Beyond Quebec

What kind of a country is Canada beyond Quebec? With a referendum on Quebec sovereignty looming on the horizon, this is a question Canadians are being forced to ask. In Beyond Quebec scholars from a wide variety of disciplines examine the current political, cultural, economic, and social situation of Canada outside Quebec and speculate on the nature of a Canada that does not include Quebec on the present terms.

What kind of a country is Canada beyond Quebec? With a referendum on Quebec sovereignty looming on the horizon, this is a question Canadians are being forced to ask. In Beyond Quebec scholars from a wide variety of disciplines examine the current political, cultural, economic, and social situation of Canada outside Quebec and speculate on the nature of a Canada that does not include Quebec on the present terms.

Quebec is currently a Canadian province and home to the second-largest French-speaking metropolis in the world and the largest French-speaking society in North America. It has, however, by virtue of its history and political development, distinguished itself as more than merely a sub-national unit. Over the past thirty years, it has assumed a significant role in international politics through its position in the Francophonie and its cultural role in the consolidation of French-speaking society in the midst of an English-speaking continent. Moreover, Quebec is unique within North America as a highly autonomous state seeking increasing integration into the New World Order while preserving its cultural specificity.

First there was the Arab Spring, then the Indignados, then Occupy Wall Street. And then there was the Printemps érable — the Maple Spring. In 2011, proclaiming the need for austerity, Québec’s governing Liberal Party announced a draconian increase in tuition fees. Enraged that the government would destroy a legacy of public education, so hard won during the 1960s Quiet Revolution — a legacy from which they themselves had reaped benefits — the youth of Québec took to the streets in a student strike under the banner of the carrés rouges. They fought not merely for education, but for the future: a future they watch being destroyed by the unrelenting march of capitalism, intent on the merciless exploitation of citizens and natural resources. Generation Rising is the story of the most important mass mobilization in Québec’s (and Canada’s) history. It is the story of six months of brutalization of youth by the police forces of the capitalist class, as the students went toe-to-toe against the corrupt and autocratic elite in an effort to construct a horizontal, participative and grassroots democracy. It is the story of the Internet generation deploying its mastery of social media to harness the forces of hundreds of thousands, and ultimately defeat a battle-hardened premier. At the end of it all, Québec’s first social media mobilization had laid the foundations for a brave new future, where the old world of order and authority might finally be swept aside to make way for a new, twenty-first-century democracy. Le combat est avenir — the fight is the future, and the battle has just begun.

During a time of significant demographic, geographic, and social transition, many women in early nineteenth-century Montreal turned to prostitution and brothel-keeping to feed, clothe, protect, and house themselves and their families. Beyond Brutal Passions is a close study of the women who were accused of marketing sex, their economic and social susceptibilities, and the strategies they employed to resist authority and assert their own agency. Referencing newspapers, parish registers, census returns, coroners' reports, city directories, documents of Catholic and Protestant institutions, police books, and court records, Mary Anne Poutanen reveals how these women confronted limited alternatives and how they fought against established authority in the pursuit of their livelihoods. She details these women’s lives not only as prostitutes but also as wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters who reconstructed the bonds of kinship and solidarity. An insightful history of prostitution, Beyond Brutal Passions explores the complicated relationships between women accused of prostitution and the society in which they lived and worked.

Beyond redrawing North American borders and establishing a permanent system of governance, the Quebec Act of 1774 fundamentally changed British notions of empire and authority. Although it is understood as a formative moment - indeed part of the "textbook narrative" - in several different national histories, the Quebec Act remains underexamined in all of them. The first sustained examination of the act in nearly thirty years, Entangling the Quebec Act brings together essays by historians from North America and Europe to explore this seminal event using a variety of historical approaches. Focusing on a singular occurrence that had major social, legal, revolutionary, and imperial repercussions, the book weaves together perspectives from spatially and conceptually distinct historical fields - legal and cultural, political and religious, and beyond. Collectively, the contributors resituate the Quebec Act in light of Atlantic, American, Canadian, Indigenous, and British Imperial historiographies. A transnational collaboration, Entangling the Quebec Act shows how the interconnectedness of national histories is visible at a single crossing point, illustrating the importance of intertwining methodologies to bring these connections into focus.

The Government of Natural Resources explores government scientific activity in Quebec from Confederation until the Second World War. Scientific and technical personnel are an often quiet presence within the state, but they play an integral role. By tracing the history of geology, forestry, fishery, and agronomy services, Stéphane Castonguay reveals how the exploitation of natural resources became a tool of government. As it shaped territorial and environmental transformations, scientific activity contributed to state formation and expanded administrative capacity. This thoughtful reconceptualization of resource development reaches well beyond provincial borders, changing the way we think of science and state power.