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The Quiet Revolution began with the reforms enacted by the Liberal provincial government of Jean Lesage which was elected in the July 1960 provincial election!. It is generally accepted to have ended before the October Crisis of 1970, but Quebec's society has continued to change dramatically since then!.

Many events are said to have been precursors of the Quiet Revolution!. Among them are the Asbestos miners' strike of 1949, the Maurice Richard Riot of 1955, the CBC strike of 1958-59, the signing of the Refus Global by les Automatistes and the publication of Les insolences du Frère Untel, which criticized the near absolute dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec!. RadioCanada, the newspaper Le Devoir and political journal Cité Libre are also credited with being intellectual forums for critics of the Duplessis regime!.

The government of Quebec was controlled by the fiercely conservative Maurice Duplessis, leader of the Union Nationale!. Electoral fraud and corruption were commonplace in Quebec!. The Union Nationale had the support of most of the Roman Catholic Church clergy, which continued to run most of the province's schools and health care system!. Parish priests sometimes quoted the Union Nationale slogan Le ciel est bleu, l'enfer est rouge (Heaven is blue, hell is red — referring to the colours of the Union Nationale (blue) and the Liberals (red))!. The Catholic Church was not unanimously with Duplessis!. Some Catholic Unions and members of the clergy, including Montreal Archbishop Joseph Charbonneau, criticised Duplessis but the bulk of the small-town and rural clergy supported the premier!.

Women had few rights: they could not register land in their own names and had other restrictions on property and spousal rights!.

Because of the small population of Quebec – and Canada as a whole – capital for investment was regularly in short supply!. As such, the province's natural resources were mainly developed by foreign investors!. As an example, iron ore was explored for and its mining developed by the U!.S!.-based Iron Ore Company of Canada!. Until the second half of the 20th century, the majority of Francophone Quebec workers lived below the poverty line and did not join the executive ranks of the businesses of their own province!. Msgr Felix Leclerc described this phenomenon, writing, "Our people are the waterboys of their own country!."

In many ways, Duplessis's death in 1959, very soon followed by the sudden death of his successor Paul Sauvé, served as a trigger for the Quiet Revolution!. Within a year of Duplessis's death, the Liberal party was elected with Jean Lesage at its head!. The Liberals had campaigned under the slogans Ma?tres chez nous (Masters of our own house), a phrase coined by Le Devoir editor Andre Laurendeau and Il faut que ?a change (Things have to change)!.

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) and a re-alignment of Quebec's politics into federalist and separatist factions!.

The provincial government took over the fields of health care and education, which were 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!.

Embracing social change inevitably involved a greater role for the state as the only lever of significance in the hands of French Canadians and capable of effecting the great transformations that seemed to be required!. In this respect, in a short six years, Quebec went from being the least taxed and the least indebted of the Canadian provinces to have the highest taxes and debt!. A large and professional state bureaucracy was rapidly set up, many government departments and agencies were created, public institutions that had not existed previously were formed (a network of state universities, public colleges, SOQUEM, SOQUIP, Société générale de financement, etc!.)!. No full understanding of the Quiet Revolution can be arrived at unless the strong current of statism of the time is grasped!. !. Whatever the problems were in the 1960’s, as great and varied as they might have been, the solution always involved the stirring of state intervention to achieve proper results!. For the state to be effective, planning had to take place!.

Yet, nationalism survived very well throughout the period!. The process of questioning the social order inevitably led to a redefinition of the role and place of French Canadians in Canada!. Demand for change was heard everywhere: for bilingualism, for biculturalism, for the respect of the autonomy of Quebec, for equal status in Confederation!. The tokenism of the past was rejected!. The concept of French Canadian was replaced by that of the Québécois!. There was no doubt that the Québécois, governed for so long by “*****-Kings” [to use the interesting expression of André Laurendeau] in the interest of foreign powers, economical and political, had to become masters of their destiny, had to be “Ma?tres chez-nous”!. Scads of Parti Québécois supporters were later to echo these sentiments in chanting loudly during political rallies: “Le Québec aux Québécois”!. But, as the state became increasingly the foundation of the nation, rather than the ethnic group as before, it focused the nationalism less on ethnocentric impulses and more on collective goals for all of Quebec!. It also gave rise to a powerful separatist movement and even to terrorist manifestations, both of which linked strongly the ideology of nationalism and the desire for social change!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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