As our homes in Switzerland and Washington, DC, combat the last month of frigid autumn weather before winter, conditions across California continue to make us jealous. With that said, Canada’s largest province, Québec, is attempting to defy natural law with its own unprecedented political heatwave. 

On October 9, 2025, the government of conservative, Québec-native Premier Francios Legault tabled a new draft constitution, which some liberal readers called political theater on paper. While advocating for secularism, gender equity and abortion rights, among others, are not what make this copy extreme, its resentment toward Canadian multiculturalism as well as English monarchical rule certainly does. 

Sources:

Quebec Constitution Act of 2025 – National Assembly of Quebec

2025 Constitution Act overview – The Canadian Press

Liberal view of 2025 Constitution Act – CBC News

Prejudiced components of the 2025 Constitution Act – Policy Magazine of Canada

Local support of these controversial tenets has started to rekindle a cause dormant for almost five decades: Québec’s independence. Despite its central location in the country, several natives suggest their language and culture have been slowly cast aside over many years, risking complete erasure if like-minded legislation is not soon accommodated.

Graphic representation of the Canadian and Québécois flags.

Sources:

Why youth support Quebec’s independence – France24

Political options for Quebec renaissance – Policy Options   

Quebec’s place in Canadian geography – Government of Canada

On July 3, 1608, French explorer Samuel de Champlain founded a North American settlement along the St. Lawrence River that stretched from the Atlantic Ocean toward four of the inland Great Lakes. Named “Kepek,” an indigenous Algonquin tribe phrase that referenced said “narrow passage,” but later rendered as Québec of New France, became a valuable trade destination well into the next century.

Sources:

Biography of Samuel de Champlain – Canadian Museum of History

Founding of Quebec City – Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, Canada 

St. Lawrence river and seaway – The Great Lakes Commission 

Origin of the name – Canada.ca 

Epicenter of trade – National Geographic

The cost of rights and war

Nonetheless, this vast economic gateway, stretching from northeastern Québec to the eventual southwest city of Windsor, Ontario, would promise France no extensive peace. Growing English territory beyond Canada’s present-day Newfoundland and Labrador province, King Charles I handedly defeated troops for the territory in 1629, but returned it to French King Louis XIII during the fall of 1632, after signing the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Sources:
Quebec City/Windsor corridor – Uptown17.ca

English settle in Newfoundland – Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, Canada

Fall of Quebec – The Loyal Edmonton Regiment Military Museum 

Biography of King Charles I – The Royal Family

Biography of King Louis XIII – Palace of Versailles 

Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye – The Canadian Encyclopedia 

As English lands continued expanding, however, concessions in this pact would only last so long. By 1759, the global Seven Years’ War (1754-1763) had driven British colonists to seek sanctuary in the French-controlled Ohio River Valley, but they met swift resistance from the indigenous Algonquin and Huron tribes. After learning that similar partnerships could help them challenge France, Britain allied with the massive Iroquois Confederacy, resulting in the French and Indian War (1754-1763).

Sources:

French and Indian War/Seven Years War, 1754-1763 – Office of the Historian, US

Native American involvement with French and British – Milwaukee Public Museum 

Following their defeat, France again relinquished authority over Québec to England, signing the Treaty of Paris in 1763. While this agreement likewise gave Britain majority control of French holdings across the region, colonialists fortunately did not prohibit Québécois from using their own language and religion, as guaranteed by the Québec Act of 1774. 

Sources: 

The Treaty of Paris, 1763 – The Avalon Project 

The Quebec Act of 1774 – UK Parliament 

These appeasement policies were more likely strategic than diplomatic, though. As British troops may have feared a French uprising inspired by the 1775 American Revolution, such legislation certainly did better to keep even more radical Québécois emotionally content. French-Canadian tolerance for English rule would, regardless, be tested again under the Constitutional Act of 1791, further reducing Québec’s domain to Lower Canada, while Ontario remained susceptible to British mediation in the country’s upper half.

Sources:

Canada and the American Revolutionary War – Museum of the American Revolution

Constitutional Act of 1791 – Legislative Assembly of Ontario  

Notwithstanding this contemporary blow to nationalist pride, Canada’s economy began to gradually flourish into the next century of colonial oversight. Partially stimulated via British demands for timber during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) and the development of a public railway system, the country was on a fast track toward self-governance, which it finally secured through the 1867 British North America Act.    

Sources:

Effect of Napoleonic Wars on Canada – The Canadian Encyclopedia 

British North America Act, 1867 – Government of Canada

Adapting to this new autonomous responsibility was no easy task in the twentieth century, however. Since many older conservative Québécois promoted an insular, anti-abortion state whose government was one with the church, a majority of younger liberals would not be submissive in opposition. When left-leaning Jean Lesage was elected as Premier in 1960, he became an inadvertent patriarch of Québec’s Quiet Revolution (1960-1970) for change and wasted no time in office. Ensuring the availability of government-subsidized healthcare, secular education and state-owned power companies in just four years, Lesage redefined the strength of his state.    

Sources:
Abortion in Quebec, 1869-1969 – The Federation of Quebec for Planned Parenthood

Divorce in Quebec, 1841-1968 – The Government of Canada

The Quiet Revolution – Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages

Biography of Premier Jean Lessage – Dictionary of Canadian Biography  

With that said, although Canada was strong enough to pry independence from Britain via the 1982 Constitution Act, Québec has long been powerless in its quest for its own sovereignty. Determined to protect his dying language and culture, Legault is simply doing what another generation taught him. Although there is no easy answer for where the state could move now, his going quietly in name only is all we should expect. 

1982 Constitution Act – UK Legislature 

Quebec’s Cultural Decline – MacLean’s.ca