How is quebec different

The most serious difficulty that has arisen between English Canada and French Canada in our own day has been over conscription. Voluntary military service is an old British tradition. Britain did not abandon it until , in the midst of World War I, and Canada was the only British dominion to follow suit.

That was because casualties in the Canadian army in were greater than the voluntary system could replace:. Voluntary recruiting in French Canada had not kept pace with recruiting in English Canada for a number of reasons. The French were naturally more isolationist because they had lived in Canada for many more generations. Practically every French Canadian had to go back nearly two centuries and a half to find an ancestor who lived on the other side of the Atlantic.

Another reason for their isolationism was their non-British origin. It inclined them to see the war as a British war in which Canada had no business to be fighting. Moreover they married younger and had larger families, so that a smaller percentage of their young men were free of the ties of wife and children.

Their religion also held them back because of two peculiar circumstances of the time, one in France and the other in Ottawa. In France the government of the Third Republic had turned on the church and driven out many of the antirepublican clergy. Some of these exiles found a refuge in Canada. From them and from their own priests as well, the French Canadians had been hearing bitter denunciations of the French government. Therefore when Germany invaded France in , French Canada was disposed to regard the attack as a judgment of God; upon what was to them the wicked and irreligious republic.

The other peculiar circumstance was that the Canadian minister of militia, the cabinet member responsible for raising and training the Canadian army in , was the outstanding Orangeman in the country. This means much to Canadians but little to Americans, few of whom have ever heard of the Orange Order. This secret order arose in Ulster, now Northern Ireland, where it stood for Protestant supremacy and is still a great power.

More than a century ago it entered Canada, and there it throve mightily on the anti-Catholic and anti-French prejudices that have been so marked in Ontario. It was nothing short of tragic that a well-known Orangeman held such a key position during the war. English Canada did not understand the situation in French Canada and impatiently cried out for conscription in order to draft the French. There was a general election on the issue: English Canada imposed its will on French Canada—contrary to assurances given when the Dominion was formed that the French Canadians could trust the English-speaking and Protestant majority never to run a steam roller over them.

The French Canadians were crushed. They had horrid visions of being crushed again in the dark, uncertain future. Conscription came to have a strange and terrible meaning for them. It implied the ultimate loss of the liberty they cherished above all else: the liberty to be themselves.

The French Canadians received such a jolt that in later years, even after World War II began, both major political parties pledged themselves, as the only way to win votes in Quebec, never to conscript men for overseas service. At the time France fell in , the Canadian government rushed through Parliament, with almost no opposition, a law giving the government nearly unlimited power over persons and property.

Compulsory military training was then adopted, but the Prime Minister said he would not abandon the voluntary system for service overseas. The Canadian expeditionary army was built entirely of volunteers. Still the French Canadians were nervous and their fears were roused by English Canadians who began to raise the old cry again.

Is your intended audience in France or Canada? The most well-known and solidly French-speaking province is Quebec. The French began settling in Canada in the 16th and 17th centuries. But by the 18th century, the British had taken over. Many French-speaking Canadians kept speaking French, but were somewhat isolated from other French speakers. As a result, the Canadian French of today retains some characteristics from 17th century French that no longer exist in regular French.

These differences include both differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. For example, the vowel sound in words like droit and froid is still pronounced in Quebec as it was in 16th and 17 century France. Canadian French may sound older in some ways, but it also uses more Anglicisms than standard French.

Anglicisms are words and phrases taken from English. These may be English words adopted without alteration, English words given a French spelling or French suffix, or English phrases and idioms directly translated into French. Another source of differences between Canadian French and European French is that Canadian French has much more vocabulary derived from First Nations languages.

Canadian French and European French also have some variations in grammar, both spoken and written. Here are just a few examples:. Others may basically like Canada, but believe Quebec and Canada could arrange a better partnership between themselves as two separate countries. A new provincial political party devoted to separatism known as the Parti Quebecois was founded in and elected in to power in In , it organized a province-wide referendum on separatism, but Quebecers ultimately voted to stay.

Despite the defeat, the French-Canadian separatist movement grew in power and size during the s and s. That loss was quite demoralizing, however, and since then the separatist movement has declined in popularity quite a bit, with many Quebecers now inclined to regard separation as a distraction from more immediate social and economic problems.

Despite its traditionalist past, modern Quebec is said to be one of the most left-wing places in North America. Politics in Quebec are thus not terribly ideological, and most politicians support broadly similar social-democratic agendas. The bigger source of polarization is the question of separatism. In , a new party, the Coalition Avenir Quebec coalition for Quebec was elected to power for the first time.

It is a European-style conservative populist-nationalist party that has promised to not reopen the separatism debate. Grand, gothic cathedrals remain popular tourist attractions in Quebec, even as the province becomes increasingly irreligious. The "Fleur de lis" and the colour blue are the two most common symbols of Quebec, and feature prominently on all sorts of logos and brands associated with the province.

Both are supposed to evoke nostalgic memories of ancient France. Next Chapter. Bennett Louis St. The St. Lawrence The mighty St. City of Montreal official website Quebec City official website. Library and Archives Canada. History of Quebec As the early history chapter discusses in more detail, explorers from France were the first Europeans to actively settle the land that is now Canada, forming an impressive colony known as New France along the St.

Francis Gagnon. The journey Quebec faces is that of a nation able to develop a relationship on equal footing with First Nations and the Inuit nation, where the Anglophone community has a place, and where the contribution of Quebec immigrants is valued. We have a rendezvous with freedom and the country we have desired for so long.