Quebec
Quebec is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is bordered to the west by the province of Ontario and the bodies of water James Bay and Hudson Bay. S. states of Maine, New Hampshire and New York. It shares maritime borders with Nunavut, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia. Quebec is Canada's largest province by its second-largest administrative division, it is and politically considered to be part of Central Canada. Quebec is the second-most populous province of Canada, after Ontario, it is the only one to have a predominantly French-speaking population, with French as the sole provincial official language. Most inhabitants live in urban areas near the Saint Lawrence River between Montreal and Quebec City, the capital. Half of Quebec residents live in the Greater Montreal Area, including the Island of Montreal. English-speaking communities and English-language institutions are concentrated in the west of the island of Montreal but are significantly present in the Outaouais, Eastern Townships, Gaspé regions.
The Nord-du-Québec region, occupying the northern half of the province, is sparsely populated and inhabited by Aboriginal peoples. The climate around the major cities is four-seasons continental with cold and snowy winters combined with warm to hot humid summers, but farther north long winter seasons dominate and as a result the northern areas of the province are marked by tundra conditions. In central Quebec, at comparatively southerly latitudes, winters are severe in inland areas. Quebec independence debates have played a large role in the politics of the province. Parti Québécois governments held referendums on sovereignty in 1980 and 1995. Although neither passed, the 1995 referendum saw the highest voter turnout in Quebec history, at over 93%, only failed by less than 1%. In 2006, the House of Commons of Canada passed a symbolic motion recognizing the "Québécois as a nation within a united Canada". While the province's substantial natural resources have long been the mainstay of its economy, sectors of the knowledge economy such as aerospace and communication technologies and the pharmaceutical industry play leading roles.
These many industries have all contributed to helping Quebec become an economically influential province within Canada, second only to Ontario in economic output. The name "Québec", which comes from the Algonquin word kébec meaning "where the river narrows" referred to the area around Quebec City where the Saint Lawrence River narrows to a cliff-lined gap. Early variations in the spelling of the name included Kébec. French explorer Samuel de Champlain chose the name Québec in 1608 for the colonial outpost he would use as the administrative seat for the French colony of New France; the province is sometimes referred to as "La belle province". The Province of Quebec was founded in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 after the Treaty of Paris formally transferred the French colony of Canada to Britain after the Seven Years' War; the proclamation restricted the province to an area along the banks of the Saint Lawrence River. The Quebec Act of 1774 expanded the territory of the province to include the Great Lakes and the Ohio River Valley and south of Rupert's Land, more or less restoring the borders existing under French rule before the Conquest of 1760.
The Treaty of Paris ceded territories south of the Great Lakes to the United States. After the Constitutional Act of 1791, the territory was divided between Lower Canada and Upper Canada, with each being granted an elected legislative assembly. In 1840, these become Canada East and Canada West after the British Parliament unified Upper and Lower Canada into the Province of Canada; this territory was redivided into the Provinces of Quebec and Ontario at Confederation in 1867. Each became one of the first four provinces. In 1870, Canada purchased Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company and over the next few decades the Parliament of Canada transferred to Quebec portions of this territory that would more than triple the size of the province. In 1898, the Canadian Parliament passed the first Quebec Boundary Extension Act that expanded the provincial boundaries northward to include the lands of the local aboriginal peoples; this was followed by the addition of the District of Ungava through the Quebec Boundaries Extension Act of 1912 that added the northernmost lands of the Inuit to create the modern Province of Quebec.
In 1927, the border between Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador was established by the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Quebec disputes this boundary. Located in the eastern part of Canada, part of Central Canada, Quebec occupies a territory nearly three times the size of France or Texas, most of, sparsely populated, its topography is different from one region to another due to the varying composition of the ground, the climate, the proximity to water. The Saint Lawrence Lowland and the Appalachians are the two main topographic regions in southern Quebec, while the Canadian Shield occupies most of central and northern Quebec. Quebec has one of the world's largest reserves of fresh water, occupying 12% of its surface, it has 3 % of the world's renewable fresh water. Mor
North America
North America is a continent within the Northern Hemisphere and all within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers, about 16.5% of the earth's land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. North America is the third largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, the fourth by population after Asia and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 579 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7.5% of the world's population, if nearby islands are included. North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge 40,000 to 17,000 years ago; the so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago. The Classic stage spans the 6th to 13th centuries.
The Pre-Columbian era ended in 1492, the transatlantic migrations—the arrival of European settlers during the Age of Discovery and the Early Modern period. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants. Owing to the European colonization of the Americas, most North Americans speak English, Spanish or French, their culture reflects Western traditions; the Americas are accepted as having been named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. Vespucci, who explored South America between 1497 and 1502, was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a different landmass unknown by Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller produced a world map, in which he placed the word "America" on the continent of South America, in the middle of what is today Brazil, he explained the rationale for the name in the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio:... ab Americo inventore... quasi Americi terram sive Americam.
For Waldseemüller, no one should object to the naming of the land after its discoverer. He used the Latinized version of Vespucci's name, but in its feminine form "America", following the examples of "Europa", "Asia" and "Africa". Other mapmakers extended the name America to the northern continent, In 1538, Gerard Mercator used America on his map of the world for all the Western Hemisphere; some argue that because the convention is to use the surname for naming discoveries, the derivation from "Amerigo Vespucci" could be put in question. In 1874, Thomas Belt proposed a derivation from the Amerrique mountains of Central America. Marcou corresponded with Augustus Le Plongeon, who wrote: "The name AMERICA or AMERRIQUE in the Mayan language means, a country of perpetually strong wind, or the Land of the Wind, and... the can mean... a spirit that breathes, life itself." The United Nations formally recognizes "North America" as comprising three areas: Northern America, Central America, The Caribbean.
This has been formally defined by the UN Statistics Division. The term North America maintains various definitions in accordance with context. In Canadian English, North America refers to the land mass as a whole consisting of Mexico, the United States, Canada, although it is ambiguous which other countries are included, is defined by context. In the United States of America, usage of the term may refer only to Canada and the US, sometimes includes Greenland and Mexico, as well as offshore islands. In France, Portugal, Romania and the countries of Latin America, the cognates of North America designate a subcontinent of the Americas comprising Canada, the United States, Mexico, Greenland, Saint Pierre et Miquelon, Bermuda. North America has been referred to by other names. Spanish North America was referred to as Northern America, this was the first official name given to Mexico. Geographically the North American continent has many subregions; these include cultural and geographic regions. Economic regions included those formed by trade blocs, such as the North American Trade Agreement bloc and Central American Trade Agreement.
Linguistically and culturally, the continent could be divided into Latin America. Anglo-America includes most of Northern America and Caribbean islands with English-speaking populations; the southern North American continent is composed of two regions. These are the Caribbean; the north of the continent maintains recognized regions as well. In contrast to the common definition of "North America", which encompasses the whole continent, the term "North America" is sometimes used to refer only to Mexico, the United States, Greenland; the term Northern America refers to the northern-most countries and territories of North America: the United States, Bermuda, St. Pierre and Miquelon and Greenland. Although the term does not refer to a unifie
Downtown Montreal
Downtown Montreal is the central business district of Montreal, Canada. Located in the borough of Ville-Marie, the district is situated on the southernmost slope of Mount Royal; the downtown region houses many corporate headquarters as well a large majority of the city's skyscrapers — which, by law, cannot be greater in height than Mount Royal in order to preserve the aesthetic predominance and intimidation factor of the mountain. The two tallest of these are the 1000 de La Gauchetière and 1250 René-Lévesque, both of which were built in 1992; the Tour de la Bourse is a significant high-rise and is home to the Montreal Exchange that trades in derivatives. The Montreal Exchange was a stock exchange and was the first in Canada. In 1999, all stock trades were transferred to Toronto in exchange for an exclusivity in the derivative trading market. Place Ville-Marie, an I. M. Pei-designed cruciform office tower built in 1962, sits atop an underground shopping mall that forms the nexus of Montreal's underground city, the world's largest, with indoor access to over 1,600 shops, offices, businesses and universities, as well as metro stations, train stations, bus terminals, tunnels extending all over downtown.
The central axis for downtown is Canada's busiest commercial avenue. The area includes high end retail such as the Holt Renfrew and Ogilvy department stores as well as Les Cours Mont-Royal shopping centre. Other major streets include Peel, de la Montagne, de Maisonneuve and Crescent; the skyline may be observed from one of two lookouts on Mount Royal. The lookout at the Belvedere takes in downtown, the river, the Monteregian Hills. On clear days the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York are visible, as are the Green Mountains of Vermont; the eastern lookout has a view of Olympic Stadium and beyond. Downtown Montreal is home to the main campuses of McGill University and UQAM and the Sir George Williams campus of Concordia University. A number of museums can be found in or near Downtown Montreal, including the Canadian Centre for Architecture, McCord Museum, Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Redpath Museum. Pointe-à-Callière Museum is more in Old Montreal. Notable religious buildings in Downtown Montreal include: Christ Church Cathedral, Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul, Church of St. John the Evangelist, Queen of the World Cathedral, St. James the Apostle Anglican Church, St. James United Church, St. George's Anglican Church and St. Patrick's Basilica.
The Bell Centre, used for ice hockey and other events, lies in the central/southern portion of Downtown Montreal. Place des Arts is located in the eastern part of the city's downtown, between Ste-Catherine and de Maisonneuve Streets, St-Urbain and Jeanne-Mance streets, in an area now known as the Quartier des Spectacles, the complex is home to the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, the Opéra de Montréal. Percival Molson Memorial Stadium lies just to the North of Pine Avenue at the edge of Downtown Montreal. Public space in Downtown Montreal includes the following squares: Cabot Square, Chaboillez Square, Dorchester Square, Norman Bethune Square, Phillips Square, Place du Canada, Place Émilie-Gamelin, Place des Festivals, Place Jean-Paul Riopelle and Victoria Square. Two railway stations are in Downtown Montreal: Central Station serves both intercity and commuter rail services of the Réseau de transport métropolitain services. Additional commuter services use Lucien-L'Allier Station.
Downtown Montreal contains two bus stations: Gare d'autocars de Montréal serves longer distance services, while Terminus Centre-Ville is a terminus for services operated by RTL. Two lines of the Montreal Metro run east–west through Downtown Montreal. Line 1 is aligned with De Maisonneuve Boulevard, serving: Atwater, Guy-Concordia, Peel, McGill, Place-des-Arts, Saint-Laurent and Berri-UQAM stations. Line 2 runs some blocks south of the Green Line, serving Lucien-L'Allier, Square-Victoria-OACI, Place-d'Armes, Champ-de-Mars and Berri-UQAM. Place-d'Armes and Champ-de-Mars stations would be considered as in Old Montreal. Berri-UQAM is the terminus for Line 4. Air Canada was headquartered in Downtown Montreal. In 1990, the airline announced that it was moving its headquarters from Downtown Montreal to Montreal-Trudeau Airport to cut costs. Portions of four university-level establishments lie within Downtown Montreal: the main campus of McGill University, on the northern side of Sherbrooke Street. Four colleges lie in downtown: the public Cégep du Vieux Montréal on Ontario Street East.
Underground City, Montreal Old Montreal Old Port of Montreal Downtown Montreal travel guide from Wikivoyage
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments and circuitry-based music technology. In general, a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means, that produced using electronics only. Electromechanical instruments include mechanical elements, such as strings, so on, electric elements, such as magnetic pickups, power amplifiers and loudspeakers. Examples of electromechanical sound producing devices include the telharmonium, Hammond organ, the electric guitar, which are made loud enough for performers and audiences to hear with an instrument amplifier and speaker cabinet. Pure electronic instruments do not have vibrating strings, hammers, or other sound-producing mechanisms. Devices such as the theremin and computer can produce electronic sounds; the first electronic devices for performing music were developed at the end of the 19th century, shortly afterward Italian futurists explored sounds that had not been considered musical.
During the 1920s and 1930s, electronic instruments were introduced and the first compositions for electronic instruments were made. By the 1940s, magnetic audio tape allowed musicians to tape sounds and modify them by changing the tape speed or direction, leading to the development of electroacoustic tape music in the 1940s, in Egypt and France. Musique concrète, created in Paris in 1948, was based on editing together recorded fragments of natural and industrial sounds. Music produced from electronic generators was first produced in Germany in 1953. Electronic music was created in Japan and the United States beginning in the 1950s. An important new development was the advent of computers to compose music. Algorithmic composition with computers was first demonstrated in the 1950s. In the 1960s, live electronics were pioneered in America and Europe, Japanese electronic musical instruments began influencing the music industry, Jamaican dub music emerged as a form of popular electronic music. In the early 1970s, the monophonic Minimoog synthesizer and Japanese drum machines helped popularize synthesized electronic music.
In the 1970s, electronic music began having a significant influence on popular music, with the adoption of polyphonic synthesizers, electronic drums, drum machines, turntables, through the emergence of genres such as disco, new wave, synth-pop, hip hop and EDM. In the 1980s, electronic music became more dominant in popular music, with a greater reliance on synthesizers, the adoption of programmable drum machines such as the Roland TR-808 and bass synthesizers such as the TB-303. In the early 1980s, digital technologies for synthesizers including digital synthesizers such as the Yamaha DX7 were popularized, a group of musicians and music merchants developed the Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Electronically produced music became prevalent in the popular domain by the 1990s, because of the advent of affordable music technology. Contemporary electronic music includes many varieties and ranges from experimental art music to popular forms such as electronic dance music. Today, pop electronic music is most recognizable in its 4/4 form and more connected with the mainstream culture as opposed to its preceding forms which were specialized to niche markets.
At the turn of the 20th century, experimentation with emerging electronics led to the first electronic musical instruments. These initial inventions were not sold, but were instead used in demonstrations and public performances; the audiences were presented with reproductions of existing music instead of new compositions for the instruments. While some were considered novelties and produced simple tones, the Telharmonium synthesized the sound of orchestral instruments, it achieved viable public interest and made commercial progress into streaming music through telephone networks. Critics of musical conventions at the time saw promise in these developments. Ferruccio Busoni encouraged the composition of microtonal music allowed for by electronic instruments, he predicted the use of machines in future music, writing the influential Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music. Futurists such as Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo began composing music with acoustic noise to evoke the sound of machinery.
They predicted expansions in timbre allowed for by electronics in the influential manifesto The Art of Noises. Developments of the vacuum tube led to electronic instruments that were smaller and more practical for performance. In particular, the theremin, ondes Martenot and trautonium were commercially produced by the early 1930s. From the late 1920s, the increased practicality of electronic instruments influenced composers such as Joseph Schillinger to adopt them, they were used within orchestras, most composers wrote parts for the theremin that could otherwise be performed with string instruments. Avant-garde composers criticized the predominant use of electronic instruments for conventional purposes; the instruments offered expansions in pitch resources that were exploited by advocates of microtonal music such as Charles Ives, Dimitrios Levidis, Olivier Messiaen and Edgard Varèse. Further, Percy Grainger used the theremin to abandon fixed tonation while Russian composers such as Gavriil Popov treated it as a source of noise in otherwise-acoustic noise music.
Developments in early recording technology paralleled that of electronic instruments. The first means of recording and reproducing audio was invented in the late 19th century with the mechanical phonograph. Record players became a common household item, by the 1920s comp
French Canadians
French Canadians are an ethnic group who trace their ancestry to French colonists who settled in Canada from the 17th century onward. Today, people of French heritage make up the majority of native speakers of French in Canada, who in turn account for about 22 per cent of the country's total population; the majority of French Canadians reside in Quebec, where they constitute the majority of the province's population, although French-Canadian and francophone minority communities exist in all other Canadian provinces and territories as well. Besides the Québécois, distinct French speaking ethnic groups in Canada include the Acadians of the Maritime Provinces, the Brayons of New Brunswick, the Métis of the Prairie Provinces, among other smaller groups. During the mid-18th century, Canadian colonists born in French Canada expanded across North America and colonized various regions and towns. Today, French Canadians live across North America. Most French Canadians reside in Quebec, are more referred to as Quebecers or Québécois, although smaller communities exist throughout Canada and in the United States.
Between 1840 and 1930 900,000 French Canadians emigrated to the United States to the New England region. Acadians, who reside in the Maritimes, may be included among the French Canadian group in linguistic contexts, but are considered a separate group from the French Canadians in a cultural sense due to their distinct history, much of which predates the admission of the Maritime Provinces to Canadian Confederation in 1867. French Canadians constitute the second largest ethnic group in Canada, behind those of English ancestry, ahead of those of Scottish and Irish heritage. In total, those whose ethnic origins are French Canadian, French, Québécois and Acadian number up to 11.9 million people or comprising 33.78% of the Canadian population. Not all francophone Canadians are of French-Canadian descent or heritage, as the body of French language speakers in Canada includes significant immigrant communities from other francophone countries such as Haiti, Algeria, Tunisia or Vietnam — and not all French Canadians are francophone, as a significant number of people who have French Canadian ethnic roots are native English speakers.
The French Canadians get their name from Canada, the most developed and densely populated region of New France during the period of French colonization in the 17th and 18th centuries. The original use of the term Canada referred to the land area along the St. Lawrence River, divided in three districts, as well as to the Pays d'en Haut, a vast and thinly settled territorial dependence north and west of Montreal which covered the whole of the Great Lakes area. From 1535 to the 1690s, the French word Canadien had referred to the First Nations the French had encountered in the St. Lawrence River valley at Stadacona and Hochelaga. At the end of the 17th century, Canadien became an ethnonym distinguishing the inhabitants of Canada from those of France. After World War I, English-Canadians appropriated the term "Canadian" and French-Canadians identified as Québécois instead. French Canadians living in Canada express their cultural identity using a number of terms; the Ethnic Diversity Survey of the 2006 Canadian census found that French-speaking Canadians identified their ethnicity most as French, French Canadians, Québécois, Acadian.
The latter three were grouped together by Jantzen as "French New World" ancestries because they originate in Canada. Jantzen distinguishes the English Canadian, meaning "someone whose family has been in Canada for multiple generations", the French Canadien, used to refer to descendants of the original settlers of New France in the 17th and 18th centuries. "Canadien" was used to refer to the French-speaking residents of New France beginning in the last half of the 17th century. The English-speaking residents who arrived from Great Britain were called "Anglais"; this usage continued until Canadian Confederation in 1867. Confederation united several former British colonies into the Dominion of Canada, from that time forward, the word "Canadian" has been used to describe both English-speaking and French-speaking citizens, wherever they live in the country; those reporting "French New World" ancestries overwhelmingly had ancestors that went back at least four generations in Canada. Fourth generation Canadiens and Québécois showed considerable attachment to their ethno-cultural group, with 70% and 61% reporting a strong sense of belonging.
The generational profile and strength of identity of French New World ancestries contrast with those of British or Canadian ancestries, which represent the largest ethnic identities in Canada. Although rooted Canadians express a deep attachment to their ethnic identity, most English-speaking Canadians of British or Canadian ancestry cannot trace their ancestry as far back in Canada as French-speakers; as a result, their identification with their ethnicity is weaker: for example, only 50% of third generation "Canadians" identify as such, bringing down the overall average. The survey report notes that 80% of Canadians whose families had been in Canada for three or more generations reported "Canadian and provincial or regional ethnic identities"; these identities include
