Quebec's Quiet Revolution remakes the province
Jean Lesage's government nationalizes Hydro-Quebec and secularizes education under 'Maitres chez nous'
Quick facts
- Premier
- Jean Lesage, 1960 to 1966
- Slogan
- 'Maitres chez nous' (Masters in our own house)
- Hydro-Quebec nationalization
- 1962 to 1963
- Department of Education created
- 1964
What happened
Jean Lesage's Liberals defeated the long-ruling Union Nationale in the 22 June 1960 Quebec election, ending sixteen years of conservative government under Maurice Duplessis's successors and launching a rapid transformation known as the Quiet Revolution. Lesage's government created a Department of Education in 1964, taking control of schooling away from the Catholic Church, and introduced the Quebec Pension Plan and family allowances. Its most ambitious project was the nationalization of Quebec's private electricity companies: after the government secured $300 million in financing from New York banks, Lesage called a snap 1962 election that served as a referendum on the plan under the slogan 'Maitres chez nous,' masters in our own house. Voters returned his government with a larger majority, and by 1963 all private hydroelectric utilities in Quebec had been folded into the public utility Hydro-Quebec.
Why it matters
The Quiet Revolution replaced a church-dominated, rural-conservative Quebec with a modern secular state apparatus in under a decade, built the economic and cultural nationalism that fed the sovereignty movement of the following decades, and opened higher education and professional jobs to French-speaking Quebecers at a scale the previous system had blocked.
How we know
Election results, legislative records establishing the Department of Education and Quebec Pension Plan, and Hydro-Quebec's own institutional history of its 1962-63 nationalization document the sequence and financing of these reforms.
Sources
- The Canadian Encyclopedia. Quiet Revolution · Reputable sourcethecanadianencyclopedia.ca · The domain "thecanadianencyclopedia.ca" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Hydro-Quebec, History of Electricity in Quebec. 1960-1979: The Second Nationalization · Primary source (author-declared)hydroquebec.com · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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