History

First Nations & First Europeans

The first "immigrants" to the region were the Iroquois, who settled in what's now called Québec long before the Europeans arrived. The Vikings landed in Canada more than 1,000 years ago, probably followed by Irish and Basque fishermen. English explorer John Cabot stepped ashore briefly on the east coast in 1497, but it was the French who managed the first meaningful European toehold.

When Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence in 1534, he recognized at once the tremendous strategic potential of Québec City's Cap Diamant (Cape Diamond), the high bluff overlooking the river. But he was exploring, not building an empire, and after stopping briefly on land, he continued on his trip.

Montréal, at the time, was home to a fortified Iroquois village called Hochelaga, composed of 50 longhouses. Cartier was on a sea route to China but was halted by the fierce rapids just west of what is now the Island of Montréal. (In a demonstration of mingled optimism and frustration, he dubbed the rapids "La Chine," assuming that China was just beyond them; even today, they're known as "the Lachine.") He then visited the Indian settlement, landing in what's now Old Montréal and paying his respects to the natives before moving on.

Samuel de Champlain arrived 73 years later, in 1608, motivated by the burgeoning fur trade, obsessed with finding a route to China, and determined to settle Québec. He was perhaps emboldened after the Virginia Company founded its fledgling colony of Jamestown, hundreds of miles to the south, just a year before.

Called "Kebec," Champlain's first settlement, or habitation, grew to become Québec City's Basse-Ville, or Lower Town, and then spread across the flat riverbank beneath the cliffs of Cap Diamant. In 2008, Québec City hosted major celebrations of the 400th anniversary of this outpost's founding.

Champlain would make frequent trips back to France to reassure anxious investors that the project, which he said would eventually "equal the states of greatest kings," was going apace. (He also married a 12-year-old girl during one of those trips.) But the first years were, in truth, bleak. Food was scarce and scurvy ravaged many of the settlers. Demanding winters were far colder than in France. And almost from the beginning, there were hostilities, first between the French and the Iroquois, then between the French and the English (and, later, the Americans). Champlain aligned himself with the Montagnais and Algonquin tribes, participating in battles with the Iroquois. At issue was control of the lucrative trade of the fur of beavers, raccoons, and bears, and the hides of deer; the pelts were shipped off to Paris fashion houses. The commercial battle lasted nearly a century.

To better defend themselves, the Québécois constructed a fortress atop the cape, and gradually the center of urban life moved to the top of the cliffs.

The British and French struggle for dominance in the new continent focused on their explorations, and in this regard, France outdid England. Their far-ranging fur trappers, navigators, soldiers, and missionaries opened up not only Canada but also most of what eventually became the United States, moving all the way south to the future New Orleans and claiming most of the territory to the west, a vast region which later comprised the Louisiana Purchase. At least 35 of the subsequent 50 states were mapped or settled by Frenchmen, who left behind thousands of city names to prove it, including Detroit, St. Louis, New Orleans, Duluth, and Des Moines.

Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, arrived in 1642 to establish a colony and to plant a crucifix atop the hill he called Mont-Royal. He and his band of settlers came ashore and founded Ville-Marie, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, at the spot now marked by Place-Royale in the old part of the city. They built a fort, a chapel, stores, and houses. One settler, the energetic Jeanne Mance, made her indelible mark by founding the Hotel-Dieu-de-Montréal hospital, which still exists today. Pointe-à-Callière, the terrific Montréal Museum of Archaeology and History, is built on the site where the original colony was established.

Life was not easy for the settlers. Unlike the friendly Algonquins who lived in nearby regions, the Iroquois in Montréal had no intention of giving up their land so easily to the new settlers. Fierce battles raged for years. At Place d'Armes today, there's a statue of de Maisonneuve, marking the spot where the settlers defeated the Iroquois in bloody hand-to-hand fighting.

Still, the settlement prospered. Until the 1800s, Montréal was contained in the area known today as Vieux-Montréal. Its ancient walls no longer stand, but its long and colorful past is preserved in the streets, houses, and churches of the Old City.

England Conquers New France

In the 1750s, the struggle between Britain and France had escalated. The latest episode was known as the French and Indian War (an extension of Europe's Seven Years' War), and strategic Québec became a valued prize. The French appointed Louis Joseph, marquis de Montcalm, to command their forces in the town. The British sent an expedition of 4,500 men in a fleet under the command of a 32-year-old general, James Wolfe. The British troops surprised the French by coming up and over the cliffs of Cap Diamant, and the ensuing skirmish for Québec, fought on September 13, 1759, became one of the most important battles in North American history: It resulted in a continent that would be under British influence for more than a century.

Fought on the Plains of Abraham, today a beautiful and much-used city park, the battle lasted just 18 to 25 minutes, depending on whose account you read. It resulted in 600 casualties, including both generals, who died as a result of wounds received. Wolfe lived just long enough to hear that the British had won. Montcalm died a few hours later. Today, a memorial to both men overlooks Terrasse Dufferin in Québec City and is the world's only statue to commemorate both victor and vanquished of the same battle. The inscription, in neither French nor English but Latin, is translated as, simply, "Courage was fatal to them."

The capture of Québec determined the war's course, and the Treaty of Paris in 1763 ceded all of French Canada to England. In a sense, this victory was a bane to Britain: If France had held Canada, the British government might have been more judicious in its treatment of the American colonists. As it was, the British decided to make the colonists pay the costs of the French and Indian War, on the principle that it was their home being defended. Britain slapped so many taxes on all imports that the infuriated U.S. colonists openly rebelled against the crown.

George Washington felt sure that French-Canadians would want to join the American revolt against the British crown, or at least be supportive. He was mistaken on both counts. The Québécois detested their British conquerors, but they were also devout Catholics and saw their contentious neighbors as godless republicans. Only a handful supported the Americans, and three of Washington's most competent commanders came to grief in attacks against Québec and were forced to retreat.

Thirty-eight years later, during the War of 1812, the U.S. army marched up the banks of the Richelieu River where it flows from Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence. Once again, the French-Canadians stuck by the British and drove back the Americans. The war ended essentially in a draw, but it had at least one encouraging result: Britain and the young United States agreed to demilitarize the Great Lakes and to extend their mutual border along the 49th parallel to the Rockies.

The Rise of Separatism in Québec

In 1867, the British North America Act created the federation of the provinces of Québec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. It was a kind of independence for the region from Britain, but was unsettling for many French-Canadians, who wanted autonomy. In 1883, "Je me souviens" -- an ominous "I remember" -- became the province's official motto. From 1900 to 1910, 325,000 French-Canadians emigrated to the United States.

In 1968, the Parti Québécois was founded by Reneé Lévesque, and the separatist movement began in earnest. One attempt to smooth ruffled Francophones (French speakers) was made in 1969, when federal legislation stipulated that all services across Canada were henceforth to be offered in both English and French, in effect declaring the nation bilingual.

That didn't assuage militant Québécois, however. They undertook to guarantee the primacy of French in their own province. To prevent dilution by newcomers, the children of immigrants were required to enroll in French-language schools, even if English or a third language was spoken in the home; this is still the case today.

"When I lived in Montréal in the '60s," wrote Ruth Reichl, the editor of Gourmet magazine, in the March 2006 issue, it "was strangely segregated. The Anglophones I trailed through the staid streets were a proper lot, more English than the English, with their umbrellas and briefcases. They may not have been hurrying home to early tea, but I imagined they were. . . The Jewish community I found in another part of town was an entirely different experience. The people were boisterous, and their streets were rich with the scent of garlic, cloves, and allspice emanating from the mountains of pickles and deliciously rich smoked meat that I spied each time a restaurant door swung open. The French-Canadians had their own territory, too, and they stuck to themselves, speaking their own robust and expressive language. . . What struck me most, as a New Yorker accustomed to the hodgepodge piling up of one culture on another, was the barriers between them. They kept themselves strictly separate, each cleaving to their own language, rituals, and food."

In 1977, Bill 101 passed, all but banning the use of English on public signage. Stop signs now read ARRÊT, a word that actually refers to a stop on a bus or train route. (Even in France, the red signs read STOP.) The bill funded the establishment of enforcement units, a virtual language police who let no nit go unpicked. The resulting backlash provoked the flight of an estimated 400,000 Anglophones to other parts of Canada.

In 1987, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney met with the 10 provincial premiers at a retreat at Québec's Meech Lake to cobble together a collection of constitutional reforms. The Meech Lake Accord, as it came to be known, addressed a variety of issues, but most important to the Québécois was that it recognized Québec as a "distinct society" within the federation. In the end, however, Manitoba and Newfoundland failed to ratify the accord by the June 23, 1990, deadline.

As a result, support for the secessionist cause burgeoned in Québec, fueled by an election that firmly placed the separatist Parti Québécois in control of the provincial government. A referendum held in 1995 was narrowly won in favor of residents who preferred to stay within the Canadian union, but the vote settled nothing. The issue continued to divide families and dominate political discourse.

The year 2007 may have marked the beginning of the end the issue, however. In provincial elections, the Parti Québécois placed third with just 28% of the vote. The election was perceived by many as the first step in closing the door on the campaign for independence. And it's a symbol of what many visitors now find in the cities: a meshing and merging of cultures that feels new and exciting.

As Gourmet's Reichl put it in that March 2006 essay, "It was a shock to return last year and discover that the city has completely transformed itself. Montréal is now the most bilingual city in the world, a place where every citizen seems equally at home in French and English. This change is about much more than mere language, however. Today, all the barriers seem to have melted away, allowing the inhabitants to come together and embrace one another's cultures."

Québécois, it's worth noting, are exceedingly gracious hosts. Montréal may be the largest French-speaking city outside Paris, but most Montréalers switch effortlessly from one language to the other as the situation dictates. Telephone operators go from French to English the instant they hear an English word out of the other party, as do most store clerks, waiters, and hotel staff. This is less the case in country villages and in Québec City, but for visitors, there is virtually no problem that can't be solved with a few French words, some expressive gestures, and a little goodwill.

• In 1968, Reneé Lévesque and the separatist movement founded the Parti Québécois (PQ) in an earnest attempt to make Québec independent from the rest of Canada.
• In 1976, the PQ came to power in Québec, remaining so until 1985.
• The PQ regained power from the Liberals in 1994 and held it more or less consistently through 2003.
• Forty years after its founding, the PQ suffered an anemic third-place showing in 2007 provincial elections. This was perceived by many as a crushing defeat for both the party and the separatist movement.

March of the Language Police (or La Police de Langue) -- When the separatist Parti Québécois took power in the province in 1976, it wasted no time in attempting to make Québec unilingual. Bill 101 made French the provincial government's sole official language and sharply restricted the use of other languages in education and commerce.

While the party's fortunes have fallen and risen and fallen (the 2007 elections saw its worst showing ever), the primacy of Française has remained.

In the early days, agents of L'Office de la Langue Française fanned out across the territory, scouring the landscape for linguistic insults to the state and her people. Merry Christmas signs were removed from storefronts, and department stores had to come up with a new name for Harris Tweed.

Because about 20% of the population spoke English as a primary language, one out of five Québécois felt instantly declared second-class citizens. Francophones responded that it was about time les Anglais -- also known as les autres (the others) -- knew what it felt like.

Affected, too, was the food world. By fiat and threat of punishment, hamburgers became hambourgeois and hot dog was rechristened chiens chaud. And Schwartz's Montréal Hebrew Delicatessen (one of the city's fixtures since 1928)? It became Chez Schwartz Charcuterie Hébraïque de Montréal.