Demographics of Quebec

Quebec is the only one of Canada's provinces to feature a Francophone (French-speaking) majority, and where anglophones (English-speakers) constitute an officially recognized minority group.

[24]{Percentages are calculated as a proportion of the total number of respondents (7,435,905)}[25] Approximately 16% of the population of Quebec belongs to a visible minority group, as of the 2021 Canadian census.

All the ethnicities living primarily south of the 55th parallel are collectively referred to in Quebec as "Amerindians", "Indians", "First Nations" or, obsolete, "Redskins".

The Algonquian family is made up of eight ethnic groups: the Abenaki, the Algonquin, the Attikamek, the Cree, the Wolastoqiyik, the Mi'kmaq, the Innu and the Naskapis.

Traditionally, nomadic tribes follow the migration of herds of animals that serve as prey, such as bison, moose or seals.

The traditions of the Iroquoian tribes, producers of the Three Sisters (corn, beans and squash), are instead developed around a matriarchal structure derived from the "long cabin" called a longhouse which houses within it several families under the authority of one dean.

Economically, through the fur trade and the development of relationships with settlers, including coureurs des bois, merchants, cartographers and Jesuit fathers.

In addition to contributing to Quebec toponymy [fr], indigenous peoples also contributed through their more advanced knowledge than settlers in the following areas: holistic medicine, the functioning of human biology, remedies for several diseases, curing scurvy at settlers' arrival (its thought this was done with a cure made from fir, white cedar or anneda), winter clothing (tanning), architecture that insulates against the cold, means of faster transport on snow (snowshoes and dogsled) and on water (canoes, kayaks and rabaskas), l'acériculture (the process of making maple syrup), sports (lacrosse and ice fishing), moose and caribou hunting, trapping, the territory and its components, watersheds and their watercourses and natural resources.

[31] When Europeans arrived in America in the 16th century, the Algonquian-speaking peoples and the St. Lawrence Iroquoians made allies with the French colonists for the purpose of trade.

The first connection was made with the arrival of Jacques Cartier when he set foot in Gaspé and met Donnacona, chief of the village of Stadacona (Stadaconé, today, the city of Quebec), in 1534.

Rather than by conquest and by force, it is by promoting commercial and military alliances, and by concluding numerous peace and friendship treaties that relations between the two peoples solidified.

[33] Entirely under federal tutelage and direction, indigenous rights were enunciated in the Indian Act and adopted at the end of the 19th century.

In recent times, discussions have been underway for several years with the Montagnais of the Côte-Nord and Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean for the potential creation of a similar autonomy in two new distinct territories that would be called Innu Assi and Nitassinan.

[35] Moreover, in January 2010, an agreement between Quebec City and Montagnais granted the Mashteuiatsh Band Council the ability to plan out development in the entire Ashuapmushuan Wildlife Reserve, which is located on the Nitassinan of the community of the Pekuakamiulnuatsh.

[36][37] A few political institutions have also been created over time: The following table shows the traditional territories of the First Nations and Inuit peoples who live in Quebec, including the basins of the St. Lawrence Valley and James Bay, as well as on the Labrador peninsula.

Nowadays, Acadians mainly live on the Magdalen Islands and in Gaspesia, but about thirty other communities are present elsewhere in Quebec, mostly in the Côte-Nord and Centre-du-Québec regions.

[47] The town of Bonaventure, in Gaspesia, also houses the Musé Acadien du Québec which features permanent exhibitions on Acadians in Quebec, like Une Acadie québécoise and Secrets d'Acadiens, les coulisses de la rue Grand-Pré.

[49]Quebec differs from other Canadian provinces in that French is the only official and preponderant language, while English predominates in the rest of Canada.

Their recommendations then become part of the debate on the standard for Quebec French and are represented in Le Grand Dictionnaire terminologique (GDT), the Banque de dépannage linguistique [fr] (BDL) and various other works.

Since the 1970s, scientific research on the matter has been carried out by university organizations, including the Trésor de la langue française au Québec (TLFQ) and the Franqus group [fr].

Early on, colonists borrowed words from Algonquin, a language they frequently interacted with, often to name and describe new aspects of geography, temperature, fauna or flora not present in the Old World.

These 800 women were mostly orphaned girls that had been adopted by the state as part of a program sponsored by King Louis XIV, and been educated in convents to become exemplary settlers and wives.

[66] After the conquest of 1759, this reality became more brutal for Quebec, which now had to avoid assimilation by the British Empire's regime and survive culturally as well as linguistically.

From the beginning of Canada, and throughout French-Canadian history, catholicism and the Catholic Church have played a preponderant role in the social and political development of Quebec.

[102] The extraordinary power that the Catholic Church once had in Quebec is reflected in all areas of culture, from language to the fine arts, theater, literature and film.

The influence of the Church began to wane a hundred years later, when, after the Grande Noirceur, Quebec society was profoundly transformed by the Quiet Revolution.

[109] In the 20th century, successive waves of immigrants from Africa, Asia, Greece, Ireland and Italy settled in Montreal, bringing their cultural and religious customs.

[112] Lionel Groulx wanted to build a nationalistic French-Canadian identity, in purpose to protect the power of the Church and dissuade the public from popular-rule and secularist views.

[114] During the 1940s and 1950s Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis party, the Union Nationale, often had the active support of the Roman Catholic Church during political campaigns, using the slogan Le ciel est bleu; l'enfer est rouge ("Heaven is blue; hell is red"; red is the colour of the Liberal party, and blue was the colour of the Union Nationale).

[125] Since it began being recorded in 1971 until 2018, each year Quebec has had negative interprovincial migration, and among the provinces it has experienced the largest net loss of people due to the effect.