page_title: History of Quebec
section_title: Separatism
hierarchical_section_title: History of Quebec / Quebec's Quiet Revolution (1960–1970) / Separatism
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Monument à René Lévesque intégré à l'édifice d'Hydro-Québec au coin du boulevard René-Lévesque et de la rue Saint-Urbain à Montréal. On peut y lire&#160;: «&#160;René Lévesque, 1922-1987, Premier-ministre du Québec, 1976-1985, Ministre des richesses naturelles, 1960-1966&#160;».
context_page_description: Quebec has played a special role in French history; the modern province occupies much of the land where French settlers founded the colony of Canada in the 17th and 18th centuries. The population is predominantly French-speaking and Roman Catholic, with a large Anglophone minority, augmented in recent years by immigrants from Asia. The political alienation of the Francophones from the Anglophones has been a persistent theme since the late 19th century. Tensions were especially high during the First World War. Historically, British merchants and financiers controlled the economy and dominated Montreal. The Catholic Church, in close cooperation with the landowners, led a highly traditional social structure in rural and small town Quebec. Much of that changed during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. Quebec's separatists, calling for an independent nation, gained strength but were narrowly defeated in two referenda. Quebec imposed increasingly stringent laws favouring the French language; many Anglophones left, as did many of the national and international corporations that had been based in Montreal. From 1966, Montreal's population fell until the 1980s, according to census data.
context_section_description: Quebec nationalism, by now popularly termed Quebec separatism, began to gain momentum in the late 1960s as a vocal minority began to push to bring the movement into the mainstream. In 1967, René Lévesque quit the Quebec Liberal Party and founded the Mouvement Souveraineté-Association.
  During an official visit to Quebec as a guest of the government of Canada, in front of a huge crowd the President of France, Colonel Charles de Gaulle,who had been temporarily given the rank of general in WWII, undiplomatically declared from the balcony of the Montreal city hall; "Vive le Québec libre!" (Long live free Quebec!). The crowd cheered and applauded loudly. A public outcry erupted over such an unprecedented interference in the affairs of another nation, an act to which the Canadian federal government strongly took offence. De Gaulle abruptly cancelled his visit to Ottawa and went home.
  Violence erupted in 1970 with the October Crisis, when Front de libération du Québec members kidnapped British Trade Commissioner James Cross and Quebec Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte.  Pierre Laporte was later found murdered.  Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau used the War Measures Act, which allowed anyone suspected of being involved with the terrorists to be held temporarily without charge. Not all reformists supported Quebec separatism, for example, the editors of the political journal Cité Libre.
caption: A monument to separatist Premier René Lévesque in Montreal.
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