Timeline of Quebec history (1931 to 1959)

This section of the Timeline of Quebec history concerns the events between the Westminster statute and the Quiet Revolution.

Table of contents

1 1930s 2 1940s 3 1950s

1930s

• 1931 - The Statute of Westminster removes the last vestiges of British power over the Dominion of Canada.
• 1936 - The Vimy Ridge Memorial opens in honour of the thousands of Canadians who died on the battlefields of France.
• 1936 - The federal government of Canada starts printing bilingual currency.
• 1938 - The Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste raised a petition of 128,000 names, demanding further restrictions on Jews in Canada.
• 1939 to 1945 - Volunteer army and air force units from Quebec -- some francophone, some anglophone -- fight with merit in Europe.

• 1940 - After many years of battle by the Suffragettes, Quebec women are allowed to vote and run for office in provincial elections.
• 1940 - France falls to Germany.
• 1942 - Referendum on conscription. Quebec votes against conscription a second time; the rest of Canada votes in favour (see Conscription Crisis of 1944).
• 1942 - On May 18, President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, writes a private letter to Lyon Mackenzie-King, Prime Minister of the Canada in which he discusses that the USA and Canada agree on an unwritten plan aiming to dispearse French Canadians in order to assimilate them more quickly.
• 1944 - June 6 - Canadian soldiers land at Juno Beach on D-Day, marking the beginning of the liberation of France.
• 1948 - Louis St. Laurent, born in Compton, Quebec, is elected Prime Minister of Canada.
• 1948 - Paul-Émile Borduas, Jean-Paul Riopelle and other Quebec artists publish the Refus Global which denounces artistic and moral conformity in Québec.