By the arrangements of the Canadian federation, Canada's monarchy operates in Quebec as the core of the province's Westminster-style parliamentary democracy and constitution. As such, the Crown within Quebec's jurisdiction is referred to as the Crown in Right of Quebec (, ), His Majesty in Right of Quebec (, ), or the King in Right of Quebec (, ). The Constitution Act, 1867, however, leaves many royal duties in the province specifically assigned to the sovereign's viceroy, the lieutenant governor of Quebec, whose direct participation in governance is limited by the conventional stipulations of constitutional monarchy.
Constitutional role
The role of the Crown is both legal and practical; it functions in Quebec in the same way it does in all of Canada's other provinces, being the centre of a constitutional construct in which the institutions of government acting under the sovereign's authority share the power of the whole. It is thus the foundation of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the province's government. The —is represented and duties carried out by the lieutenant governor of Quebec, whose direct participation in governance is limited by the conventional stipulations of constitutional monarchy, with most related powers entrusted for exercise by the elected parliamentarians, the ministers of the Crown drawn from among them, and the judges and justices of the peace. The Crown today primarily functions as a guarantor of continuous and stable governance and a nonpartisan safeguard against the abuse of power. This arrangement began with the 1867 British North America Act and continued an unbroken line of monarchical government extending back to the early 16th century, making Quebec the oldest continuously monarchical territory in North America. However, though it has a separate government headed by the , as a province, Quebec is not itself a kingdom.
Upon the death of the monarch (known as the demise of the Crown), An Act Respecting the Demise of the Crown ensures that all activities of the provincial Parliament, Cabinet, courts, and employees of the Crown continue without interruption. This law was required because earlier legislation that attempted to remove all references to the monarchy in Quebec left a "legal vacuum".
There is currently no government house in Quebec. A viceregal suite in the André-Laurendeau Building in Quebec City is used both as an office and official event location by the lieutenant governor, the sovereign, and other members of the Canadian royal family. The viceroy resides in a separate home provided by the provincial Crown and the and relations reside at a hotel when in Quebec; either the Château Frontenac in Quebec City or the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal.
Royal associations
Those in the royal family perform ceremonial duties when on a tour of the province; the royal persons do not receive any personal income for their service, only the costs associated with the exercise of these official obligations are funded by both the Canadian and Quebec Crowns in their respective councils.
Monuments around Quebec mark some of those visits, while others honour a royal personage or event. Further, Quebec's monarchical status is illustrated by royal names applied to regions, communities, schools, and buildings, many of which may also have a specific history with a member or members of the royal family; for example, Quebec has at least seven distinct features named for Queen Victoria, including the second largest area in Canada and Grand lac Victoria, at the head of the Ottawa River, south of Val-d'Or. Eleven locations and organizations are named for Victoria's father, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn.
Gifts are also sometimes offered from the people of Quebec to a royal person to mark a visit or an important milestone; for instance, Queen Elizabeth II was in 1955 given the puck with which Maurice Richard scored his 325th career goal—thereby setting a new record—during a game against the Chicago Blackhawks on 8 November 1952.
Associations also exist between the Crown and many private organizations within the province; these may have been founded by a royal charter, received a royal prefix, and/or been honoured with the patronage of a member of the royal family. Examples include the Royal Montreal Curling Club, which was under the patronage of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and received its royal designation from King George V in 1924, and McGill University, which was originally constituted as the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning through a royal charter from King George III in 1801, before being reconstituted as a university by George IV in 1827.
The main symbol of the monarchy is the sovereign himself, his image (in portrait or effigy) thus being used to signify government authority. A royal cypher or crown may also illustrate the monarch as the locus of authority, without referring specifically to the individual who is king or queen. Further, though neither the monarch nor viceroy form a part of the constitutions of Quebec's honours, the latter do stem from the Crown as the fount of honour; unlike in all of Canada's other provinces, however, the insignia do not bear any royal emblems. Quebec lawyers may be appointed King's Counsel.
Popularity
Before the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s, when the distinction between the Canadian Crown and British imperialism was obscured by Quebec nationalism, the monarchy was relatively popular among Quebecers. The only moment when notable hostility was directed at the Crown was during the Lower Canada Rebellion, between 1837 and 1838, during which the republican rebels expressed personal animosity toward the young Queen Victoria.
Although Donald Mackenzie Wallace, the foreign correspondent for The Times, described a lack of "vigorous cheering" from the crowds in Quebec when Prince George, Duke of Cornwall and York (later King George V), and Princess Mary, Duchess of Cornwall and York (later Queen Mary), toured parts of the province in 1901, the French-Canadian media and nationalist organizations, such as the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society, presented the royal couple with addresses of welcome. Prince George returned to Quebec seven years later, for the tercentennary of the founding of Quebec City; the events were so popular with Quebec residents that Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier was led to opine that Quebecers were "monarchical by religion, by habit, and by the remembrance of past history."
During the 1939 royal tour by King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, Francophone newspapers emphasized that French-Canadians were loyal to the Canadian monarch, admired the King and Queen, and did not support British imperialism or view themselves as having assimilated into the British Empire.
Even at the start of the Quiet Revolution, when Queen Elizabeth II visited Quebec City in 1964 and open protest against the Crown was seen for the first time since the 1830s, the supporters far outnumbered the anti-monarchists; The New York Times reported there being between 50 and 100 student protesters, compared to the approximately 50,000 denizens who gave the Queen, as noted by the Montreal Gazette, "a tumultuous welcome". As the decade went on, the monarchy continued to receive support from some corners of Quebec, such as L'Action magazine asserting, “long before Ottawa was seized, as it is now, of the bilingual and bicultural ferment, the Crown was establishing the fact, in all its interventions in Canada, of equality of the two languages beyond the letter of the constitution.”
Recent polls show support for the monarchy is low in Quebec compared to the other provinces.
Quebec nationalism and the sovereignty movement In the first days of the royal tour of Canada by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1939, which started in Quebec City, the French language newspaper took issue with the displays of British flags and decorations in Quebec, calling them "imperialistic propaganda". But, this was not anti-monarchical sentiment. Instead, the editorial board wanted for the King's presence to be a foundation for a celebration of culture, asking, "why don't we, French Canadians, profit from the occasion to manifest our loyalty and attachment to our sovereigns, certainly, but also to our language, our nationality, our rights, our ethnic character. If we must have inscriptions, let them be worded in French. If we cheer, cheer in French."
Advocates of the Quebec sovereignty movement, which emerged in the 1960s, regard the Crown not as a distinct and essential part of the province's national structure—"the last bulwark of democracy," as former Liberal Prime Minister of Quebec Daniel Johnson Jr put it—but, as a federal institution involved in Quebec affairs; for them, the Canadian monarchy is a target of anti-federal, anti-English sentiment. Premier Daniel Johnson, head of the nationalist Union Nationale party, mused about making Quebec a federated republic. In an interview in 1971, René Lévesque, the then-leader of the province's sovereigntist political party, the , was asked if there would be any role for the monarchy in an independent Quebec. He responded, "are you joking? Why? I have great respect for the Queen [...] But, what the Hell part should monarchy have in Quebec?" leader Pauline Marois in 2012 called the lieutenant governor—the viceregal figure it was Marois' job to advise—a waste of money and railed against the monarchy as an institution of Anglophones' and Ottawa's dominance. University of Toronto professor Richard Toporoski held the theory that a sovereign, not independent, Quebec would still be under the sovereignty of the Canadian monarch: "the real problem of the Quebec bill is not separation from Canada: Quebec has said that it wishes to preserve common elements—Canadian currency (issued officially by whom?—the Queen of Canada), for example, and the possibility of Quebec citizens being Canadian citizens (and who are Canadian citizens?—subjects of the Queen)."
The Canadian monarchy is not recognized by most of those in the sovereignty movement, who refer to it instead still as the "British monarchy" or "English Crown", to play up on the narrative of the British conquest of New France in 1760, ignoring that Quebecers fought during the American Revolution and War of 1812 to stay under the Crown and that the flag of Quebec, which leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said, "represents both the right of Quebecers to exist as a people and the province's democracy", employs French royal symbols.
Members of Canada's royal family have been asked by some Quebec sovereigntists to apologize for acts such as the Acadian Great Upheaval in the mid 18th century (which took place in Nova Scotia and the Crown recognized in 2003) and the patriation of the Canadian constitution in 1982. In 2009, the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society's Montreal chapter asked Prince Charles to apologize for what it said was the royal family's role in the "cultural genocide of francophones in North America over the last 400 years". The society did not make clear what, exactly, any member of the family had done to that end.