Recent Social Trends in Québec 1960-1990

Terry A. Crowley is an associate professor of history at the University
of Guelph.

Statistics. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Yet
despite our aversion to numerical sets, much of our contemporary thought
is predicated on the evaluation of social scientific data. The role of
intuitive thought has decreased dramatically over the 20th century, to
the point where it is now disparaged as “anecdotal” information.

The value of this book will be readily apparent to anyone willing to
wade through its numerous columns. Its multiple authors provide informed
discussions about each of its 17 sections, as well as concise
conclusions about the trends they observe. Their work can be pursued at
leisure for general information or mined more deeply. While minor
attention is accorded economic data, social and cultural trends during
the past three decades constitute its presumably principal focus.

Many observations will appear familiar—even trite—to any informed
reader. The status of Quebec women has improved dramatically in many
ways, but large discrepancies vis-а-vis men remain. Immigrants in
Quebec are concentrated so heavily in Montreal that the metropolis risks
being detached from the rest of the province more dramatically than ever
before. Other nuggets of information are not so well known. The number
of elderly living in poverty has declined dramatically, while a third of
the province’s children were born out of wedlock by 1988. The province
tolerated a consistently high rate of more than 10 percent unemployment
throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

As the first volume in a series that will include companions centring
on four European countries and the United States, this book forecasts
exciting new comparative social studies. While it is too bad that there
will be nothing analogous for Canada as a whole, this book remains
essential for anyone interested in Quebec’s recent past, and vital for
research libraries.