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Dateline
1534 Jacques Cartier sails up the St. Lawrence, claiming the territory for France and marking the first European discovery of Canada.
1608 Motivated by the burgeoning fur trade, Samuel de Champlain founds a settlement at Kebec, at the foot of Cape Diamond. It will become the city of Québec.
1642 Paul de Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve, establishes a colony called Ville-Marie that will become Montréal.
1668 Québec Seminary is founded in Québec City, later to become Laval University in 1852.
1682 A massive fire on August 4 in Québec's Lower Town destroys 55 buildings in 7 hours. Rules established afterward require the use of stone walls to limit fire jumps.
1759 British General Wolfe defeats French General Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham in Québec City.
1760 Montréal falls to the British.
1763 The king of France cedes all of Canada to the king of England in the Treaty of Paris.
1775 Montréal is occupied by American Revolutionary forces who withdraw after a few months, when an attempted siege of Québec City by Benedict Arnold fails.
1821 English-speaking McGill University is founded in Montréal.
1845 Cholera! With the increased number of immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, and England to Québec City, cholera breaks out.
1867 The British North America Act creates the federation of the provinces of Québec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick.
1883 "Je me souviens" becomes the official motto of Québec -- an ominous "I remember."
1900-10 Three hundred twenty-five thousand French Canadians emigrate to the United States.
1922 Armand Bombardier invents the prototype for the Ski-Doo, the first snowmobile, which will make him famous and wealthy in the late 1950s.
1925 The Seagram Company is founded in Montréal.
1940 Women are granted the right to vote in provincial elections in Québec, having obtained that right in federal elections in 1917.
1948 The Québec flag, bearing four fleurs-de-lis, is adopted.
1962 Montréal's underground city is born, with the construction of Place Ville-Marie.
1967 Montréal hosts the successful Expo '67.
1968 The Parti Québécois is founded by Reneé Lévesque, and the separatist movement begins in earnest. Québécois Pierre Elliott Trudeau is elected prime minister of Canada, and he holds that office for most of the following 18 years.
1976 The Parti Québécois comes to power in Québec and remains in office until 1985, when the Liberal Party succeeds it. Montréal hosts the Olympics.
1984 Québécois Brian Mulroney becomes prime minister of Canada.
1989 The North American Free-Trade Agreement goes into effect, gradually removing most tariffs on goods of national origin moving between the United States and Canada.
1990 The Meech Lake Accord, recognizing Québec as a "distinct society" within Canada, is voted down, and separatist agitation increases.
1992 Montréal celebrates its 350th birthday.
1993 Mulroney resigns with public approval ratings in the single digits. He is succeeded by Kim Campbell, the first female prime minister. She and the Tories are soundly defeated by Jean Chrétien and the Liberals in October.
1994 Québec's separatist Parti Québécois wins provincial elections, ending 9 years of Liberal rule.
1995 Despite seemingly unstoppable momentum toward independence, a referendum on separation from the rest of Canada is narrowly defeated.
1996 Sharp cuts in federal contributions to Canada's cherished universal healthcare system provoke job actions by doctors. Accounts of unsanitary hospitals, outdated equipment, and delays for treatment cause mounting unease in the face of governmental demands for even greater efficiencies and cost-cutting procedures.
1997 Prime Minister Jean Chrétien calls early elections in hopes of strengthening his party's hold on Parliament. Results are mixed. The separatist Bloc Québécois loses its standing as the largest opposition party to the emerging western Reform Party. Chrétien's Liberals shrink from 174 seats to 155.
1998 The governing provincial Parti Québécois wins reelection in November, beating off the resurgent Liberals, headed by Jean Charest. Still, the margin of victory is narrower than expected, and Premier Lucien Bouchard shelves plans for an early referendum on independence.
1999 By changing the definition of spouse in 39 laws and regulations, the government of Québec eliminated all legal distinctions between same-sex and heterosexual couples, becoming the first province in Canada to recognize the legal status of same-sex civil unions.
2000 Despite signs of Québec's emergence from a decade-long recession, by some measures surpassing the rest of Canada, support for Bouchard and separation falls below 40% of the electorate.
2001 Premier Bouchard resigns unexpectedly, throwing his separatist Parti Québécois into disarray. Polls show increasing disaffection with the idea of Québec sovereignty. He is succeeded by Bernard Landry.
2002 The 28 towns and cities on Montréal Island are merged into one megacity with a population of 1.8 million inhabitants. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, until then enjoying excellent approval ratings, runs afoul of an ethics scandal in midyear over favors exchanged for campaign donations. In August, he announces that he won't seek a fourth term.
2003 In regional elections, Landry and the Parti Québécois lose in a landslide to the Liberals and their leader Jean Charest, an avowed federalist. Nationally, Paul Martin takes over as prime minister in December.
2004 Martin calls for a new June election in the face of another financial scandal. He wins, but there are substantial Liberal losses in Parliament. In Montréal, 15 of the boroughs vote to de-merge from the megacity imposed in 2002.
2005 Continued revelations in the corruption scandal bring about a vote of confidence in the House of Commons in May. The Liberals win by only one vote and lose to the Tories in a January 2006 election. Gay marriage is made legal in all of Canada's provinces and territories.
2006 The television show Little Mosque on the Prairie gives a peek into the religious and cultural issues faced by Québec's large immigrant population.
2007 Jean Charest and his Liberal Party win just a minority number of seats in provincial elections. In second place is the new Action démocratique du Québec party, led by Mario Dumont. The separatist Parti Québécois's anemic third-place showing is perceived as a crushing defeat for both the PQ and the separatist movement.
Note: This information was accurate when it was published, but can change without
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