Province of Quebec

“ I cannot speak of the place as an engineer, but only as a tourist, and the tourist is chiefly concerned with the view. This is altogether superb, and if Quebec is not the most picturesque city in America, this is no fault of its incomparable site. Perched on its mountain of rock, washed by a river as free and ample as an ocean-gulf, sweeping from its embattled crest, the villages, the forests, the blue undulations of the imperial province of which it is warden—as it has managed from our scanty annals to squeeze out a past, you pray in the name of all that's majestic that it may have a future. ”

“ For some years after the conquest, the form of government was purely military. It was, indeed, only in 1774, that two Acts were passed by the British government, one with the view of providing a revenue for the civil government of the Province of Quebec, as the whole of Canada was then termed, the other, called "The Quebec Act," defining the boundaries of the Province, setting aside all the provisions of the Royal proclamation, of 1763, and appointing a governing Council of not more than twenty-three, nor less than seventeen persons. ”

“ The province of Quebec was formerly a vast forest, and the lumber trade is still its most important industry. Its inhabitants are chiefly of French origin, and they still cling to the language and customs of their ancestors. The French Canadian does not seem to move with the stream of time. ”

“ Beginning, therefore, with Quebec,—which although ocean-swept and geographically maritime, is not one of the Maritime Provinces,—and proceeding east, a brief survey is now made of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia inclusive of Cape Breton.
The Province of Quebec is highly diversified and mountainous, and full of ever-changing pictures of great beauty. Its eastern borders are famed for their fine highland scenery, picturesque lakes and romantic glens. In many parts the scenery is majestic, with everything 8 on a grand scale ”

“ Quebec is blamed for being the great obstacle to the realization of the dreams of our nationalizers. Quebec, we maintain, is the most sane Province of the Dominion, and the greatest help to the maintenance of Confederation. This is now an admitted fact by every serious and broad minded Canadian. ”

“ And be it further enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That all His Majesty's Canadian Subjects within the Province of Quebec, the religious orders and Communities only excepted, may also hold and enjoy their Property and Possessions, together with all Customs and Usages relative thereto, and all other their Civil Rights, in as large, ample, and beneficial Manner, as if the said Proclamation, Commissions, Ordinances, and other Acts and Instruments had not been made, and as may consist with their Allegiance to His Majesty, and Subjection to the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain ”

“ Economically and technologically the nation has developed in parallel with the US, its neighbor to the south across an unfortified border. Its paramount political problem continues to be the relationship of the province of Quebec, with its French-speaking residents and unique culture, to the remainder of the country. ”

“ The existence of the present Constitutions of the two Provinces for nearly thirty years without any misunderstanding with regard to trade and revenue, is the best proof that these differences were not a necessary consequence of the division of the late Province of Quebec. It is neither necessary nor practicable that the inhabitants of countries lying on the same extensive rivers, forming their natural outlet to the sea, should be under the same Government. ”

“ The city of Quebec is the capital of the province from which it derives its name, and once, long years ago, it was the capital of all Canada, and is still known as "The ancient capital."
It is certainly a very picturesque part of the New World, and not the least interesting are the French Canadian people, descendent of the early voyageurs who came to this corner of the globe as early as the year 1535 A. D. One still finds in lower Canada the same spirit that kept up the fight for the Fleur de lis long after the "few acres of snow" had been abandoned by the French King, Louis Fourteenth. ”

“ The census of 1911 showed a total of nearly two million three thousand persons, of whom the males outnumbered the females by almost twenty thousand; and the gain during the preceding decade was greater than in any other eastern province. Four-fifths of the people in Quebec are French-speaking, and of these 70 per cent. live in villages and rural districts.
Quebec is a beautiful province of mountain and valley, forest, lake and river. It was along the rivers and the coasts of the gulf that its settlement first began. In fact, it was the St. Lawrence that made New France ”

“ The thirteen revolted colonies had become an independent nation, had started on their national career under favourable auspices, and had already become a thriving and prosperous community. The Province of Quebec, which then included the whole of what afterwards became Upper and Lower Canada, had to contend with many disadvantages, and its condition was in many important respects far behind that of the American Republic. ”

“ Enlarged understanding between the two peoples of the country will produce a national life marked by courage, energy, integrity, and imagination. Though Quebec has ceased to be an administrative centre of the nation, the influence of the people of her province grows no less, but is woven more and more into the web of the general progress. The Empire will do well to set an enduring value on that New France so hardly won from a great people, and English Canada will reap rich reward for every compromise of racial pride made in the interests of peace, equality, and justice. ”

“ The French inhabitants of the province were granted the liberty to profess “the religion of the Church of Rome”; the French civil law was established, though in criminal law the English code was introduced. Government was vested in a governor and council, a representative assembly not being granted till the Constitutional Act of 1791.
The granting of part of the Western territory to Quebec, and the recognition of the Roman Catholic religion, greatly angered the American colonies. On the other hand, it did much to keep the French Canadians from joining the Americans in the coming struggle. ”

“ About two thirds of the inhabitants are of French extraction. The society in Quebec is agreeable, and very extensive for a place of the size, owing to its being the capital of the lower province, and therefore the residence of the governor, different civil officers, principal lawyers, &c. &c. The large garrison constantly kept in it makes the place appear very gay and lively. ”

“ First were the Maritime Provinces, with western bounds touching the eastern bounds of Quebec, but in reality with the settlements of New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island separated from the settlements of Quebec by a thousand miles of untracked forest. Only the Ottawa River separated Quebec from Ontario, but one province was French, the other English, aliens to each other in religion, language, and customs. A thousand miles of rock-bound, winter-bound wastes lay between Ontario and the scattered settlement of Red River in Manitoba. ”

“ An important factor has now entered into the political aspect of the province, namely the advent of the United Empire Loyalists, now beginning to leave the United States for a wider freedom to settle on the lands above Montreal, as were also the disbanded troops, a move which did much more than anything else to promote the movement for an assembly, and to point the direction in which the amendments to the Quebec act must follow. ”

“ That Quebec is on the other side of the Atlantick, at too great a distance to do much good or harm to the European world:
That the inhabitants, being French, were always papists, who are certainly more dangerous as enemies than as subjects:
That though the province be wide, the people are few, probably not so many as may be found in one of the larger English counties:
That persecution is not more virtuous in a protestant than a papist ”

“ If the population of Canada, instead of being eight millions, were one hundred and ten millions—that is, an equivalent to the German and French nations rolled into one—and if the whole of that population were concentrated in Quebec province, the inference of the hasty thinker would probably be correct. For the area of Quebec province is nearly equal to France and Germany combined. ”

“ Quebec.—This province was once a possession of France, and in the greater part of it French customs are yet about as prevalent as they were a century ago; moreover, the French population is increasing rapidly. The English-speaking population lives mainly along the Vermont border. ”

“ Mc Newspaper, Mackenzie starts, 320; destroyed by mob, 321; draft constitution of provisional government published in, 356.
Constitutional Act, 1791. The Act was designed to harmonize the conflicting interests of French and English by dividing Quebec into two provinces,—Upper and Lower Canada,—thereby giving to each a larger control of its own local affairs. It established in each province a Legislative Council, appointed by the crown for life, and a Legislative Assembly, elected by the people. See other constitutional acts: Quebec Act, 1774; Union Act, 1840; British North America Act, 1867. ”

“ All the characteristics of the Old Empire are in Quebec to-day. Quebec is French to the core, not in loyalty to republican France, but in loyalty to the religious ideals which the founders brought to the banks of the St. Lawrence three centuries ago. Church spire, convent walls, religious foundations occupy the most prominent site in every city and town and hamlet of Quebec. From Tadousac to Montreal, from Labrador to Maine or New Hampshire, you can follow the thread of every river in Quebec by the glitter of the church spires round which nestle the hamlets. ”

“ More French than the French are the Lower Canada habitans. The pulse-beat of the Continent finds no echo here." Henry Ward Beecher thought Quebec the most curious city he had ever seen, saying, "It is a peak thickly populated, a gigantic rock, escarped, echeloned, and at the same time smoothed off to hold firmly on its summit the houses and castles, although, according to the ordinary laws of nature, they ought to fall off, like a burden placed on a camel's back without a fastening. ”

“ Like their own proverb, “In love there is always one who kisses and one who holds the cheek,” French Canada was expending a good deal of sentiment upon people who had forgotten that tucked away in a remote corner of the new world was “a relic preserved in ice,” a relic of France before the Revolution, its capital the farthermost point of manner and civilization, a town with an Indian sounding name, which yet bore upon its front the impress of nobility. For Quebec is and should be the central point of interest for all Canadians ”

“ In place of this, I found the city more picturesque, more odd, more grand, than I had ever imagined, and peopled by a race who, if conquered in 1759, have had sweet revenge ever since, by making a conquest of every stranger who has entered Quebec—through his higher nature. It is no wonder that Quebec has such a story of song and adventure. There is romance in the river and tragedy on the hill, and while the memory of Wolfe and Montcalm is green, the city will be the Mecca of the Dominion. ”

“ Is there any city in the world that stands so nobly as Quebec? The citadel crowns a headland, three hundred feet high, that juts boldly out into the St Lawrence. Up to it, up the side of the hill, clambers the city, houses and steeples and huts, piled one on the other. It has the individuality and the pride of a city where great things have happened, and over which many years have passed. Quebec is as refreshing and as definite after the other cities of this continent as an immortal among a crowd of stockbrokers. She has, indeed, the radiance and repose of an immortal ”

“ But Quebec is too real a city to be 'seen' in such a manner. And a better way of spending a few days, or years, is to sit on Dufferin Terrace, with the old Lower Town sheer beneath you, and the river beyond it, and the citadel to the right, a little above, and the Isle of Orleans and the French villages away down-stream to your left. Hour by hour the colours change, and sunlight follows shadow, and mist rises, and smoke drifts across. And through the veil of the shifting of lights and hues there remains visible the majesty of the most glorious river in the world. ”

“ It was a stronghold devoted to the military and to the church, for the predominant features were barracks and batteries, spires and belfries, all clinging like flies to the steep cliff.
"A jewel than which there is none more beautiful in the crown of France," said the colonel, as he pointed out the various places to Steve. "Quebec is the most regal-looking city I have ever seen, and I never know whether she looks best as we see her now, with the spring sunshine smiling on her, or in the winter, when she is clad in her mantle of white. ”

“ With British rule all this was changed. In Quebec the Tiers État awoke to its latent destiny thirty years before the same realisation came to Paris; and it was the new principles of government which achieved this bloodless revolution. The rights of man were no longer confined to the Governor, Intendant, and the Sovereign Council; and the plainest citizen felt a new pulse within him as soon as he saw the trend of the English system. ”