The Quiet Revolution (French: Révolution tranquille) was the 1960s period of intense change in Quebec, Canada, characterized by the rapid and effective secularization of society, the creation of a welfare state (état-providence), a realignment of politics into federalist, and separatist factions.
The provincial government took over the fields of health care and education, which had been in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. It created ministries of Education and Health, expanded the public service, and made massive investments in the public education system and provincial infrastructure. The government allowed unionization of the civil service. It took measures to increase Québécois control over the province's economy and nationalized electricity production and distribution.
The Quiet Revolution was a period of unbridled economic and social development in Quebec and paralleled similar developments in the West in general. It can also be credited for the surge in Quebec nationalism, which remains a controversial topic in modern Quebec society.
Read more about Quiet Revolution: Origins, Secularization, Economic Reforms, Nationalism, Important Figures
Famous quotes containing the words quiet and/or revolution:
“The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is said that when manners are licentious, a revolution is always near: the virtue of woman being the main girth and bandage of society; because a man will not lay up an estate for children any longer than whilst he believes them to be his own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)