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Culture of Quebec


The Culture of Quebec emerged over the last few hundred years, resulting predominantly from the shared history of the French-speaking North Americans majority in Quebec. It is noteworthy in the Western World; Quebec is the only region in North America with a French-speaking majority, as well as one of only two provinces in Canada where French is a constitutionally-recognized official language. (New Brunswick being the other). For historical and linguistic reasons, Francophone Quebec also has cultural links with other North American and Caribbean French-speaking communities, particularly with the Acadians of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Franco-Ontarian communities in Eastern Ontario and Haiti; to a lesser extent with Martinique and French-Canadian communities of Northern Ontario and Western Canada and the Cajun French revival movements in Louisiana, United States. There is also a large Celtic influence with immigrants from Ireland and Scotland. As of 2006, 79% of all Quebecers list French as their mother tongue; since French is the official language in the province, up to 95% of all residents speak French.

History made Quebec a meeting place for cultures, where people from around the world experience America, but in the main from the point of view of a linguistic minority surrounded by the larger English-speaking culture. The culture of Quebec is connected to the strong cultural currents of the rest of Canada, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. As such, it is often described as a crossroads between Europe and America. The Encyclopedia Britannica describes contemporary Quebec culture as a post-1960s phenomenon resulting from the Quiet Revolution, an essentially homogeneous socially liberal counter-culture phenomenon supported and financed by both of Quebec's major political parties, who differ essentially not in a right-vs-left continuum but a federalist-vs-sovereignty/separatist continuum.


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