Quiet Revolution: Encyclopedia II - Quiet Revolution - Origins

Quiet Revolution - Origins

There is no consensus as to when the Quiet Revolution began, except perhaps on the political level with the reforms enacted by the Liberal provincial government of Jean Lesage elected in the 1960 provincial election. Similarly, there is no consensus as to when the Quiet Revolution ended, but it is mostly agreed that it was before the October Crisis of 1970.

Many events are said to have been precursors or at least signs of this impending revolution. Among them are the Asbestos miners' strike of 1949, the Maurice Richard riot of 1955, the signing of the Refus Global by les Automatistes and the publication of Les insolences du Frère Untel (the impertinences of Brother Somebody), which criticized the near absolute dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec. The political journal Cité Libre is also credited with being an intellectual forum for critics of the Duplessis regime.

From the late 1930s to 1959, the political, educational, economic and social spheres of Quebec were controlled by the fiercely conservative Maurice Duplessis, leader of the Union Nationale. Since first settled as part of New France, the Roman Catholic Church used entities such as the Company of One Hundred Associates to keep control but under under British rule, business maintained a powerful lobby to protect the investments needed to keep Canada's economy on pace with the United States. Electoral fraud and corruption were commonplace in Quebec, with the Church openly campaigning for the Union Nationale with slogans such as Le ciel est bleu, l'enfer est rouge (Heaven is blue, hell is red - referring to the colours of the Union Nationale (blue) and the Liberals (red)). The Roman Catholic Church controlled the availability of books by maintaining an index of banned documents (the Index Librorum Prohibitorum). The Catholic Church controlled the French education institutions and hospitals. A legacy from this agreement is the Duplessis Orphans.

Because of Canada's, and Quebec's, small population, capital for investment was, and still is, always in short supply. As such, the country and the province of Quebec's natural resources were developed by foreign investors willing to risk the investment needed. As an example, iron ore was explored for and its mining developed by the United States-based Iron Ore Company. Because of the agrarian, anti-business policies of the Roman Catholic Church and its Seigneurial system that had been rigidly in place for centuries, it was British immigrants, notably the Scots-Quebecers who invested and built the industrialized economy in Quebec, making it the foremost economic center in Canada and a major force in North America. However, the Roman Catholic Church led the rejection of an industrialization effort by former Premier Louis-Alexandre Taschereau. Because of the failure of the ensuing Duplessis government of Quebec to promote business and to establish university business training for francophones to match the rest of Canada and the U.S., the income levels between rural French workers and those in the growing white collar sector began to widen at a time when Canada was looking to grow. The country followed the massive industrialization and technological innovations going on in the United States while trying to cope with the Great Depression. Because the vast majority of French-Canadians chose not participate in business solutions, it increased the number of Canadians from other provinces of Canada willing to fill the void. Historians have referred to this period as the Grande noirceur (Great Darkness), but most will add that this period is often perceived as worse than it was.

In many ways, Maurice Duplessis's death in 1959, very soon followed by the sudden death of his successor Paul Sauvé, served as a trigger for the Quiet Revolution, or rather it unleashed energies that had been held back by the Roman Catholic Church policies for decades. Within a year of Duplessis's death, the Liberal party was elected with Jean Lesage at its head. The Liberal party had campaigned under the very evocative slogans Maîtres chez nous (Masters of our own house) and Il faut que ça change (Things must change).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Origins", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki