This AAR will use the Modern Day Scenario,
I'll play as Canada untill 2008, then i'll switch to Quebec.
I think no one never did that so it may be interesting.
Note: most of the 1st first post if from Wiki, my poor english is too limited to write all that story myself.
o
Decicated to my Homeland.
The discovery of America in 1492 by a Spanish expedition opened a new era for Europe. Soon, the Spaniards conquered the vast Aztecs and Incas Empires, and began to colonise South and Central America. In the same period the small kingdom of Portugal opened its own colonial adventure and settled in this new world.
The other Europeans states where also interested by thoses strange regions. But their first objectives where to find a new way to reach Asia, something Spain failed to do. In 1534, the ambitious king François I of France hired a Briton Captain Jacques Cartiers to discover a 'Northern pass' to open trades with rich Asian countries. Two months later, Jacques reach a new continent, and decide to take the control of it in the name of his country. He order his crew to build a giant cross of wood and wrote 'Vive le Roy de France' on it. After exploring a vast bay, he return home without gold or any new road to Asia. This first travel was a failure, but the King was interested into colonisation to prove to his rival, the Spanish king, than France was a great power. A 2nd travel allowed Jacques to discover a large river, wich he called the Saint-Laurent (St-Lawrence). This river was leading to many great lakes, and the French strongly beleived than beyond the lakes, another river was going to Asia. In 1541, he left France for a 3rd time and established the city of Charlesbourg-Royal, near a great cape. The region was called 'Kebek' by the natives, wich mean 'strait' or the shortest point of a river. But the Spaniard, natives and internal rivalities finally lead to the failure of the 3rd expedition. The French governement was deeply deceived, as he invested alot of money in that project. French colonisation of North America will be stoped untill the 1600'.
Samuel de Champlain was part of a 1603 expedition from France that traveled into the St. Lawrence River. In 1608, he returned as head of an exploration party and founded Quebec City with the intention of making the area part of the French colonial empire. Champlain's Habitation de Quebec, built as a permanent fur trading outpost, was where he would forge a trading, and ultimately a military alliance, with the Algonquin and Huron nations. Natives traded their furs for many French goods such as metal objects, guns, alcohol, and clothing.
From Quebec, Voyageurs, Coureurs des bois, and Catholic missionaries used river canoes to explore the interior of the North American continent, establishing fur trading forts on the Great Lakes (Étienne Brûlé 1615), Hudson Bay (Radisson and Groseilliers 1659-60), Ohio and Mississippi Rivers (La Salle 1682), as well as the Prairies and Missouri River (de la Verendrye 1734-1738).
After 1627, King Louis XIII of France introduced the seigneurial system and forbade settlement in New France by anyone other than Roman Catholics. Sulpician and Jesuit clerics founded missions in Trois Rivières (Laviolette) and Montréal or Ville-Marie (Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance) to convert New France's Huron and Algonkian allies to Catholicism. The seigneurial system of governing New France also encouraged immigration from the motherland.
New France became a Royal Province in 1663 under King Louis XIV of France with a Sovereign Council that included intendant Jean Talon. This ushered in a golden era of settlement and colonization in New France. The population would grow from about 3,000 to 60,000 people between 1666 and 1760. Colonists built farms on the banks of St. Lawrence River and called themselves "Canadiens" or "Habitants". The colony's total population was limited, however, by a winter climate significantly harsher than that found in France; by the spread of diseases; and by the refusal of the French crown to allow Huguenots, or French Protestants, to settle. The population of New France lagged far behind that of the 13 Colonies to the south, leaving it vulnerable to attack.
In 1753 France began building a series of forts in the British Ohio Country. They refused to leave after being notified by the British Governor and in 1754 George Washington launched an attack on the French Fort Duquesne (now Pittsburgh) in the Ohio Valley in an attempt to enforce the British claim to take territory. This frontier battle set the stage for the French and Indian War in North America. By 1756, France and Britain were battling the Seven Years' War worldwide. In 1758, the British mounted an attack on New France by sea and took the French fort at Louisbourg.
On 13 September 1759, General Wolfe defeated General Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec City. France ceded its North American possessions to Great Britain through the Treaty of Paris (1763). By the British Royal Proclamation of 1763, Canada (part of New France) was renamed the Province of Quebec.
In 1774, fearful that the French-speaking population of Quebec (as the colony was now called) would side with the rebels of the 13 Colonies to the south, the British Parliament passed the Quebec Act giving recognition to French law, Catholic religion and French language in the colony; before that Catholics had been excluded from public office and recruitment of priests and brothers forbidden, effectively shutting down Quebec's schools and colleges. The first British policy of assimilation (1763-1774) was a failure. Both the petitions and demands of the Canadiens' élites, and Governor Guy Carleton, played an important part in convincing London of dropping the assimilation scheme, but the looming American revolt was certainly a factor. By the Quebec Act, the Quebec people obtained their first Charter of rights. That paved the way to later official recognition of the French language and French culture. The Act allowed Canadiens to maintain French civil law and sanctioned the freedom of religious choice, allowing the Roman Catholic Church to remain. It also restored the Ohio Valley to Quebec, reserving the territory for the fur trade.
The act, designed to placate one North American colony, had the opposite effect among its neighbors to the south. The Quebec Act was among the Intolerable Acts that infuriated American colonists, who launched the American Revolution. A 1775 invasion by the American Continental Army met with early success, but was later repelled at Quebec City. However, the American Revolutionary War was ultimately successful in winning the independence of the Thirteen Colonies. With the Treaty of Paris (1783), Quebec would cede its territory south of the Great Lakes to the new United States of America.
Like their counterparts in Upper Canada, in 1837, English and French speaking residents of Lower Canada, led by Louis-Joseph Papineau and Robert Nelson, formed an armed resistance group to seek an end to British colonial rule. They made a Declaration of rights with equality for all citizens without discrimination, and a Declaration of Independence in 1838. Their actions resulted in rebellions in both Lower and Upper Canada. An unprepared British Army had to raise a local militia force and the rebel forces were soon defeated after having scored a victory in Saint-Denis, Quebec, east of Montreal. The British army also burned alive the rebels who were hiding in the Church of St-Eustache. The bullet and cannonball marks on the walls of the church are still visible to this day.
After the rebellions, Lord Durham was asked to undertake a study and prepare a report on the matter and to offer a solution for the British Parliament to assess. The final report recommended that the population of Lower Canada be assimilated. Following Durham's Report, the British government merged the two colonial provinces into one Province of Canada in 1841. However, the union proved contentious. Reformers in both Canada West (formerly Upper Canada) and Canada East (formerly Lower Canada) worked to repeal limitations on the use of the French language in the Legislature. The two colonies remained distinct in administration, election, and law. In 1849, Baldwin and LaFontaine, allies and leaders of the Reformist party, obtained the grant (from Lord Elgin) for responsible government and returned the French language to legal status in the Legislature.
In the 1860s, the delegates from the colonies of British North America (Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland) met in a series of conferences to discuss self-governing status for a new confederation. As a result of those deliberations, in 1867 the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the British North America Act, providing for the Confederation of most of these provinces. The former Province of Canada was divided into its two previous parts as the provinces of Ontario (Upper Canada) and Quebec (Lower Canada). New Brunswick and Nova Scotia joined Ontario and Quebec in the new Dominion of Canada. Prince Edward Island joined in 1873 and the Dominion of Newfoundland entered Confederation in 1949.
Jonh A. Macdonald, first prime minister of Canada
When World War I broke out in 1914, all of the Commonwealth nations, including Canada, were called upon by Great Britain to fight on behalf of the British Empire. Canada's sacrifices and contributions to the war changed its history and enabled it to become more independent, while opening a deep rift between the French and English speaking populations. For the first time in its history, Canadian forces fought as a distinct unit under a Canadian-born commander. Battles such as Vimy Ridge, Second Battle of Passchendaele and the Battle of the Somme are still remembered today by Canadians as part of Canada's founding myth, to both its identity and culture.
Canadians at the battle of Vimy
In 1939, Canada was a fully autonomous (though not independent) country, the most senior of the British Dominions, and a nation that was, for the most part, reluctant to return to war. Nonetheless, Canadians entered the Second World War united, and from a population of only 12 million, eventually raised very substantial armed forces. Over the course of the war, 1.1 million Canadians served in the army, navy, and air force. Of these more than 40,000 gave their lives and another 55,000 were wounded. Countless other Canadians shared in the suffering and the hardships of war at home and abroad. After the long struggle of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the challenges of the Second World War accelerated Canada's ongoing transformation into a modern urban and industrialized nation.
The conservative government of Maurice Duplessis and his Union Nationale dominated Quebec politics from 1944 to 1960 with the support of the Roman Catholic church. Pierre Trudeau and other liberals formed an intellectual opposition to Duplessis's regime, setting the groundwork for the Quiet Revolution under Jean Lesage's Liberals. The Quiet Revolution was a period of dramatic social and political change that saw the decline of Anglo supremacy in the Quebec economy, the decline of the Roman Catholic Church's influence, the nationalization of hydro-electric companies under Hydro-Québec and the emergence of a sovereignist movement under former Liberal minister René Lévesque.
The Quiet Revolution has been described by some people as the time when everyone stopped going to church; so that by the end of 1963 the Catholic churches were virtually empty. Whether this is a factual comment or simply an expression of the felt change that Quebec was going through at the time, it provides a telling commentary to the widespread change that the people in Quebec underwent during the Quiet Revolution. The period spawned a a significant movement for statehood which resulted in two referendums (in 1980 and 1995) which rejected sovereignty-association.
Beginning in 1963, a terrorist group that became known as the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) launched a decade of bombings, robberies and attacks directed primarily at English institutions, resulting in at least five deaths. In 1970, their activities culminated in events referred to as the October Crisis [3] when James Cross, the British trade commissioner to Canada, was kidnapped along with Pierre Laporte, a provincial minister and Vice-Premier, who was murdered a few days later. In their published Manifesto, the terrorists stated: "In the coming year Bourassa (Quebec Premier) will have to face reality; 100,000 revolutionary workers, armed and organized."
René Lévesque
In 1977, the newly elected Parti Québécois government of René Lévesque introduced the Charter of the French Language. Often known as Bill 101, it defined French as the only official language of Quebec in areas of provincial jurisdiction.
Lévesque and his party had run in the 1970 and 1973 Quebec elections under a platform of separating Quebec from the rest of Canada. The party failed to win control of Quebec's National Assembly both times — though its share of the vote increased from 23% to 30% — and Lévesque himself was defeated both times in the riding he contested. In the 1976 election, he softened his message by promising a referendum (plebiscite) on sovereignty-association rather than outright separation, by which Quebec would have independence in most government functions but share some other ones, such as a common currency, with Canada. On November 15, 1976, Lévesque and the Parti Québécois won control of the provincial government for the first time. The question of sovereignty-association was placed before the voters in the 1980 Quebec referendum. During the campaign, Pierre Trudeau promised that a vote for the NO side was a vote for reforming Canada. Trudeau advocated the patriation of Canada's Constitution from the United Kingdom. The existing constitutional document, the British North America Act, could only be amended by the United Kingdom Parliament upon a request by the Canadian parliament.
Sixty percent of the Quebec electorate voted against the proposition. Polls showed that the overwhelming majority of English and immigrant Quebecers voted against, and that French Quebecers were almost equally divided, with older voters less in favour, and younger voters more in favour. After his loss in the referendum, Lévesque went back to Ottawa to start negotiating a new constitution with Trudeau, his minister of Justice Jean Chrétien and the nine other provincial premiers. Lévesque insisted Quebec be able to veto any future constitutional amendments. The negotiations quickly reached a stand-still.
Then on the night of November 4, 1981 (widely known in Quebec as La nuit des longs couteaux or the "Night of the Long Knives"'), Pierre Elliott Trudeau met all the provincial premiers except René Lévesque to sign the document that would eventually become the new Canadian constitution. The next morning, they put Lévesque in front of the "fait accompli." Lévesque refused to sign the document, and returned to Quebec. In 1982, Trudeau had the new constitution approved by the British Parliament, with Quebec's signature still missing (a situation that persists to this day). The Supreme Court of Canada confirmed Trudeau's assertion that every province's approval is not required to amend the constitution.
In subsequent years, two attempts were made to gain Quebec's approval of the constitution. The first was the Meech Lake Accord of 1987, which was finally abandoned in 1990 when the provinces of Manitoba and Newfoundland refused to support it. This led to the formation of the sovereignist Bloc Québécois party in Ottawa under the leadership of Lucien Bouchard, who had resigned from the federal cabinet. The second attempt, the Charlottetown Accord of 1992, was rejected by 56.7% of all Canadians and 57% of Quebecers. This result caused a split in the Quebec Liberal Party that led to the formation of the new Action Démocratique (Democratic Action) party led by Mario Dumont and Jean Allaire.
On October 30, 1995, with the Parti Québécois back in power since 1994, a second referendum on sovereignty took place. This time, it was rejected by a slim majority (50.6% NO to 49.4% YES); a clear majority of French-speaking Quebecers voted in favour of sovereignty.
The referendum was enshrouded in controversy. Federalists complained that an unusually high number of ballots had been rejected in pro-federalist areas, notably in the largely Jewish and Greek riding of Chomedey (11.7 % or 5,500 of its ballots were spoiled, compared to 750 or 1.7% in the general election of 1994) although Quebec's chief electoral officer found no evidence of outright fraud. The Government of Canada was accused of not respecting provincial laws with regard to spending during referendums (leading to a corruption scandal that would become public a decade later, greatly damaging the Liberal Party's standing), and to having accelerated the naturalization of immigrant people living in the province of Quebec (43,850 immigrants were naturalized in 1995, whereas the average number between 1988 and 1998 was 21,733).
The same night of the referendum, an angry Jacques Parizeau, then premier and leader of the "Yes" side, declared that the loss was due to "money and the ethnic vote". Parizeau resigned over public outrage and as per his commitment to do so in case of a loss. Lucien Bouchard became Quebec's new premier in his place.
Federalists accused the sovereignist side of asking a vague, overly complicated question on the ballot. Its English text read as follows:
Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership within the scope of the bill respecting the future of Quebec and of the agreement signed on June 12, 1995?
After winning the next election, Bouchard retired from politics in 2001. Bernard Landry was then appointed leader of the Parti Québécois and premier of Quebec. In 2003, Landry lost the election to the Quebec Liberal Party and Jean Charest. Landry stepped down as PQ leader in 2005, and in a crowded race for the party leadership, André Boisclair was elected to succeed him. The PQ has promised to hold another referendum should it return to government.
Sorry if it a very long text, but its interesting to understand the past before writing the future. Its like playing HoI without knowing nothing from WWI. That long prologue is over, and, don't worry, the rest of the AAR will be less complex
I'll play as Canada untill 2008, then i'll switch to Quebec.
I think no one never did that so it may be interesting.
Note: most of the 1st first post if from Wiki, my poor english is too limited to write all that story myself.
o Decicated to my Homeland.
__________________________________
Prologue
History of Quebec
Prologue
History of Quebec
1534 - 2003
The discovery of America in 1492 by a Spanish expedition opened a new era for Europe. Soon, the Spaniards conquered the vast Aztecs and Incas Empires, and began to colonise South and Central America. In the same period the small kingdom of Portugal opened its own colonial adventure and settled in this new world.
The other Europeans states where also interested by thoses strange regions. But their first objectives where to find a new way to reach Asia, something Spain failed to do. In 1534, the ambitious king François I of France hired a Briton Captain Jacques Cartiers to discover a 'Northern pass' to open trades with rich Asian countries. Two months later, Jacques reach a new continent, and decide to take the control of it in the name of his country. He order his crew to build a giant cross of wood and wrote 'Vive le Roy de France' on it. After exploring a vast bay, he return home without gold or any new road to Asia. This first travel was a failure, but the King was interested into colonisation to prove to his rival, the Spanish king, than France was a great power. A 2nd travel allowed Jacques to discover a large river, wich he called the Saint-Laurent (St-Lawrence). This river was leading to many great lakes, and the French strongly beleived than beyond the lakes, another river was going to Asia. In 1541, he left France for a 3rd time and established the city of Charlesbourg-Royal, near a great cape. The region was called 'Kebek' by the natives, wich mean 'strait' or the shortest point of a river. But the Spaniard, natives and internal rivalities finally lead to the failure of the 3rd expedition. The French governement was deeply deceived, as he invested alot of money in that project. French colonisation of North America will be stoped untill the 1600'.
Samuel de Champlain was part of a 1603 expedition from France that traveled into the St. Lawrence River. In 1608, he returned as head of an exploration party and founded Quebec City with the intention of making the area part of the French colonial empire. Champlain's Habitation de Quebec, built as a permanent fur trading outpost, was where he would forge a trading, and ultimately a military alliance, with the Algonquin and Huron nations. Natives traded their furs for many French goods such as metal objects, guns, alcohol, and clothing.
From Quebec, Voyageurs, Coureurs des bois, and Catholic missionaries used river canoes to explore the interior of the North American continent, establishing fur trading forts on the Great Lakes (Étienne Brûlé 1615), Hudson Bay (Radisson and Groseilliers 1659-60), Ohio and Mississippi Rivers (La Salle 1682), as well as the Prairies and Missouri River (de la Verendrye 1734-1738).
After 1627, King Louis XIII of France introduced the seigneurial system and forbade settlement in New France by anyone other than Roman Catholics. Sulpician and Jesuit clerics founded missions in Trois Rivières (Laviolette) and Montréal or Ville-Marie (Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance) to convert New France's Huron and Algonkian allies to Catholicism. The seigneurial system of governing New France also encouraged immigration from the motherland.
New France became a Royal Province in 1663 under King Louis XIV of France with a Sovereign Council that included intendant Jean Talon. This ushered in a golden era of settlement and colonization in New France. The population would grow from about 3,000 to 60,000 people between 1666 and 1760. Colonists built farms on the banks of St. Lawrence River and called themselves "Canadiens" or "Habitants". The colony's total population was limited, however, by a winter climate significantly harsher than that found in France; by the spread of diseases; and by the refusal of the French crown to allow Huguenots, or French Protestants, to settle. The population of New France lagged far behind that of the 13 Colonies to the south, leaving it vulnerable to attack.
In 1753 France began building a series of forts in the British Ohio Country. They refused to leave after being notified by the British Governor and in 1754 George Washington launched an attack on the French Fort Duquesne (now Pittsburgh) in the Ohio Valley in an attempt to enforce the British claim to take territory. This frontier battle set the stage for the French and Indian War in North America. By 1756, France and Britain were battling the Seven Years' War worldwide. In 1758, the British mounted an attack on New France by sea and took the French fort at Louisbourg.
On 13 September 1759, General Wolfe defeated General Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec City. France ceded its North American possessions to Great Britain through the Treaty of Paris (1763). By the British Royal Proclamation of 1763, Canada (part of New France) was renamed the Province of Quebec.
In 1774, fearful that the French-speaking population of Quebec (as the colony was now called) would side with the rebels of the 13 Colonies to the south, the British Parliament passed the Quebec Act giving recognition to French law, Catholic religion and French language in the colony; before that Catholics had been excluded from public office and recruitment of priests and brothers forbidden, effectively shutting down Quebec's schools and colleges. The first British policy of assimilation (1763-1774) was a failure. Both the petitions and demands of the Canadiens' élites, and Governor Guy Carleton, played an important part in convincing London of dropping the assimilation scheme, but the looming American revolt was certainly a factor. By the Quebec Act, the Quebec people obtained their first Charter of rights. That paved the way to later official recognition of the French language and French culture. The Act allowed Canadiens to maintain French civil law and sanctioned the freedom of religious choice, allowing the Roman Catholic Church to remain. It also restored the Ohio Valley to Quebec, reserving the territory for the fur trade.
The act, designed to placate one North American colony, had the opposite effect among its neighbors to the south. The Quebec Act was among the Intolerable Acts that infuriated American colonists, who launched the American Revolution. A 1775 invasion by the American Continental Army met with early success, but was later repelled at Quebec City. However, the American Revolutionary War was ultimately successful in winning the independence of the Thirteen Colonies. With the Treaty of Paris (1783), Quebec would cede its territory south of the Great Lakes to the new United States of America.
Like their counterparts in Upper Canada, in 1837, English and French speaking residents of Lower Canada, led by Louis-Joseph Papineau and Robert Nelson, formed an armed resistance group to seek an end to British colonial rule. They made a Declaration of rights with equality for all citizens without discrimination, and a Declaration of Independence in 1838. Their actions resulted in rebellions in both Lower and Upper Canada. An unprepared British Army had to raise a local militia force and the rebel forces were soon defeated after having scored a victory in Saint-Denis, Quebec, east of Montreal. The British army also burned alive the rebels who were hiding in the Church of St-Eustache. The bullet and cannonball marks on the walls of the church are still visible to this day.
After the rebellions, Lord Durham was asked to undertake a study and prepare a report on the matter and to offer a solution for the British Parliament to assess. The final report recommended that the population of Lower Canada be assimilated. Following Durham's Report, the British government merged the two colonial provinces into one Province of Canada in 1841. However, the union proved contentious. Reformers in both Canada West (formerly Upper Canada) and Canada East (formerly Lower Canada) worked to repeal limitations on the use of the French language in the Legislature. The two colonies remained distinct in administration, election, and law. In 1849, Baldwin and LaFontaine, allies and leaders of the Reformist party, obtained the grant (from Lord Elgin) for responsible government and returned the French language to legal status in the Legislature.
In the 1860s, the delegates from the colonies of British North America (Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland) met in a series of conferences to discuss self-governing status for a new confederation. As a result of those deliberations, in 1867 the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the British North America Act, providing for the Confederation of most of these provinces. The former Province of Canada was divided into its two previous parts as the provinces of Ontario (Upper Canada) and Quebec (Lower Canada). New Brunswick and Nova Scotia joined Ontario and Quebec in the new Dominion of Canada. Prince Edward Island joined in 1873 and the Dominion of Newfoundland entered Confederation in 1949.
Jonh A. Macdonald, first prime minister of Canada
When World War I broke out in 1914, all of the Commonwealth nations, including Canada, were called upon by Great Britain to fight on behalf of the British Empire. Canada's sacrifices and contributions to the war changed its history and enabled it to become more independent, while opening a deep rift between the French and English speaking populations. For the first time in its history, Canadian forces fought as a distinct unit under a Canadian-born commander. Battles such as Vimy Ridge, Second Battle of Passchendaele and the Battle of the Somme are still remembered today by Canadians as part of Canada's founding myth, to both its identity and culture.
Canadians at the battle of Vimy
In 1939, Canada was a fully autonomous (though not independent) country, the most senior of the British Dominions, and a nation that was, for the most part, reluctant to return to war. Nonetheless, Canadians entered the Second World War united, and from a population of only 12 million, eventually raised very substantial armed forces. Over the course of the war, 1.1 million Canadians served in the army, navy, and air force. Of these more than 40,000 gave their lives and another 55,000 were wounded. Countless other Canadians shared in the suffering and the hardships of war at home and abroad. After the long struggle of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the challenges of the Second World War accelerated Canada's ongoing transformation into a modern urban and industrialized nation.
The conservative government of Maurice Duplessis and his Union Nationale dominated Quebec politics from 1944 to 1960 with the support of the Roman Catholic church. Pierre Trudeau and other liberals formed an intellectual opposition to Duplessis's regime, setting the groundwork for the Quiet Revolution under Jean Lesage's Liberals. The Quiet Revolution was a period of dramatic social and political change that saw the decline of Anglo supremacy in the Quebec economy, the decline of the Roman Catholic Church's influence, the nationalization of hydro-electric companies under Hydro-Québec and the emergence of a sovereignist movement under former Liberal minister René Lévesque.
The Quiet Revolution has been described by some people as the time when everyone stopped going to church; so that by the end of 1963 the Catholic churches were virtually empty. Whether this is a factual comment or simply an expression of the felt change that Quebec was going through at the time, it provides a telling commentary to the widespread change that the people in Quebec underwent during the Quiet Revolution. The period spawned a a significant movement for statehood which resulted in two referendums (in 1980 and 1995) which rejected sovereignty-association.
Beginning in 1963, a terrorist group that became known as the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) launched a decade of bombings, robberies and attacks directed primarily at English institutions, resulting in at least five deaths. In 1970, their activities culminated in events referred to as the October Crisis [3] when James Cross, the British trade commissioner to Canada, was kidnapped along with Pierre Laporte, a provincial minister and Vice-Premier, who was murdered a few days later. In their published Manifesto, the terrorists stated: "In the coming year Bourassa (Quebec Premier) will have to face reality; 100,000 revolutionary workers, armed and organized."
René Lévesque
In 1977, the newly elected Parti Québécois government of René Lévesque introduced the Charter of the French Language. Often known as Bill 101, it defined French as the only official language of Quebec in areas of provincial jurisdiction.
Lévesque and his party had run in the 1970 and 1973 Quebec elections under a platform of separating Quebec from the rest of Canada. The party failed to win control of Quebec's National Assembly both times — though its share of the vote increased from 23% to 30% — and Lévesque himself was defeated both times in the riding he contested. In the 1976 election, he softened his message by promising a referendum (plebiscite) on sovereignty-association rather than outright separation, by which Quebec would have independence in most government functions but share some other ones, such as a common currency, with Canada. On November 15, 1976, Lévesque and the Parti Québécois won control of the provincial government for the first time. The question of sovereignty-association was placed before the voters in the 1980 Quebec referendum. During the campaign, Pierre Trudeau promised that a vote for the NO side was a vote for reforming Canada. Trudeau advocated the patriation of Canada's Constitution from the United Kingdom. The existing constitutional document, the British North America Act, could only be amended by the United Kingdom Parliament upon a request by the Canadian parliament.
Sixty percent of the Quebec electorate voted against the proposition. Polls showed that the overwhelming majority of English and immigrant Quebecers voted against, and that French Quebecers were almost equally divided, with older voters less in favour, and younger voters more in favour. After his loss in the referendum, Lévesque went back to Ottawa to start negotiating a new constitution with Trudeau, his minister of Justice Jean Chrétien and the nine other provincial premiers. Lévesque insisted Quebec be able to veto any future constitutional amendments. The negotiations quickly reached a stand-still.
Then on the night of November 4, 1981 (widely known in Quebec as La nuit des longs couteaux or the "Night of the Long Knives"'), Pierre Elliott Trudeau met all the provincial premiers except René Lévesque to sign the document that would eventually become the new Canadian constitution. The next morning, they put Lévesque in front of the "fait accompli." Lévesque refused to sign the document, and returned to Quebec. In 1982, Trudeau had the new constitution approved by the British Parliament, with Quebec's signature still missing (a situation that persists to this day). The Supreme Court of Canada confirmed Trudeau's assertion that every province's approval is not required to amend the constitution.
In subsequent years, two attempts were made to gain Quebec's approval of the constitution. The first was the Meech Lake Accord of 1987, which was finally abandoned in 1990 when the provinces of Manitoba and Newfoundland refused to support it. This led to the formation of the sovereignist Bloc Québécois party in Ottawa under the leadership of Lucien Bouchard, who had resigned from the federal cabinet. The second attempt, the Charlottetown Accord of 1992, was rejected by 56.7% of all Canadians and 57% of Quebecers. This result caused a split in the Quebec Liberal Party that led to the formation of the new Action Démocratique (Democratic Action) party led by Mario Dumont and Jean Allaire.
On October 30, 1995, with the Parti Québécois back in power since 1994, a second referendum on sovereignty took place. This time, it was rejected by a slim majority (50.6% NO to 49.4% YES); a clear majority of French-speaking Quebecers voted in favour of sovereignty.
The referendum was enshrouded in controversy. Federalists complained that an unusually high number of ballots had been rejected in pro-federalist areas, notably in the largely Jewish and Greek riding of Chomedey (11.7 % or 5,500 of its ballots were spoiled, compared to 750 or 1.7% in the general election of 1994) although Quebec's chief electoral officer found no evidence of outright fraud. The Government of Canada was accused of not respecting provincial laws with regard to spending during referendums (leading to a corruption scandal that would become public a decade later, greatly damaging the Liberal Party's standing), and to having accelerated the naturalization of immigrant people living in the province of Quebec (43,850 immigrants were naturalized in 1995, whereas the average number between 1988 and 1998 was 21,733).
The same night of the referendum, an angry Jacques Parizeau, then premier and leader of the "Yes" side, declared that the loss was due to "money and the ethnic vote". Parizeau resigned over public outrage and as per his commitment to do so in case of a loss. Lucien Bouchard became Quebec's new premier in his place.
Federalists accused the sovereignist side of asking a vague, overly complicated question on the ballot. Its English text read as follows:
Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership within the scope of the bill respecting the future of Quebec and of the agreement signed on June 12, 1995?
After winning the next election, Bouchard retired from politics in 2001. Bernard Landry was then appointed leader of the Parti Québécois and premier of Quebec. In 2003, Landry lost the election to the Quebec Liberal Party and Jean Charest. Landry stepped down as PQ leader in 2005, and in a crowded race for the party leadership, André Boisclair was elected to succeed him. The PQ has promised to hold another referendum should it return to government.
----------------------------------------------
Sorry if it a very long text, but its interesting to understand the past before writing the future. Its like playing HoI without knowing nothing from WWI. That long prologue is over, and, don't worry, the rest of the AAR will be less complex
