Canada’s largest province is still a French-majority narrows
Quebec covers about 1.5 million square kilometres, nearly three times the size of France, and is Canada’s only Francophone-majority province. Its Algonquin name means “narrow passage,” first applied where the Saint Lawrence pinches at Quebec City. Samuel de Champlain gave that name to his outpost in 1608.
French Canada (1534–1763) was New France’s core before the Seven Years’ War yielded the British Province of Quebec, then Lower Canada, and today’s province. It became Lower Canada in 1791, joined the Province of Canada after the Lower Canada Rebellion, and entered Confederation in 1867 alongside Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The Catholic Church shaped schools and social life until the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s expanded the provincial state.
A Westminster-style constitutional monarchy hosts ongoing independence debates. Private law follows a civil code while public law uses common law, a mix no other province shares. Exports lean on aeronautics, hydroelectricity, mining, pharmaceuticals, aluminum, wood, paper—and maple syrup fame. Around eight million people make it the second most populous province after Ontario.
Borders touch Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, and Nunavut’s coast plus U. S. New England and New York. Its borders run for more than 12,000 kilometres, and over 95 percent of the land lies on the Canadian Shield, rising to 1,652 metres at Mont d’Iberville. Fresh water covers 12 percent of the surface, some 3 percent of the planet’s renewable supply, spread across more than half a million lakes.
Most people live in the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence Lowlands, where long narrow farm strips reaching back from the river date from the seigneurial system. Winters can hit −40 °C, and the 2007–2008 season buried the Quebec City area under more than five metres of snow.
Source: Quebec
