Quebec Fr. Québec, city (1991 pop. 167,517), provincial capital, S Que., Canada, at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and St. Charles rivers. The population is largely French speaking, and the town is at the ideological core of French Canada. Quebec is an important port and is an industrial, cultural, service, and tourist center. Part of the city is built on the waterfront and is called Lower Town; that part called Upper Town is on Cape Diamond, a bluff rising c.300 ft (91 m) above the St. Lawrence. Winding, narrow streets link the two sections of the city. The chief industries are shipbuilding and tourism, and the manufacture of pulp, paper, newsprint, leather products, textiles, clothing, machinery, and foods and beverages. The site of Quebec was visited by Cartier in 1535, and in 1608 Champlain established a French colony in the present Lower Town; this was captured (1629) by the English, who held it until 1632. In 1663, Quebec was made the capital of New France and became the center of the fur trade. The city was unsuccessfully attacked by the English in 1690 and 1711. Finally in 1759 English forces under Wolfe defeated the French under Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham (see Abraham, Plains of ) and captured Quebec. During the American Revolution, Americans under Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold failed (1775-76) to capture the city, although Arnold briefly held the Lower Town. Quebec became the capital of Lower Canada in 1791. After the union (1841) of Upper and Lower Canada, it was twice the capital of the United Provinces of Canada (1851-55 and 1859-65). The Quebec Conference was held in the city in 1864. Historic old Quebec, much of which is preserved, was named a World Heritage Site by the United Nations. There are many notable old structures, including the Ursuline Convent (1639); the Basilica of Notre Dame (1647); Quebec Seminary (1663); and parts of the fortifications enclosing Old Quebec. The surrounding area also has many notable sights, such as Montmorency Falls, the Île d'Orléans, and the shrine of Ste Anne de Beaupré. Laval Univ. is a center for the city's largely francophone culture.

Bibliography: See M. de la Roche, Quebec, Historic Seaport (1944); W. P. Percival, The Lure of Quebec (rev. ed. 1965); M. Gaumond, Place Royale: Its Houses and Their Occupants (tr. 1971); D. T. Ruddel, Quebec City, Seventeen Sixty-Five to Eighteen Thirty-Two (1988).

QUEBECAlso Québec. The name of both the largest province of Canada (home of the largest FRENCH-speaking community in North America) and of its capital city (founded by Samuel Champlain in 1608). Out of a population of c.6m, 82% speak French, 16% English. ITALIAN and GREEK are prominent immigrant languages, and Cree and Mohawk are prominent indigenous languages. The first Europeans to settle in the region were the French in the 17c, and their colony was known as Nouvelle France (New France) until well into the 18c. In its heyday, the French empire in North America stretched from the valley of the St Lawrence down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to the Gulf of Mexico, limiting British expansion west. In the late 20c, however, Quebec is the only politically significant French-speaking community in North America.

Quebec French

The French of Quebec descends from the speech of 17c Normandy and Picardy. Distinctive and varied, it has a broad form known as joual (pronounced ‘zhwal’: a variant of cheval horse). The traditional standard of education and the media has been that of Paris, often referred to as le français international. Local French of all varieties and most social levels has been stigmatized both in France and in Quebec as a patois marred by its accents, its ARCHAISMS, and its ANGLICISMS.

Quebec English

British Empire Loyalists from the US, after the end of the War of Independence in 1783, were the first significant English-speaking settlers in Quebec. They founded the Eastern Townships south-east of Montreal. By 1831, ANGLOPHONES of British descent were in the majority in Montreal itself, but an influx of rural francophones, who filled the ranks of the urban working class, had by 1867 reversed that trend. By 1981, 66% of the city's population was French-speaking. Such facts explain why English as used in Montreal (and more generally in Quebec) is not as homogeneous as other Canadian regional Englishes. Rather it exists as a continuum, from long-established unilingual anglophones broadly similar to anglophones in Ontario through bilinguals of various kinds to francophones using English as a second language. Until 1970, Montreal was the economic capital of Canada, but many controlling anglophone companies relocated, especially in Toronto, as a result of mounting separatist pressures in the 1970s and early 1980s among the French majority and under the government of the secessionist Parti Québécois (1976–85).

Much has been written in French on the effects of English on French in Quebec. In such works, the dominating role of English in North America has generally been considered pernicious, and francophones have often been urged to éviter les anglicismes (avoid Anglicisms) and not commettre un anglicisme (commit an Anglicism) in their French. The French of Quebec and Canada as a whole, however, continues to be heavily influenced by both CANADIAN ENGLISH and AmE, as for example the widespread use of bienvenu(e), the equivalent of You're welcome (in response to merci thank you), rather than the de rien (It's nothing) of France. There has been little comparable concern in Quebec about the effects of French on English and there have been few studies of Quebec English. However, the research that has been done indicates that in Montreal, for socio-economic reasons, English was until c.1975 regarded in both communities as the language of prestige. In the last 15 years, however, under the impact of pro-French legislation, French has gained greatly in prestige. In addition, English in Montreal tends to favour the norms of AmE more than English in Ontario, and Montrealers are less likely to employ Canadian Raising in their speech.

The most marked feature of local English is the influence of French. Many expressions have simply moved into English, such as: autoroute highway, caisse populaire credit union, depanneur convenience store, corner shop, and subvention subsidy. Anglophones who speak French constantly use such loan expressions as: give a conference give a lecture (from donner une conférence), sc(h)olarity schooling (from scolarité), and syndicate a trade union (from syndicate). The Gallicisms of francophones when speaking English range from such easily grasped expressions as collectivity (for community) and annex (for the appendix to a document) to a common place misuse of faux amis, such as deceive in I was deceived when she didn't come (from décevoir to disappoint), reunion in We have a reunion at 5 o'clock (from réunion a meeting), and souvenir in We have a good souvenir of our trip to Louisiana (from souvenir a memory). See CAJUN, CANADIAN LANGUAGES, DIALECT IN CANADA, MÉTIS.

Quebec, Canada Stadacona A province and a city‐port which was originally a Huron village called Stadacona. This was discovered by Samuel de Champlain^† who is credited with founding the city of Quebec in 1608. The city was captured by the British in 1759 and ceded to Great Britain in 1763. At the same time the colony of New France, claimed for France by Jacques Cartier^† in 1534, became the province of Quebec. In 1791 it was renamed Lower Canada and in 1841 Canada East. The present Province of Quebec came into existence in 1867 when the Confederation of Canada was created. The name is derived from the Algonquian quililbek ‘place where the waters narrow’, a reference to the lessening width of the St Lawrence River here.