Québec was a French colony for more than two centuries, between the arrival of Jacques Cartier in 1534 and Governor Vaudreuil’s capitulation to the English in 1760.
It is the only province in Canada where French is the official language, and it is one of the rare former French colonies where French is still spoken.
Québec is Canada’s second most populous province. It has 7 million inhabitants, including 5.6 million (approx. 80%) whose mother tongue is French.
French is the mother tongue of 82% of Quebecers, and English is the mother tongue of 10% of the population. The remaining 8% is divided among some 30 languages such as, in order of importance, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Greek. However, it is very easy to travel in Québec speaking only English. In fact, over 40% of the population is bilingual. In major cities like Montréal, this percentage is as high as 64%, and 16% of the population speaks a third language.
The majority of the population lives in the vicinity of the St. Lawrence River, in the southern portion of the province. The population is largely urbanized; between 50 and 60% of Quebecers live in the metropolitan area of Montréal.
