AHC: Mainly Francophone but liberal, secular, maybe even anticlerical Quebec

raharris1973

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Quebec's identity over the centuries (except perhaps the 21st?) has been tied up with conservative, Catholic values. How can we have a Quebec that is still mainly Francophone, but with a more progressive, forward-looking tradition.

....and before anybody says it, because somebody always does: it cannot repeat not repeat not repeat not be Huguenot-settled.
 
Quebec's identity over the centuries (except perhaps the 21st?) has been tied up with conservative, Catholic values. How can we have a Quebec that is still mainly Francophone, but with a more progressive, forward-looking tradition.

....and before anybody says it, because somebody always does: it cannot repeat not repeat not repeat not be Huguenot-settled.

Quebec remains French? The Catholic identity is what differed them as well from the Anglophone Canadians.

Being French territory does not give such justification.
 
Isn't this OTL after the Quiet Revolution? I get that this is in pre-1900 rather than post-1900, but my point is that we just need to get the OTL backlash against Church control to happen sooner.

TBH, I think the only reason that Quebec remained conservative for so long was:
1. Catholicism was a core part of Quebecois identity vis-a-vis anlgo Canada.
2. The secular education system and the merchant classed (traditional supporters of 19th-centiury liberalism) we dominated by anglo-Montrealers.

Here's a sketch of a TL:
- France is somehow able to hold on to both Canada and Louisiana in the Seven Years' War.
- this postpones the American Revolution until the early 19th century
- butterflies change the course of the French Revolution to result in a more moderate republic while allies itself with Britain, but not before the French Royal family flees to French North America.
- with Canada independent, the American colonists no longer feel they need British protection and they revolt while Britain is fighting Austria, Prussia and Russia. The newly independent alt-USA allies itself eith monarchist French North America.
- Montreal grows as the hub of French Noeth America into an industrial city. The business classes of Montreal chafe under the conservative monarchy. Without every being a British colony the Quebecois don't turn to Catholicism to define their identity and instead aspire to be more like republican France
- in the mid-19th century, once the alt-USA no longer fears Britain, they sponsor a liberal revolution in French North America whoch results in a liberal, secular Quebec defining itself in opposition to a more conservative, rural Louisiana
 
Quite frankly, I think French Canada's turn inwards towards conservatism and religion over the 19th century had much to do with the ways in which French Canadians--even in Québec--were repressed in British colonial society. With political radicalism being suppressed, most famously and violently in the Rebellion of 1837, and with Britain adopting a policy aiming at the ultimate assimilation of French Canadians through the mechanisms of the state, it only made sense that French Canadians would opt for a politically quietest resistance organized around institutions like the Roman Catholic Church that French Canadians did control. If French Canadians' experience of British rule had been very different and more benign, I can imagine a French Canada that would be more comfortable with liberalism.
 
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