Québécois (word)

In French, the word Québécois generally refers to a resident of Quebec, Canada. Its English equivalent is Quebecker, also spelled as Quebecer, but this latter alternative's ending might be mispronounced as "-sir".

The word Québécois in English more specifically designates a particular francophone (i.e. French-Canadian) ethnicity and culture found in Quebec. This ethnicity traces its roots to the French colonists of Quebec.

- - - To whoever keeps putting back the Québec bashing junk everytime, get the facts straight: The Québécois are not an ethnic group! The main ethnic group composing those who self-identify as Québécois are the (French) Canadians (aka the Canadiens). But they are not the only ethnic group making up this people! Québécois means all the citizens of Québec (YES, even those who don't identify as Québécois, the same way all Québécois are citizens of Canada even though a huge chunk of them don't agree to be called Canadians.)

Québécois IS NOT EQUAL to French Canadian. The French Canadian ethnic group includes millions of people born out of French Canadian + Irish mariages. According to the Canadian Irish Congress, 40% of the francophones in Québec have Irish ancestry! Wake up! You don't seem to understand the meaning of the word ethnicity! The word "ethnic" comes from Late Latin "ethnicus", which comes from the Greek "ethnikos", from "ethnos", meaning a people, a nation. A people is a sizable group of individuals sharing a common and distinctive racial, national, religious, linguistic, or cultural heritage.

Today, hundreds of thousands of Québécois simply have NO French roots at all (yes, even those who speak French too!).

Those who root back to the French colonists are today scatered across all of North America. If all these people had their identity based on their origins, there would be about 10 millions in the US and 8 million in Canada. These people are of French ancestry. This is not the case for all Québécois.

For the love of God, keep politics out of this page: this is an encyclopedia! We need facts and facts only! ****

The idea that Québécois are French also has many adherents among francophones. After the failure of the 1995 Quebec referendum on sovereignty, Jacques Parizeau attributed the defeat of the provincial government's initiative to 'l'argent et le vote ethnique," a statement which was taken by many as implying that French culture was the only true Québécois culture (Parizeau quickly apologized, however, and has recently said that it should be possible to gain support for sovereignty among speakers of other languages). During the campaign Lucien Bouchard had also referred to the Québécois as a white race; this conforms to popular views of Québécois culture as the culture of the francophone descendants of the original French colonists (Québécois de vieille souche).

The Québécois are the most numerous group of French-Canadians, though communities of French-Canadians can be found across the country, especially in Manitoba, Ontario, and the Maritimes; French-speaking cultural groups elsewhere in Canada include the Métis and Acadians. Other Francophone communities in North America are to be found in New England and Louisiana.

A related term, pure laine ("old stock", literally "pure wool"), is sometimes taken to be synonymous with Québécois. This term refers to someone whose ancestry is almost entirely Québécois. As with any ethnicity in a multicultural country such as Canada, few people can accurately claim to be pure laine. The idea of pure laine has been at the root of some heated polemic battles about ethnicity, culture, and belonging in recent years in Quebec; many find the idea and its linking with Québécois identity and culture to be racist.

Many of the well known cultural items of the Québécois are well-known throughout the world. Traditional aspects of Québécois culture include a variety of folk songs and dances (many with Celtic roots, as the French-Canadians intermarried a great deal with Irish immigrants), as well as items of cuisine such as 'tourtière', 'paté chinois', 'sucre à la crème', 'creton', maple sugar products, pea soup with ham, and the latter-day creation of poutine.

The Québécois culture underwent a profound shift with the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, after the end of the Duplessis years and the wane of the influence of the Catholic church and the control of the Anglo-American financial elite in the province. New movements in art, literature, and music sprang up: a revolutionary artistic movement, Les Automatistes, was born in Quebec as a response to the conformity of the Duplessis era. This included world-renowned artists like Paul-Émile Borduas, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Jean-Paul Mousseau, and Marcelle Ferron.

The term Québécois may also refer to the Québécois dialect of French, which is mostly oral but has been transcribed by many songwriters and playwrights such as Michel Tremblay. The best-known lect of Québécois French is the joual dialect, which combines traditional Quebec accent and vocabulary with a distinct vocabulary unto itself, including many anglicisms (adapted English words) and many latter-day French words that are not used in France as well. (For more information see the article on Québécois French.)

Québécois literature is an important part of worldwide Francophone heritage. Some important Québécois authors include Émile Nelligan, Octave Crémazie, Saint-Denys Garneau and Anne Hébert.

Today Quebec is home to a multi-ethnic society with a francophone majority and large anglophone and allophone minorities. The wide variety of ethnic groups in Quebec includes ten First Nations and the Inuit of Nunavik. Many believe that Québécois society is therefore adapting to and enriching itself with the cultures of recent immigrants to Quebec. Haitian, francophone African, Latino, and Arab cultures are among the most numerically significant populations of recent immigrants. These cultures exert an especially important influence in Montreal and increasingly Quebec City. Today, thousands of people from around the world adopt French when they move to Quebec.

Note that in French, the term québécois can also refer to a resident of Quebec City. When distinction is required, these become québécois de Québec instead of québécois du Québec.

External Links: History of French in Quebec