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Originally Posted by yuriandrade
Surprised me as well. I thought people would focus only on the North American shift.
I guess Melbourne was ahead Sydney for only a brief moment back on the Australian Gold Rush in 1860. After that, Sydney kept a stable 20% lead, which is now being erode as Melbourne is growing faster.
English used to be Montreal's lingua franca when the city was the biggest one, right? I heard many wealthy English-speakers left in the 70's and 80's.
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Melbourne became the largest city in Australia after the Gold rush in the 1860s (before it was Sydney) and remained in that spot until the '70s when Sydney again became Australia's largest city. Now Melbourne is looking to take back that top position. Seems like there's a lot more back-and-forth in Australia.
Montreal was originally a settlement of New France, but after the Seven Years War, in 1763, when the British formally took over New France, the city slowly began developing an Anglo minority population.
It grew over the centuries to the point where, by the early 20th century, although vastly outnumbered by Francophones, the Anglophones controlled almost all of Montreal's wealth. Business, culture, politics, all Anglo-dominated. French was unnecessary for newcomers to know and largely relegated to the poor, Francophone underclass.
Eventually, the Francos had enough and revolted, first with the Quiet Revolution in the '60s, which sought to make Quebec into a secular state (where it was previously very Roman Catholic, even politically). But there was also a sense of not wanting Quebecois culture to wither away like other French-speaking cultures have done in the Americas, namely Acadia and Louisiana. Starting in the mid-'60s, the Front de liberation du Quebec (FLQ) started bombing various places in Montreal, mostly mailboxes, and mostly in Westmount, an affluent Anglo district of Montreal.
Then in 1970, the FLQ provoked the October Crisis, wherein the federal government invoked the War Measures Act for the first and only time outside of wartimes. The act basically temporarily revokes certain democratic rights for the safety of the country. Armed forces were deployed to the streets of Montreal, Quebec City, and Ottawa while the FLQ kidnapped a British diplomat and killed Quebec's minister of labour.
Eventually, the members of FLQ were caught, and while that meant the FLQ ceased to exist, their sentiments lived on in Quebecois, allowing for the separatist movement of the '70s and increasing demands for more autonomy from Ottawa. Referendums were held on Quebec independence in 1980 and 1995, with the latter being just under 50% for 'oui.'
With this growing sense of nationalism and the reclamation of the French language within Quebec, many of the former Anglo aristocracy fled the city en masse for Toronto in the '70s and '80s. It was also coincidental that around this time Toronto overtook Montreal as Canada's largest city, adding fuel to fire.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
I would say that Quebec mostly turned away from the rest of Canada. It discovered the world, the U.S., Europe, the international Francophonie. It's grossly unfair and inaccurate but the rest of Canada is viewed as boring, and the sense is that Montreal and Quebec think they have bigger fish to fry than Western Canada, Ottawa or even Toronto.
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Within Canada, Quebec has grown more insular. Like you say, it couldn't give a fuck about Toronto or Calgary or Vancouver or Halifax. It beats to its own drum these days. Both partitions of Canada, though, have increasingly become more internationally focused since the Parti Quebecois rose to prominence. Quebec is more focused on Europe, New England, and French Africa, while Anglo Canada is more focused on Asia, the Commonwealth, and the US as a whole.
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