early 1960s, there were more than 1,500 school boards, each responsible for its own programs, textbooks and the recognition of diplomas according to its own criteria.
In addition, until the Quiet Revolution, higher education was accessible to only a minority of French Canadians because of the generally low level of formal education and the expense involved.
Following World War II, while most of the United States and Canada was enjoying a long period of prosperity and modernization, economic growth was slower in Québec.[citation needed] The level of formal schooling among French-Canadians was quite low: only 13% finished grade 11, as opposed to 36% of English Canadians. One of the most scathing attacks on the educational system was levelled by Brother Jean-Paul Desbiens, writing under the pseudonym of Frère Untel. The publication of his book Les insolences du Frère Untel (1960) quickly sold over 100,000 copies and has come to be recognized as having important impact on the beginning of the Quiet Revolution.[citation needed]
Also during this period the Ministry of Social Affairs was created, which in June 1985 became the Ministry of Health and Social Services, responsible for the administration of health and social services in the province.
The Quiet Revolution combined declericalization with the radicalized implementation of
Also during the time of the Quiet Revolution, Quebec experienced a large drop in the total fertility rate (known as TFR: the lifetime average number of live births per woman of child-bearing age) falling from 3.8 in 1960 to 1.9 in 1970.[15] According to a study commissioned in 2007 by The Québec Ministry of Families, Seniors and Status of Women on possible ways to address problems related to a by then even lower TFR (1.6) "Starting in 1960, Québec experienced a drop in fertility that was so sharp and rapid, it was almost unparalleled in the developed countries."[16]
In the 2003 article "Where Have All the Children Gone?", published in the academic journal Canadian Studies in Population by Professor Catherine Krull of Queen's University and Professor Frank Trovato of The University of Alberta, point to the decline in influence of the Roman Catholic Church over the lives of French-Canadians as one of the causes of the great reduction in the TFR during the Quiet Revolution.[17] Per Professor Claude Belanger of Montreal's Marianopolis College the loss of influence of the RC Church and subsequent abandonment of long adhered to Church teachings concerning procreation was a key factor in Quebec going from having the highest provincial birth rate in 1960 to the lowest in 1970.[18]
Economic reforms
Seeking a mandate for its most daring reform, the nationalization of the province's electric companies under
More public institutions were created to follow through with the desire to increase the province's economic autonomy. The public companies SIDBEC (iron and steel), SOQUEM (mining), REXFOR (forestry) and SOQUIP (petroleum) were created to exploit the province's natural resources. This was a massive shift away from the Duplessis era in which Québec's abundant natural resources were hardly utilized. Duplessis' policy was to sell off untransformed natural resources at bargain prices in order to create more employment in Québec's regions. This strategy, however, proved weak as Québec's natural resources were exploited for little profit.
A new labour code (Code du Travail) was adopted in 1964. It made unionizing much easier and gave public employees the right to strike. It was during the same year that the Code Civil (Civil Code) was modified to recognize the legal equality of spouses. In case of divorce, the rules for administering the Divorce Act were retained using Québéc's old community property matrimonial regime until 1980, when new legislation brought an automatic equal division of certain basic family assets between spouses.
Nationalism
The societal and economic innovations of the Quiet Revolution, which empowered Québec society, emboldened certain nationalists to push for political independence.[23] While visiting Montreal for
The Parti Québécois twice led the Québécois people through unsuccessful referendums, the first in 1980 on the question of political sovereignty with economic association to Canada (also known as sovereignty association),[8] and the second in 1995 on full sovereignty.[9]
In 1977, during their first term in office, the Parti Québécois enacted the Charter of the French Language, known more commonly as Bill 101, whose goal is to protect the French language by making it the language of business in Québec, as well as restricting the use of English on signs. The bill also restricted the eligibility for elementary and high school students to attend school in English, allowing this only for children of parents who had studied in English in Québec. Children may also be eligible for English education if their parents or grandparents received a certain amount of English education outside of the province (ex. another Canadian province). Once a child has been permitted to attend an English primary or high school, the remaining children in that family are also granted access.[7] This bill still stands today, although many reforms have been made in an attempt to make it less harsh.
Historiography
Several historians have studied the Quiet Revolution, presenting somewhat different interpretations of the same basic facts. For example, Cuccioletta and Lubin raised the question of whether it was an unexpected revolution or an inevitable evolution of society.
A revolution or a natural course of action?
Modern Québec historians have brought some nuance to the importance of the Quiet Revolution. Though the improvements made to Québec society during this era make it seem like an extremely innovative period, it has been posited that these changes follow a logical revolutionary movement occurring throughout the Western world in the 1960s. Québec historian Jacques Rouillard [fr] took this revisionist stance in arguing that the Quiet Revolution may have accelerated the natural evolution of Quebec's francophone society rather than having turned it on its head.[28]
Several arguments support this view. From an economic perspective, Quebec's manufacturing sector had seen important growth since the Industrial Revolution. Buoyed by significant manufacturing demand during World War I and World War II, the Québec economy was already expanding before the events of the Quiet Revolution.[29]
Rouillard also argues that traditional portrayals of the Quiet Revolution falsely depict it as the rise of
The perception of the Quiet Revolution as a great upheaval in Québec society persists, but the revisionist argument that describes this period as a natural continuation of innovations already occurring in Québec cannot be omitted from any discussion on the merits of the Quiet Revolution.[28] The historiography of the period has been notably explored by Ronald Rudin, who describes the legacy of the Lesage years in the depiction of what preceded them.[31] Though criticized as apologists for Duplessis, Robert Rumilly and Conrad Black did add complexity to the narrative of neo-nationalists by contesting the concept of a "Grande Noirceur," the idea that Duplessis's tenure in office was one of reactionary policies and politics.[32][33] Dale Thomson, for his part, noted that Jean Lesage, far from seeking to dismantle the traditional order, negotiated a transition with (and sought to accommodate) Québéc's Catholic Church.[34] Several scholars have lately sought to mediate the neo-nationalist and revisionist schools by looking at grassroots Catholic activism and the Church's involvement in policy-making.[35][36]
Federal politics
Politics at the federal level were also in flux. In 1957, the federal government passed the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act. This was, effectively, the beginning of a pan-Canadian system of public health insurance.[37][38] In 1961, Prime Minister Diefenbaker instituted the National Hospital Insurance Plan, the first public health insurance plan adhered to by all the provinces. In 1966, the National Medicare program was created.[37]
Federal politics were further influenced by the election of
Municipal politics
Montreal municipal politics were also going through an important upheaval.
Important figures
- Pierre Bourgault
- Thérèse Casgrain
- Michel Chartrand
- Jean Drapeau
- Paul Gérin-Lajoie
- Eric Kierans
- Pierre Laporte
- Jean Lesage
- René Lévesque
- Maurice Duplessis
- Gilles Vigneault
- Claire Kirkland-Casgrain
- Lucien Bouchard
See also
- Quebec nationalism
- Quebec sovereignty movement
- État québécois
- Québec politics
- Timeline of Québec history
References
- ^ Dickinson, John; Young, Brian (2003). A Short History of Quebec. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 372.
- ^ "Media — Rocket Richard: The Legend, The Legacy". Civilization.ca. Archived from the original on May 14, 2008. Retrieved December 15, 2010.
- ^ Farber, Michael (November 29, 1999). "Loud Start To The Quiet Revolution: March 17, 1955: The Riot Over Rocket Richard". Sports Illustrated. Retrieved 2020-07-13.
- ^ ISBN 9780773560956.
- ISSN 1201-4710.
- ISBN 9780771022616.
- ^ a b c d Dickinson, John; Young, Brian (2003). A Short History of Quebec. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 324.
- ^ a b Dickinson, John; Young, Brian (2003). A Short History of Quebec. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 327.
- ^ a b Dickinson, John; Young, Brian (2003). A Short History of Quebec. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 354.
- ^ a b Mathieu Pigeon. "Education in Québec, before and after the Parent reform". McCord Museum. Retrieved October 11, 2010.
- ^ )
- ISBN 9780771067495.
- ^ Pigeon, Matthieu (2008). "The Quiet Revolution". McCord Museum. Retrieved 21 January 2019.
- ^ Micheline D'Allaire, "Les Religieuses du Quebec dans le Courant de la Laicisation", Cultures du Canada Francais (1986), Vol. 3, pp 38-45.
- ^ Bernier, Jean; Roy, Laurent (2007). Family Policy, Social Trends and Fertility in Québec: Experimenting with the Nordic Model?. The Quebec Ministry of Families, Seniors and Status of Women. p. 11.
- ^ Bernier, Jean; Roy, Laurent (2007). Family Policy, Social Trends and Fertility in Québec: Experimenting with the Nordic Model?. The Quebec Ministry of Families, Seniors and Status of Women. p. 5.
- better source needed]
- ^ Bélanger, Claude (2000). "The Roman Catholic Church and Quebec". Readings in Quebec History. Marianopolis College. Retrieved 1 April 2020.
- ^ Dickinson, John; Young, Brian (2003). A Short History of Quebec. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. pp. 319, 350.
- ^ Dickinson, John; Young, Brian (2003). A Short History of Quebec. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 351.
- ^ ISSN 0702-6706. Retrieved September 26, 2009.
- ^ Bergeron, Leandre (1971). The History of Quebec. Toronto: NC Press.
- ^ a b Dickinson, John; Young, Brian (2003). A Short History of Quebec. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 321.
- ^ Donald Cuccioletta and Martin Lubin. "The Quebec quiet revolution: a noisy evolution." Quebec Studies (2003) 36#1 pp: 125-138.
- ^ Michael D. Behiels, Prelude to Quebec's Quiet Revolution: Liberalism vs Neo-Nationalism, 1945-60 (McGill-Queen's Press-MQUP, 1985).
- ISBN 9780773528741.
- ^ David Seljak, "Why the quiet revolution was ‘Quiet’: the Catholic church’s reaction to the secularization of nationalism in Quebec after 1960." Historical Studies (1996) 62#1 pp: 109-24. online
- ^ a b Jacques Rouillard (Winter 1998). "La révolution tranquille, rupture ou tournant?". 32:4. Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études canadiennes. Archived from the original on May 14, 2008. Retrieved September 22, 2010.
- ^ Jacques Rouillard (Winter 1998). "La révolution tranquille, rupture ou tournant? Section 1". 32:4. Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études canadiennes. Archived from the original on May 14, 2008. Retrieved September 22, 2010.
- ^ Jacques Rouillard (Winter 1998). "La révolution tranquille, rupture ou tournant? Section 2". 32:4. Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études canadiennes. Archived from the original on November 12, 2010. Retrieved September 22, 2010.
- S2CID 144929356.
- ^ Rumilly, Robert (1978). Maurice Duplessis et son temps, Tome II. Montreal: Fides.
- ISBN 9780771015304.
- ^ Thomson, Dale (1984). Jean Lesage and the Quiet Revolution. Toronto: Macmillan.
- ^ Gauvreau, Michael (2005). The Catholic Origins of Quebec's Quiet Revolution, 1931-1970. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press.
- S2CID 141037057.
- ^ a b Silversides, Ann (2007). Conversations with Champions of Medicare. Ottawa: Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. p. 4.
- PMID 13523526.
- ^ Robertson, Gordon (2007). Memoirs of a Very Civil Servant: Mackenzie King to Pierre Trudeau. Ottawa: University of Toronto Press. p. 253.
- ^ Robertson, Gordon (2007). Memoirs of a Very Civil Servant: Mackenzie King to Pierre Trudeau. Ottawa: University of Toronto Press. p. 254.
- ^ Robertson, Gordon (2007). Memoirs of a Very Civil Servant: Mackenzie King to Pierre Trudeau. Ottawa: University of Toronto Press. pp. 259–261.
- ^ The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (December 21, 1967). "Trudeau's Omnibus Bill: Challenging Canadian Taboos". CBC Digital Archives. Retrieved September 22, 2010.
- ^ English, John (2016). "Trudeau, Pierre Elliott". In Cook, Ramsay; Bélanger, Réal (eds.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. XXII (1991–2000) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press.
- ^ Gignac, Benoit (2009). Jean Drapeau: Le maire qui rêvait sa ville. Montréal: La Presse. p. 105.
- ^ Gignac, Benoit (2009). Jean Drapeau: Le maire qui rêvait sa ville. Montréal: La Presse. p. 108.
- ^ Gignac, Benoit (2009). Jean Drapeau: Le maire qui rêvait sa ville. Montréal: La Presse. p. 111.
- ^ Gignac, Benoit (2009). Jean Drapeau: Le maire qui rêvait sa ville. Montréal: La Presse. p. 122.
- ^ Gignac, Benoit (2009). Jean Drapeau: Le maire qui rêvait sa ville. Montréal: La Presse. p. 127.
- ^ Gignac, Benoit (2009). Jean Drapeau: Le maire qui rêvait sa ville. Montréal: La Presse. pp. 133–137.
- ^ Gignac, Benoit (2009). Jean Drapeau: Le maire qui rêvait sa ville. Montréal: La Presse. p. 157.
- ^ Gignac, Benoit (2009). Jean Drapeau: Le maire qui rêvait sa ville. Montréal: La Presse. p. 172.
Further reading
- Behiels, Michael D. Prelude to Quebec's Quiet Revolution: Liberalism vs Neo-Nationalism, 1945–60 (1985).
- Behiels, Michael D. ed. Quebec Since 1945: Selected Readings (Copp Clark Pitman, 1987).
- Bélanger, Claude (1998). "Jean Lesage and the Quiet Revolution (1960–1966)". Readings in Quebec History. Marianopolis College.
- Bélanger, Claude (1999). "The Quiet Revolution". Events, Issues and Concepts of Quebec History. Marianopolis College.
- Cuccioletta, Donald, and Martin Lubin. "The Quebec quiet revolution: a noisy evolution." Quebec Studies, vol. 36, 2003, p. 125+. online
- Gauvreau, Michael. The Catholic Origins of Quebec's Quiet Revolution, 1931–1970 (2008).
- LeMay. Joseph. "Impact of the Quiet Revolution: the business environment of smaller cities and regions of Quebec 1960-2000." Quebec Studies, vol. 34, 2002, pp. 19–30. online
- Linteau, Paul-Andre, Rene Durocher, and Jean-Claude Robert, Quebec Since 1930 (1991) excerpt
- Pelletier, Réal, ed. Une Certaine Révolution tranquille: 22 juin [19]60–[19]75. Montréal: La Presse, 1975. 337 pp., ill. chiefly with b&w port. photos. Without ISBN.
- Polese, Mario. "Quebec's Entrepreneurial Revolution and the Reinvention of Montreal: Why and How It Happened." AEI Paper & Studies (American Enterprise Institute, 2020) online
- Polese, Mario. "Montreal's Economy Since 1930," in Montreal: The History of a North American City, ed. D. Fougeres and R. Macleod (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2018), 164–205;
- Sloan, Thomas. Québec: The Not-so-Quiet Revolution (1965). OCLC 1413353.
- Tanguay. A. Brian. "Caught in the blind spot: organized labour in revisionist explanations of the Quiet Revolution." Quebec Studies, vol. 34, 2002, pp. online
- "Quiet revolution". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved October 16, 2019.