In this episode, we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Quebec Act. We talk to Jean-François Lozier, curator of the history of French North America at the Canadian Museum of History. He tells us about how this act has become a key element in the political and cultural inclusion of the French Canadians during the British conquest. You will also hear from Martin Pâquet, an historian and anthropologist at Université Laval, on the Quebec Act’s lasting impact on modern Canadian identity. At last, we will explore how this act shaped relations between the French and English-speaking communities, while laying the foundations for the tensions that preceded the American Revolution.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – If you like history podcasts, do not miss Artifactuality from the Canadian Museum of History. It explores how the objects and stories from the past can help us learn about our identity and how we will remember actual events in the future. Find this podcast on your favorite podcast streaming platform.
Bonhomme, bonhomme, sais-tu jouer?
(Bonhomme, bonhomme, sais-tu jouer?)
Sais-tu jouer de ce violon-là?
(Sais-tu jouer de ce violon-là?)
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – The folkloric song you are hearing is “Bonhomme, bonhomme” and is originally from the early 1600s in New France. French Canadians and Quebecers have been signing this song since then.
In fact, it’s still part of the school program for English-speaking children learning French. Many children associate it with a rather friendly snowman in a red hat.
However, in the late 1760s, it probably had a different, even uncomfortable meaning for some, like the British who had conquered New France.
Welcome to Canadian Time Machine, a podcast that unpacks key milestones in our country’s history and their impact on our lives today. This podcast receives funding from the Canadian Heritage and is created by The Walrus Lab. I am Ariane-Li Simard-Côté. This episode is about the 250th anniversary of the Quebec Act, an act of political and cultural inclusion that would change the world.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – Imagine the British officials walking down the unpaved streets of the City of Québec and Montreal.
Possibly while hearing the children singing :
Tu n’es pas maître dans ta maison
Quand nous y sommes!
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – Looking back, we could laugh about it today. But, when the Quebec Act was in effect, our southern neighbors were not happy. They were not laughing. It was a brutal reminder of the complexities they faced.
Jean-François Lozier – The Quebec Act is a key moment in the constitutional history of Canada. From that moment, on the legal side, the logic of conquest and assimilation is replaced by pluralism with French Canadians and British Canadians.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – You are hearing Jean-François Lozier, curator of the history of French North America at the Canadian Museum of History. He will talk to us through Sir Guy Carleton’s perspective, one of the main architects of this revolutionary law. He will help us understand what life was like a few years after the British conquest of New France.
Jean-François Lozier – From the 1760s to the 1770s, approximately 60 to 70 000 settlers were living in that territory. Most of them were of French origin. To put things in perspective, the 13 English American colonies, who would become the United States, had around 2 150 000 inhabitants already. The city of London had around 700 000 inhabitants. In the Laurentian colony, this Province of Quebec covers a huge territory, but has a rather small demography.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – He said that the cities of Quebec and Montreal were rural colonies with 8 000 and 6 000 inhabitants respectively.
Jean-François Lozier – Of this population, some 7 000 to 8 000 live in the City of Quebec and 5 000 to 6 000 in Montreal. The cities of Quebec and Montreal correspond roughly to the area of old Quebec and old Montreal, which many listeners are probably familiar with. You can walk across either of these cities in about 20 minutes at that time. It was a militarized zone and these were fortified towns. The City of Quebec is also a seat of government and a city under construction, bombarded in 1759 by British troops.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – And, at that time, society differed a lot from today.
Jean-François Lozier – It is a small community, an intimate one, face to face. Writing is important as far as the law is necessarily written. Merchants, especially those in the Atlantic business, have to write. But, among French Canadians, the literacy rate is very low. So, in the end, this society relies mostly on oral tradition.
Demographically speaking, we have to understand and acknowledge that 95%, if not more, of the population of the Quebec province is of French descent. The new migrants from Britain, so, the English, the Scottish, in a large number and the Irish, accounted for perhaps 500 residents of the colony at that time. So, the idea of the two solitudes, as presented in the 20th century, was already well in place.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – Indeed, the song we heard at the beginning of “Bonhomme, bonhomme” takes on its full meaning in this demographic and geopolitical situation, doesn’t it?
And with its 2 million inhabitants distributed across the 13 southern colonies, we can start to feel the social and political pressure which Guy Carleton felt and dealt with.
Jean-François Lozier – In 1767, Carleton, very clear-sighted and pragmatic, wrote to Lord Shelburne, Secretary of State for the Colony:
“Barring a catastrophe, shocking to think of, this country must, to the end of time, be peopled by the Canadian race.”
So, early in his mandate, from 1767, Carleton concluded that the province of Quebec would be inhabited by the Canadian race, the Canadian people, until the end of time, unless an unlikely catastrophe occurred. This led to a compromise.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – And this idea of compromise? We will come back to it. It’s as Canadian as maple syrup.
Jean-François Lozier – So, in 1770, Carleton went to England. He had left Quebec for London to attend to some family business. While in London, he found a wife. But it also was to inform the government on how the Quebec Act would be like.
With the Quebec Act, at the end of 1774, Carleton is sent back from London to Quebec and is reappointed as General Governor, with specific instructions. Meanwhile, the transition from the French system to the British system happened smoothly and was still happening in the day-to-day life of many French Canadians.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – This means that the daily lives of these Canadians, this would not change a lot of things… but…
Jean-François Lozier – What is going to change, however, is that the principle of recognizing the place of the Catholic religion in this society – the formal recognition of a distinct civil right of French origin – is finally being implemented. And, in the end, theory follows practice. In concrete terms, what would change was that Carleton would now be able to appoint French-Canadian members of small nobility, small aristocracy, to positions to which they had previously been denied access.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – This is where this great social experiment began. The Quebec Act establishes a legislative council to legislate in the Province of Quebec. The colony’s boundaries are extended to the Great Lakes watershed. The Roman Catholic religion is officially legalized.
The Test Oath before God was replaced by an oath to the King – allowing Catholics to become legislative counsels and judges. Finally, the use of French civil law in the colony’s justice system was legalized.
This was very different.
And it brought several other things. Because, do not forget: when you are given power, everyone looks at you, even those who are far away, even living a thousand kilometers from here.
Jean-François Lozier – Perhaps the greatest effect the Quebec Act had was to frustrate and to put oil on the fire for the 13 British-American colonies. This act will be seen as the latest in a series of “intolerable acts,” as British-American patriots felt left out by the government in London.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – It stipulates that the purpose of this law is to recognize and formally establish Roman Catholicism.
Jean-François Lozier – This act formally recognizes and establishes Roman Catholicism. And let’s not forget that anti-Catholicism had been central to how British subjects define themselves for over a century and in the British-American colonies too.
It gives the impression that we are making concessions with conquered people who should have been treated as conquered people by the British-American settlers. Also, I have not mentioned it yet, but one of the aspects of the Quebec Act is territorial.
With 1774, including Quebec, the new Province of Quebec gained back the country of the Great Lakes, then known as “pays d’en haut,” the country of the Ohio, just south of the Great Lakes.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – The British merchants doing business in Canada, it allows them to have an easier and faster access to the basin used for fur supplies. For the few French-Canadian elites who participate in and profit from this trade, it’s a good thing too.
Jean-François Lozier – It’s an affront for the British-American settlers because it’s a territory where these populations would have liked to settle. It’s a territory where there’s a lot of land speculation. From a British-American perspective, the Quebec Act is an outrage. And, finally, the Quebec Act was cited indirectly in the Declaration of Independence of the American colonies in 1776, as the last straw.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – It’s fascinating that we are talking about this today and that, in a certain way, the Quebec Act had something to do with the foundation of the United States. It is a collateral damage of our act of inclusion.
But this story becomes even more complex as we unravel it and examine the impact the Quebec Act still has today.
And this is why we are now talking to Mr. Martin Pâquet, historian and anthropologist at Université Laval, an expert and passionate about the entire history of the Province of Quebec.
Martin Pâquet – In fact, the political and cultural impacts of the Quebec Act are numerous, indeed.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – Can you explain what those are, starting with the geopolitical context?
Martin Pâquet – We have to understand the context in which the Quebec Act was developed. On one side, we have the empires and the colonial empires on the other. So, we establish a colony and we try to set up a political regime on a given territory.
On the other hand, we have a colony that appears after a particular moment in human history. That is where we see the emergence of the State.
The State is composed of a political structure that ensures, over a given territory, what Max Weber, the sociologist, called – “the monopoly of legitimate violence.”
So, societies are divided. Societies are multiple, they are “plural,” to use the expression of the philosopher Hannah Arendt. So, this is an important element of the political world here.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – What do you think is important to remember about the Quebec Act?
Martin Pâquet – The fact that we can establish a compromise and that we have to maintain harmony at that time. The fact that the spirit of harmony, the spirit of compromise, was sustainable. And that’s an important element. It’s less the confessional question, because the confessional question, from the 19th century, becomes curiously less important. It is no longer a matter of political definition. When you’re a British subject, from now on, you can be a British subject, Catholic or Protestant. It does not matter.
However, what remains from the Quebec Act is this notion of compromise in politics. This was a new approach at that time. Because we should not forget, I return to what I was saying earlier: the context of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – And it’s still a tense and brutal period of time, isn’t it?
Martin Pâquet – In the 17th century, it was the time of the wars of religion, among other things. We saw them in France and in Germany. We also see them in England, at the time of Cromwell. It was particularly violent. You have executives, English people who are going to die.
That we are able to talk about it today, to behave together, to have a compromise on religious matters. We can call this a miracle because we still remember violence, interreligious dialogues that are quite huge and we are still able to get over it.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – And today, we can still see its impact, on the way it was put in place at that precise moment.
Martin Pâquet – Yes, there are still impacts today and not even the impacts we tend to think because, in Canadian history, we often think: Ah, listen, it’s the language question that is important.
At that time, in the 18th century, the language issue was not that important. This may surprise you because in Buckingham, British sovereigns speak French. When you have seigneurs, governors who settle in New France, they all speak French.
So, the language was not an important matter but it will become one later in time. It was really a religious question. And it is so because it is at the heart of the laws, at the time, and at the heart of how society works. It is a hot topic in 18th century politics.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – At that point, Guy Carleton has really paved the way to what sculpted our whole identity and the way we ended up making our choices afterwards, and still do today, in fact.
Martin Pâquet – It’s a philosophic question that… I would say that life in a democracy, we have to consider the essence of democracy. The essence of democracy is that our societies are plural and diverse. There are divisions between men and women. There are divisions between ages, divisions between ethnic origins, religious divisions and so on.
So, with all of these intersections, how do we create a community? That is fundamental in politics. It’s a dimension – this question – it was an issue in 1774, at the time of the Quebec Act. It is just as relevant today, in the contemporary world, at the beginning of the 21ᵉ century, when we have differences that are as important. Ethnic differences, among others. Of origin too, which means the arrival of new citizens who have to integrate within the political context. So, we have to consider this diversity. And that is why the Quebec Act is topical.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – Yes, indeed. I was coming to the pluralism of our society. So, in a context of immigration, how do you think we should lead this social experiment, which is in itself pluralistic? And how should we live in this so-called living together today, in 2024, in 2025 and beyond?
Martin Pâquet – So, in this way, the compromise the Quebec Act has brought, the harmony, can still be here today. In other words, we could see that, at the time of the Quebec Act, in 1774, we would not transform a Canadian Catholic into an Anglican British subject magically.
There was maybe an intention of assimilation that did not happen. However, French-speaking, Catholic Canadians were slowly becoming British subjects. And it is quite important, they remained British subjects. Later, they became Canadian citizens. So, this understanding of the time required to change is important.
It’s an element that can inspire us today. When we talk about migrants from Haiti, from the Maghreb and from Sub-Saharan Africa, we need to understand that they need time to integrate because, on the one hand, they have their own dreams, their own will, their own journey which they need to take into account. On the other, the society that welcomes them must be able to provide the means for them to gradually help them become citizens.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – I find it really inspiring and beautiful, I could listen to you for a long time. It is fascinating to learn about the open-minded Guy Carleton because he is himself an Irish. He knew the profound meaning of one’s own cultural identity. I think it helped him understand the notion of diversity he tried to put into place.
So, in the end, we can’t be fully assimilated, or wanting to be assimilated, without a major incident. So, cultural diversity can emerge and evolve with this “living together.” It is really to live here in the Province of Quebec with our “living together.” So, I find it really nice to see how it defines us as a province, as a country, with everything we experienced.
So, thanks a lot, Mr. Pâquet. That was fascinating. Thank you so much for joining us.
Martin Pâquet – It’s my pleasure.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – And thanks for listening to the Canadian Time Machine. This podcast receives funding from the Canadian Heritage and is created by the Walrus Lab.
As with all our episodes, transcripts are available in English and French. To read the transcripts, please visit: thewalrus.ca/canadianheritage.
This episode was produced by Kirk Finken. Jasmine Rach is the editor and Amanda Cupido is the executive producer.
A special thanks to Jean-François Lozier and Jonathan Wise from the Canadian Museum of History for suggesting and providing the recording of “Bonhomme, bonhomme.”
For more episodes about key milestones in Canadian history, visit thewalrus.ca/canadianheritage.
Ariane-Li Simard-Côté – I am curious to know why you are so passionate about anthropology and Quebec’s history and Canada’s history.
Martin Pâquet – An historian is not here to tell us what will happen in the future. He does not compile data alone. This profession helps us understand our world. And for me, passion drives me, it helps me understand the world that surrounds me.
For more stories about historic Canadian milestones, visit thewalrus.ca/CanadianHeritage.
