| One of the most striking differences between Canada and the United States is that 25 percent of the Canadian population is French-speaking, thus making Canada a bilingual and, to some extent, a bicultural country. Depending on the meaning given to culture, the word bicultural is controversial. If culture is understood in a strictly ethnic sense, as in a reference to Italian Americans, for example, then Canada must be seen as a multicultural country. The French culture, in that sense, is just one of the many cultural backgrounds in the Canadian mosaic. But if culture is understood as a way of life or as the prism through which members of a society see the world, then French Canadians may be considered as having a culture of their own, separate from the culture of all other Canadians. This, in fact, is the way the majority of French-speaking Canadians see themselves, although many Canadians persist in talking about one Canadian culture. |
| A large number of French Canadians even go a step further and consider themselves as a people or as a nation or as forming, particularly in the province of Qubec, a distinct society. All those words have been and, in all likelihood, will remain subject to controversy in Canada, hence, the deliberately vague title of this monograph. The word civilization may very well mean "the type of culture, society, etc., of a specific place, time, group..." as the dictionary puts it, but it may also be understood in a much broader way, as a general political, economic and social framework. In that last sense, French-Canadian civilization may be no more than the remnant of an obsolete tradition, a reference to the heritage left by the French empire in the eighteenth century. |
| The author of this paper has no doubt that the French-speaking population of Canada, as it stands today, must be seen as a distinct people, with a culture to be distinguished from that of anglophone Canadians. Each of the following sections tries to confirm that assertion. |
| First, it is necessary to look at history, even though other papers in this series are dealing with Canadian history as such. For one of the main features that make French Canadians different is their perception of historical events. Some of these events must be stressed as they have shaped French-Canadian identity. |
| Second, to understand modern Quebec, homeland of most French Canadians, a particular period of recent history has to be analyzedthe so-called Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. Contemporary French Quebec still reflects in many ways the important transformations that took place during those years. |
| Third, the constitutional debate has to be examined, because it has occupied the French-Canadian political agenda for at least the past thirty-five years. The |
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