In the Province of Quebec after 1759, what were the French-speaking Catholic people called?
- Anglophones
- Habitants or Canadiens
- Loyalists
- Métis
Answer: Habitants or Canadiens
After the war, Great Britain renamed the colony the Province of Quebec. Its French-speaking Catholic people were known as habitants or Canadiens, and they worked to keep their way of life inside the English-speaking, Protestant-ruled British Empire. The Loyalists were a different group: people loyal to the Crown who fled the American Revolution.
Learn more: The British conquest and the Quebec Act
- In 1759 the British defeated the French at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham at Québec City. This ended France’s empire in America.
- The commanders of both armies, Brigadier James Wolfe and the Marquis de Montcalm, were killed leading their troops.
- After the war, Britain renamed the colony the “Province of Quebec”.
- The French-speaking Catholic people were called habitants or Canadiens. They worked to keep their way of life in the English-speaking, Protestant British Empire.
- The Quebec Act of 1774 was passed to govern the French Roman Catholic majority better. It is one of the constitutional foundations of Canada.
- The Quebec Act gave Catholics religious freedom and let them hold public office, which was not then allowed in Britain.
- The Quebec Act restored French civil law and kept British criminal law.
- Sir Guy Carleton (Lord Dorchester), Governor of Quebec, defended the rights of the Canadiens and defeated an American invasion of Quebec in 1775.