Political Space and Economic Space: Quebec and the Empire of the St. Lawrence

Abstract

The paper traces the the evolving relationship between the way in which the French Canadians (later the francophone Québécois) perceived their potential economic space and the way in which they have defined political space since the Conquest. A gradual reorientation of economic space led to a narrowing definition of political space until the 1840s. From the 1840s to the 1920s a steadily widening perception of economic space led to a corresponding expansion of the cultural and political space in which the French Canadians situated themselves, culminating in Henri Bourassa’s theory of the cultural compact of Confederation. Since 1920 the pan-Canadian definition of cultural and political space has received growing recognition in law, but has also found itself in growing tension with a new reorientation of economic space along continental lines, culminating in the U.S. and North American Free Trade Agreements. Those wishing to preserve the Canadian political space may have not only to make the corresponding economic space as attractive as possible to the Québécois, but also to nourish Canadian values, especially the ideal of linguistic justice which the original conjunction of these two spaces helped to inspire.