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The difficulty is that Trudeau and Lévesque differ totally on the means to prevent the assimilation of the French—a problem that has dogged Canada ever since British General James Wolfe ended French rule in Quebec with his victory over the Marquis de Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham in 1759. For Trudeau, the safeguarding of the Gallic heritage of Quebec, as well as that of some 1 million other French-speaking Canadians in other provinces,* can and should be done within a tolerant, officially bilingual Canada. For Lévesque, the solution is a homogeneous, independent state where Quebecois can be maîtres chez nous (masters in our own house).
Quebec's claim to a distinct identity has for centuries made it Canada's problem child. Novelist MacLennan described the historical relationship between French-and English-speaking Canadians as "the two solitudes." Roman Catholic, French-speaking, stamped by a different culture and tradition, the mostly rural Quebecois lived a separate life from that of the province's Protestant, English-speaking minority, which centered its activities around Montreal and the nearby Eastern Townships. For the Anglophone elite, the hub of Quebec life was Montreal's fashionable Sherbrooke Street, within easy distance of the banks and big businesses that they dominated almost exclusively. For the French-speaking upper class of lawyers, intellectuals and politicians, it was the history-drenched Grande Allée, in the provincial capital of Quebec City, 150 miles farther north along the St. Lawrence River. The two peoples were more or less separate but certainly not equal: as early as 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville noted that "the immense majority is everywhere French. But it is easy to see that the French are the conquered race."
The St. Lawrence—frozen solid or clogged with ice floes for nearly five months a year—is the lifeline of Quebec: a rugged land of 594,860 sq. mi., bigger than France and Spain combined. As in the rest of Canada, most of the province's population huddles along a narrow ribbon in the south; the vast majority of Quebecois live within 50 miles of the St. Lawrence, and 82% live within 200 miles of Montreal (pop. 2,758,780). Quebec is rich in iron, copper, zinc and timber, and produces 80% of the non-Communist world's asbestos. Its 450 rivers give it huge reserves of hydropower. Vast hydroelectric projects, like the $16.2 billion James Bay complex now under construction (see map), have made Quebec one of the world's major centers of aluminum production. The province is also a principal Canadian manufacturing center for textiles, garments and shoes, industries that provide 25% of Quebec jobs. With a gross provincial product of $45 billion, Quebec provides 23% of Canada's total G.N.P., second only to neighboring Ontario. If Quebec became independent tomorrow, Lévesque likes to boast, it would rank as the 23rd wealthiest nation in the world, ahead of Iran and