What was the major conflict over language in Quebec?

Answer 1

The conflict over language has never been solely in Quebec. It is all over Canada because in Quebec people speak French only* and the English-speaking minority is quite small and in almost all other provinces people speak English only and the French-speaking minorities are even smaller so if you look at Quebec alone there is no conflict, people speaks French and they don't bother with languages issues except maybe in downtown Montreal where newly arrived immigrants tend to not speak French .

So in Quebec there was never really a language conflict between citizens of the province. The conflict was between Quebec's provincial government which was largely supported by Quebecers and Canada's federal government which was largely supported by the population of Canada excluding Quebec.

The conflict is hard to define if we consider the fact that it started with the foundation of this country and that it is still going on right now. If we go back to its beginning, the province called Quebec today was originally part of a French colony called New-France which included modern Ontario, maritimes and about 1/3 of the continental United-States territory. The approximative region of modern Quebec was called Lower-Canada. At that time people there spoke French because they were settlers from France. To it's south, Lower-Canada shared borders with the future United-States, the Thirteen-Colonies where people where British settlers. Since France and the Great-Britain were constantly struggling for the control of colonial empires, there was eventually a war between French and English settlers in the name of their motherland. For many reasons that I won't take the time to explain here, French colony was much less populated. At that time the approximation of New-France's population is around 12,000 people while the Thirteen-Colonies had a population of about 300,000. When the Englishmen invaded the city of Quebec and succeeded in their conquest they had France surrendering all of the Canadian territory colonies they had while keeping Louisiana*. When that happened French-speaking citizens of Lower-Canada were given a choice to either leave the colony and go back to France with an equivalent of their goods in money or to stay and become subjects of her majesty the Queen and be British citizens but still have the right to use their own language and practice their own religion which was catholic instead of protestant like the British. Most of them preferred to stay. At that point, even if under British rule, the everyday life in Quebec did not change a lot and language was not an issue. Canadians (at that time French-speaking citizens were called Canadians while English-speaking citizens of Canada were called British) even had their own money. When the American independence war begun, those who were against independence and loyal to Great-Britain, when they realized the revolution was going to be a success, fled to Upper-Canada, which was a former French colony stayed until then with a very low population, which is now known as the province of Ontario. With the Tories (British loyal to her majesty) migrating to Canada, the population of the colony went from mostly French-speaking to about 50/50 in about a decade. That is approximately when the language conflict started.

With a different Demographics came new conflicts. Lower-Canada was still largely populated by Canadians while a British minority was gradually increasing in Montreal, the largest city in Canada at that time and still, the second largest today. At the same time Upper-Canada and eventually all of the unexplored west of the country were largely English-speaking. With English becoming gradually, as officially planned by the British throne, the dominant language the French-speaking minorities outside of Lower-Canada (today's Southern-Quebec) lost their right to study in French. By the end of the 19th century the language demographics were about 60% French and 40% English in what eventually became officially known as the Province of Quebec with most of the English-speaking population living in Montreal. Even then, language was only an issue in the metropolitan area because ethnic groups were extremely divided. French-Canadians (that's the name they were now given) being gradually swallowed by the demographic pressure of the English majority countered their assimilation totally on purpose by having the most children they can. So from the late 18th century to the late 19th century, with families of sometimes over 20 children, French-speaking population went from a few tens of thousands to 2 millions of people. Also with the Industrial Revolution leading rural population to go live in big cities, the demographic evolution of Montreal began to reverse the process and French-Canadian workers made the city a French-speaking city again. By the 1950's Quebec's language demographics were 80% French, 20% English which is about the same as today (79% Francophone, 11% Anglophone and 12% Allophone).

Now the problem was this: Canada being a prominently English-speaking country was making political choices often without the consent of Quebec's population even if they had the same legal right due to their smaller proportion of Canada's population which was about 70% English, 30% French in the early 1900's. French-Canadians were mostly "forgotten" in the important issues and even if they succeeded in their attempt to keep at least Quebec prominently French-speaking, their importance in Canada was rapidly decreasing. By the end of the 1950's, over 90% of French-Canadians were living in Quebec so eventually they began to call themselves Quebecers (Quebecois in French) and eventually adopted their own flag. At this point the English-speaking citizens stopped calling themselves British with the full independence of Canada from the UK to call themselves Canadians which was previously the name of the French speaking citizens.

With Quebecers starting to feel a stronger attachment to their native province than their country, the idea of forming an independent country began more popular. Even though it was not largely supported it was starting to make more noise. Before the 60's the Francophones of Quebec were on average making much less money than Anglophone, were much less educated and were often refused to high education, important jobs and credit or loan because of their cultural background. They then started to protest against this attitude toward them, they abandoned strict religion and started asking for equal rights. This eventually led to the election of the Parti Quebecois in 1976 that was promoting Quebec's independence from Canada and keeping only French as the official language of Quebec wether it was going to be in an independent Quebec or as a part of Canada. The creation of Bill 101 which was largely supported by Quebecois even those who were against independence made not only French the sole official language of Quebec but also made education in French mandatory for any child who's parents did not attend English school in Canada. It also made advertising publicly or stores panels to be in French only or at least 10% larger in French to show the predominance of that language in the province.

This, the bill 101, is the main reason for modern times conflict over language. Even at this day there are a lots of protestations against it and yet it was declared by the supreme court of Canada as acceptable by the constitution. After this was the 1980 and 1995 referendums on independence that ended with Quebec staying part of Canada.

Even today there are issues about the application of Bill 101 and just that week Quebec's government promised to apply it strictly to French language advertising in stores of the Montreal downtown. Yet the Parti Quebecois which is still proposing Quebec's independence is in a good position to win the next provincial elections with a 33% of vote intentions equal to the Liberal party which has about 32%. There are also 2 other separatist parties that get about 10% together. With the Conservative federal government of Stephen Harper being particularly hated in Quebec due to its nomination of English-speaking only ministers and going back to British monarchy, the idea of French language preservation (which is mostly supported by separatists parties) is becoming a major debate in Quebec. The possibility that the Parti Quebecois wins the elections in 2013 would make the language conflict a first stage debate and the possibility of Quebec separating from Canada would make that debate rise to the federal level.