In the 1960s, Quebec cracked open. The Révolution tranquille wasn’t loud, but it was deep. It was also swift, stubborn, and total. It wasn’t a revolt in the streets; it was a reshuffling of everything under the surface: who held the power, who had the voice, and what kind of future could be imagined. A province that had been told to survive—quietly, humbly, obediently—suddenly chose to live on its own terms.
The people and ideas that had shaped Quebec for generations were brought down, gently in some cases, forcefully in others. First to fall: the Catholic Church. For more than a century, bishops and priests had shaped minds, managed hospitals, run schools. Faith was the backbone of family, morality, and politics. But by the 1960s, that authority cracked. The Parent Report called for secular, public education. The hospital system was reorganized. Young people stopped entering seminaries. Not out of spite—but out of a hunger to choose, to think, to question.
Then came the old political guard—the world of Maurice Duplessis, of patronage and silence. His vision was rooted in another time: rural, pious, deferent. The Union Nationale had ruled with a firm hand and a whispered voice. But Quebecers grew tired of that dim room. Lesage’s Liberals swept in with promises of light. Maîtres chez nous. Masters in our own house. It wasn’t just a slogan—it was a switch flipped in the collective mind.
Alongside this shift came an economic reckoning. For decades, the province’s wealth had been extracted by others—by Anglophone elites, by American and British investors. Francophones worked the machines, but rarely owned them. The nationalization of Hydro-Québec in 1963 changed more than the energy grid—it rewired identity. Suddenly, Quebec was no longer just a source of labour. It was a builder, a decision-maker, a player. A new francophone middle class rose in the public sector, in unions, in the arts. The collective understanding of who Quebecers were had changed.
The Quiet Revolution enabled a new form of hope. Quebecers were proud to build their own dream. One that hadn’t been handed down by bishops or premiers or colonizers. A dream built from within. That’s where we circle back to la joie de vivre. Not the joy of ease, but the joy of becoming. Of dreaming. Of building. Individually and collectively. Because in the end, la joie de vivre during the Quiet Revolution was the joy of building the dream. Together. Out loud. And at last, on our own terms.