Quebec Guide

As home to the only French-speaking society in North America, Quebec is totally distinct from the rest of the continent - so distinct, in fact, that its political elite have been obsessed with the politics of secession for the last forty years. The genesis of Quebec's potential political separation from its English-speaking neighbours tracks back to France's ceding of the colony to Britain after the Conquest of 1759. At first this transfer of real estate saw little change in the life of most Québécois. Permitted to maintain their language and religion, they stayed under the control of the Catholic Church, whose domination of rural society - evident in the huge churches of Québec's tiny villages - resulted in an economically and educationally deprived subclass whose main contribution was huge families. It was these huge families, though, that ensured French-speakers would continue to dominate the province demographically - a political move termed the revanche du berceau (revenge of the cradle).

The creation of Lower and Upper Canada in 1791 emphasized the inequalities between anglophones and francophones, as the French-speaking majority in Lower Canada were ruled by the so-called Château Clique - an assembly of francophone priests and seigneurs who had to answer to a British governor and council appointed in London. Rebellions against this hierarchy by the French Patriotes in 1837 led to an investigation by Lord Durham who concluded that English and French relations were akin to two nations warring within the bosom of a single state. His prescription for peace was immersing French-Canadians in the English culture of North America, and the subsequent establishment of the Province of Canada in 1840 can be seen as a deliberate attempt to marginalize francophone opinion within an English-speaking state.

The scenic Gaspé Peninsula has always been sparsely inhabited and poor, its remote communities eking out an existence from the turbulent seas and the rocky soil. Still, it functions as a major summer holiday spot, especially busy during the last two weeks of July for Quebec's construction holiday; if you travel during this period, book your accommodation and activities well in advance. The people of the peninsula are predominantly and proudly Québécois, though there are pockets of long-established English-speaking settlements, particularly in and around Gaspé town, while Carleton and Bonaventure are centres of Acadian culture, established in 1755 in the wake of the British deportation of some 10,000 Acadians from around the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia . Neither of these communities has created visually distinctive villages or towns, however, and the Gaspé looks as French as the heartlands of rural Québec.

Montreal, Canada's second-largest city, is geographically as close to the European coast as to Vancouver, and in look and feel it combines some of the finest aspects of the two continents. Its North American skyline of glass and concrete rises above churches and monuments in a melange of European styles as varied as Montréal's social mix. This is also the second-largest French-speaking metropolis after Paris, but only two-thirds of the city's three and a half million people are of French extraction, the other third being a cosmopolitan mishmash of les autres - including British, Eastern Europeans, Chinese, Italians, Greeks, Jews, South Americans and West Indians. The result is a truly multidimensional city, with a global variety of eateries, bars and clubs, matched by a calendar of festivals that makes this the most vibrant place in Canada.

Québec's true north is a mighty, inhospitable tundra inhabited only by mining communities, groups of Inuits, and the hardy characters who staff the hydroelectric installations with which so many of the rivers are dammed. The only readily accessible region, along the north shore of the St Lawrence and its main tributary, the Saguenay, covers an area that changes from trim farmland to a seemingly never-ending forest bordering the barren seashore of the St Lawrence. Immediately northeast of Québec City is the beautiful Charlevoix region of peaceful villages and towns that bear the marks of Québec's rural beginnings - both in the architecture of the seigneurial regime and in the layout of the land. Often the winding highways and back roads pass through a virtually continuous village, where the only interruptions in the chain of low-slung houses are the tin-roofed churches. The beguiling hills and valleys give way to dramatic ravaged rock just beyond the Charlevoix borders, where the Saguenay River crashes into the immense fjord that opens into the St Lawrence at the resort of Tadoussac.

Spread over Cap Diamant and the banks of the St Lawrence, Quebec City is Canada's most beautifully located and most historic city. Vieux-Québec, surrounded by solid fortifications, is the only walled city in North America, a fact that prompted UNESCO to classify it as a World Heritage Site in 1985. In both parts of the Old City - Haute and Basse - the winding cobbled streets are flanked by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century stone houses and churches, graceful parks and squares, and countless monuments. Although some districts have been painstakingly restored to give tourists as seductive an introduction to Québec as possible, this is an authentically and profoundly French city: 95 percent of its 600,000 population are French-speaking, and it is often difficult to remember which continent you are in as you tuck into a croissant and a steaming bowl of coffee in a Parisian-style café. Moreover, despite the fact that the city's symbol is a hotel, the Château Frontenac, the government remains the main employee, not tourism, and some of the more impressive buildings are government-run and off-limits.