The Quiet Revolution (in French, la revolution tranquille) was probably the most politically important period of the twentieth century for the province of Québec. The term, coined by a writer with the Toronto-based newspaper the Globe and Mail, encompasses the period from 1960 to 1966 (give or take a couple of years), during which Québec moved away from its conservative roots and became one of the most left-leaning and progressive provinces in Canada.
Through the 1950s, Québec had been under the control of Maurice Duplessis and his strictly conservative Union Nationale party. Historians have labelled this era the "Grande noirceur" or "les années noires" (the "Great darkness" or "dark years", equating it with the Dark Ages), and though many maintain that life then wasn't nearly so bad as it's made out to be, the point still stands that under Duplessis, Québec seemed destined to crash spectacularly.
First off, Duplessis's government was corrupt to the core. It was fairly common knowledge that elections were won under fraudulent circumstances, but no-one had the power or the wherewithal to protest; the government regularly accepted money from corporations in return for ludicrous deals pertaining to natural resource sales, most famously iron ore sold to an American corporation for a penny per tonne. The Roman Catholic Church wielded a great deal of influence, even openly supporting Duplessis during elections with the slogan "Le ciel est bleu, l'enfer est rouge" ("The sky is blue, hell is red", referring to the colours of the Union Nationale and their Liberal opposition, respectively), and also kept a list of literature and documents that had been banned for various sundry reasons, most having to do with subversive themes or implications.
Fully one half of the province had received no education beyond secondary school -- and of those who had attended university, a disproportionate amount were Anglophones. Accordingly, a considerable disparity in wages existed between Anglophones and Francophones. In a province mostly populated by French-speakers, this presented a serious problem, but one that the government seemed unable or unwilling to rectify.
Perhaps the first indicator that the Québecois were slowly coming to realise that something needed to change came in 1948, when a collective of sixteen artists created and signed the Refus Global (Total Refusal), a manifesto denouncing the Catholic church and the establishment. Soon after was the asbestos miners' strike of 1949. It was put down, but the seeds of dissent had been sown. Montreal's Maurice Richard riots of 1955, though superficially unrelated, proved that Quebec was ready for a change in regime.
Duplessis died in office in 1959. He was replaced by Paul Sauvé, who also died suddenly shortly after taking control. A provincial election was called in 1960; with a radical campaign that demanded immediate and drastic change, the Liberal party under Jean Lesage won. This marked the beginning of the real revolution.
One of Lesage's main campaign slogans was "Maîtres chez nous" ("Masters in our own house"), which spoke to the Francophone majority's desire to be in control of its own affairs, instead of under the thumb of the Anglophone minority which was generally thought to be ignorant of the special concerns of the Québecois.
The other key slogan was "Il faut que ça change" -- "Things have to change" -- and Lesage lived up to his campaign promises. After a scathing criticism of the Church's influence in state affairs was published in 1960, Lesage established the Commission Parent in 1961, whose prerogative it was to look into the education system and make suggestions for its improvement. Their most important proposal called for the immediate secularisation of the schools, placing them under provincial control. For good measure, school attendance was made mandatory until age 16, and made available through eleventh grade for free.
Taking control of the natural resources that had been exploited and abused by Duplessis called for more sweeping and daring reforms. Lesage felt that the best way would be to nationalise the corporations that looked after the resources; the most important of these was the electric company, Hydro-Québec. To do so required some preparation, and a lot of temerity: Lesage called another election in 1962, hoping to gain more seats for his Liberal party in the legislative assembly, so the nationalisation movement would have more support. His gamble paid off; the election was a landslide Liberal victory. Lesage appointed René Lévesque the provincial minister of natural resources and within six months Hydro-Québec was under state control. Soon after, more state-owned corporations were founded to deal with other resources: SIDBEC covered iron and steel, while SOQUEM was responsible for mining, REXFOR for forestry, and SOQUIP for oil and gas.
The influence of the Catholic church in the past had seen to it that women and men were nowhere near equal in the eyes of the law, and this was the next traditional stance to be attacked by Lesage. In 1964, the province's Code Civic (Civil Code) was modified so that married women were accorded the same rights as their spouses; in the case of divorce, material goods were to be divided in half and split between the two parties. Women could now also perform financial transactions without needing their husbands' permission.
Labour law was the next issue to be tackled. In the same year that the civil code was amended, a new labour code was implemented; this made the process of starting up a union far easier with much less red tape. It also gave employees the right to strike -- shockingly, before 1964, such action had been illegal.
At the same time as the other changes were being effected, a series of public institutions were founded to increase Québec's autonomy and independence from the federal government in Ottawa. In 1962, the Société Générale de Financement (or General Financing Corporation) was created to help Québecers invest in small local companies to ensure prosperity for the future. A year later the Quebec Pension Plan (Régie des Rentes du Québec) was introduced, separate from the already-extant federal pension plan. To handle the sudden influx of revenue as people contributed to the Plan, a provincial financial institution (the Caisse de dépôt et de placement) was founded in 1965.
Another provincial election in 1966 saw the end of the Lesage era; the Union Nationale party rose from the ashes of Duplessis's legacy to win the majority, under the leadership of Daniel Johnson Sr. Some historians treat this as the end of the Quiet Revolution; others maintain that the establishment of the CÉGEPs in 1967 (for universal post-secondary education in the trades) and the Université du Québec network in 1968, serving the same purpose for academics, were a continuation of Lesage's reforms and thus should be included.
Arguably, the real end came in 1968 when the Parti Québecois was created under René Lévesque; their aim was sovereignty for the province, which went far beyond Lesage's vision of a prosperous Quebec within Canada. Regardless of whether Johnson's reforms count as part of the revolution proper, it ended for good by 1969-1970 with the emergence to prominence of terrorist organisations like the Front de Libération du Québec, who tried to effect more and greater change through violent means.
Remarkably, nearly all of this change transpired without violence. This is why it is called the Quiet Revolution; within six years provincial politics swung from the far right to the far left, but there was no opposition -- the only violence came when extremists sought more and faster change. Perhaps the most lasting effect of the revolution is that it saw Québec find its own identity; instead of merely French, or French-Canadian, they were Québecois. This distinction has withstood the test of time, and it is a testament to Lesage's vision that the issues he addressed are still prominent in Canadian politics today.
Sources:
Bélanger, Claude. Jean Lesage and the Quiet Revolution. Marianopolis College. http://www2.marianopolis.edu/quebechistory/readings/lesage.htm (30 September 2004)
Bélanger, Claude. Quiet Revolution. Marianopolis College. http://www2.marianopolis.edu/quebechistory/events/quiet.htm (30 September 2004)
Lebeuf, Sophie-Hélène. "La Révolution tranquille a 40 ans". Societé Radio-Canada. (In French, for if you're feeling bold or bilingual.) http://radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/dossiers/revolution-tranquille/revolution-tranquille.html (30 September 2004)
Quiet Revolution. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Revolution (30 September 2004)
Le Refus Global: Revolution in the Arts. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-68-109/arts_entertainment/refus_global/ (30 September 2004)