Canada has a reputation for being a rather low-key friendly place.

For the most part, this is true. It's a nice place to visit and it's not usually in the middle of any sort of turmoil.

However, that hasn't always been the case.

50 years ago, Canadians face the threat of extremism and terrorism

and it almost did irreparable damage to the country.

Learn more about Quebec's October crisis of 1970 on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. For those of you not familiar with the history, I should first give a background on how

Quebec ended up where it did in the autumn of 1970.

As I mentioned in previous episodes, Canada was once exclusively French.

The land was known as New France and it was largely

populated with settlers from France. However, the British started moving in, came

into conflict with the French, and defeated them in 1759 at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City.

The British now found themselves ruling over a people with a totally different language,

legal system, and religion.

The British were going to have a very difficult time controlling Quebec if they tried to force their customs and language on the French settlers.

If you remember back to my episode on Why Didn't Canada join the American Revolution?

The solution the British adopted was the Quebec Act of 1774.

This basically gave Quebec autonomy to run things around way.

They could keep their language, religion, and legal system, although

they would still nominally be ruled by the British. This actually appeased most of the

Cabiquois. They were left largely alone, which is why they didn't join the Americans in revolting.

However as Canada grew it mostly grew from British settlers

whereas Canada was originally almost totally French as it grew it became dominated by English speakers.

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