John Travolta
John Joseph Travolta is an American actor, film producer and singer. Travolta first became known in the 1970s, appearing on the television series Welcome Back and starring in the box office successes Saturday Night Fever and Grease, his acting career declined through the 1980s, but enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s with his role in Pulp Fiction, he has since starred in films such as Get Shorty, Broken Arrow, Face/Off, Swordfish, Be Cool, Wild Hogs and The Taking of Pelham 123. Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction, he won his first and only Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for his performance in Get Shorty and has received a total of six nominations, the most recent being in 2011. In 2010, he received the IIFA Award for Outstanding Achievement in International Cinema. In 2016, Travolta received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the first season of the anthology series American Crime Story, subtitled The People v. O. J. Simpson.
He received an additional Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of lawyer Robert Shapiro in the series. Travolta, the youngest of six children, was born and raised in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of Bergen County, New Jersey, his father, Salvatore Travolta, was a semi-professional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Cecilia, was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher, his siblings, Ellen, Ann and Sam Travolta, inspired by their mother's love of theatre and drama, have all acted. His father was a second-generation Italian American and his mother was Irish American, he was raised Roman Catholic, but converted to Scientology in 1975. Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School, but dropped out as a junior at age 17 in 1971. After attending Dwight Morrow High School, Travolta moved across the Hudson River to New York City and landed a role in the touring company of the musical Grease and on Broadway in Over Here!, singing the Sherman Brothers' song "Dream Drummin'".
He moved to Los Angeles for professional reasons. Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in Emergency!, in September 1972, but his first significant movie role was as Billy Nolan, a bully, goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film Carrie. Around the same time, he landed his star-making role as Vinnie Barbarino in the TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, in which his sister, Ellen occasionally appeared; the show aired on ABC. Travolta had a hit single titled "Let Her In", peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976. In the next few years, he starred in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble and two of his most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever and Danny Zuko in Grease; the films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him, at age 24, one of the youngest performers nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.
His mother and his sister Ann appeared briefly in Saturday Night Fever and his sister Ellen played a waitress in Grease. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album. In 1980, Travolta inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film Urban Cowboy, in which he starred with Debra Winger. After Urban Cowboy, Travolta starred in a series of commercial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career; these included Two of a Kind, a romantic comedy reteaming him with Olivia Newton-John, Perfect, co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. He starred in Staying Alive, the 1983 sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for which he trained rigorously and lost 20 pounds. During that time Travolta was offered, but declined, lead roles in what would become box-office hits, including American Gigolo and An Officer and a Gentleman, both of which went to Richard Gere. In 1989, Travolta starred with Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking, which grossed $297 million making it his most successful film since Grease.
Next came Look Who's Talking Too and Look Who's Talking Now but it was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career revived. The movie shifted him back onto the A-list, he was inundated with offers. Notable roles following Pulp Fiction include a movie-buff loan shark in Get Shorty, a corrupt US air force pilot in Broken Arrow, an FBI agent and terrorist in Face/Off, a desperate attorney in A Civil Action, a Bill Clinton-esque presidential candidate in Primary Colors, a military investigator in The General's Daughter. In 2000, Travolta starred in and co-produced the science fiction film Battlefield Earth, based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth; the film had been a dream project for Travolta since the book's release in 1982, when Hubbard had written him to try to
John Lennon
John Winston Ono Lennon was an English singer and peace activist who co-founded the Beatles, the most commercially successful band in the history of popular music. He and fellow member Paul McCartney formed a much-celebrated songwriting partnership. Along with George Harrison and Ringo Starr, the group achieved worldwide fame during the 1960s. In 1969, Lennon started the Plastic Ono Band with his second wife, Yoko Ono, he continued to pursue a solo career following the the Beatles' break-up in April 1970, he was born as John Winston Lennon in Liverpool, where he became involved in the skiffle craze as a teenager. In 1957, he formed his first band, the Quarrymen, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. Further to his Plastic Ono Band singles such as "Give Peace a Chance" and "Instant Karma!", Lennon subsequently produced albums that included John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, songs such as "Working Class Hero", "Imagine" and "Happy Xmas". After moving to New York City in 1971, he never returned to England for the remainder of his life.
In 1975, he disengaged himself from the music business to raise his infant son Sean, but re-emerged with Ono in 1980 with the album Double Fantasy. He was shot and killed in the archway of his Manhattan apartment building three weeks after the album's release. Lennon revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, drawings, on film and in interviews, he was controversial through his political and peace activism. From 1971 onwards, his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a three-year attempt by the Nixon administration to deport him; some of his songs were adopted as anthems by the larger counterculture. By 2012, Lennon's solo album sales in the United States had exceeded 14 million units, he had 25 number-one singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart as a co-writer or performer. In 2002, Lennon was voted eighth in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons and in 2008, Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer of all time. In 1987, he was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Lennon was twice posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: first in 1988 as a member of the Beatles and again in 1994 as a solo artist. Lennon was born on 9 October 1940 at Liverpool Maternity Hospital, to Alfred Lennon. Alfred was a merchant seaman of Irish descent, away at the time of his son's birth, his parents named him John Winston Lennon after his paternal grandfather, John "Jack" Lennon, Prime Minister Winston Churchill. His father was away from home but sent regular pay cheques to 9 Newcastle Road, where Lennon lived with his mother; when he came home six months he offered to look after the family, but Julia, by pregnant with another man's child, rejected the idea. After her sister Mimi complained to Liverpool's Social Services twice, Julia gave her custody of Lennon. In July 1946, Lennon's father visited her and took his son to Blackpool, secretly intending to emigrate to New Zealand with him. Julia followed them – with her partner at the time, Bobby Dykins – and after a heated argument, his father forced the five-year-old to choose between them.
In one account of this incident, Lennon twice chose his father, but as his mother walked away, he began to cry and followed her. According to author Mark Lewisohn, Lennon's parents agreed that Julia should take him and give him a home. A witness, there that day, Billy Hall, has said that the dramatic portrayal of a young John Lennon being forced to make a decision between his parents is inaccurate. Lennon had no further contact with Alf for close to 20 years. Throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence, Lennon lived at Mendips, 251 Menlove Avenue, with Mimi and her husband George Toogood Smith, who had no children of their own, his aunt purchased volumes of short stories for him, his uncle, a dairyman at his family's farm, bought him a mouth organ and engaged him in solving crossword puzzles. Julia visited Mendips on a regular basis, when John was 11 years old, he visited her at 1 Blomfield Road, where she played him Elvis Presley records, taught him the banjo, showed him how to play "Ain't That a Shame" by Fats Domino.
In September 1980, Lennon commented about his family and his rebellious nature: Part of me would like to be accepted by all facets of society and not be this loudmouthed lunatic poet/musician. But I cannot be what I am not... I was the one who all the other boys' parents – including Paul's father – would say, "Keep away from him"... The parents instinctively recognised I was a troublemaker, meaning I did not conform and I would influence their children, which I did. I did my best to disrupt every friend's home... Out of envy that I didn't have this so-called home... but I did... There were five women. Five strong, beautiful women, five sisters. One happened to be my mother. Just couldn't deal with life, she was the youngest and she had a husband who ran away to sea and the war was on and she couldn't cope with me, I ended up living with her elder sister. Now those women were fantastic... And, my first feminist education... I would infiltrate the other boys' minds. I could say, "Parents are not gods because I don't live with mine and, therefore, I know."
He visited his cousin, Stanley Parkes, who lived in Fleetwood and took him on trips to local cinemas. During the school holidays, Parkes visited Lennon with Leila Harvey, another cousin, the threesome travelled to Blackpool two or three times a week to watch shows, they would
Indira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, was an Indian politician, stateswoman and a central figure of the Indian National Congress. She was the first and, to date, the only female Prime Minister of India. Indira Gandhi was the daughter of the first prime minister of India, she served as Prime Minister from January 1966 to March 1977 and again from January 1980 until her assassination in October 1984, making her the second longest-serving Indian Prime Minister, after her father. Gandhi served as her father's personal assistant and hostess during his tenure as Prime Minister between 1947 and 1964, she was elected President of the Indian National Congress in 1959. Upon her father's death in 1964 she was appointed as a member of the Rajya Sabha and became a member of Lal Bahadur Shastri's cabinet as Minister of Information and Broadcasting. In the Congress Party's parliamentary leadership election held in early 1966, she defeated her rival Morarji Desai to become leader, thus succeeded Shastri as Prime Minister of India.
As Prime Minister, Gandhi was known for her political intransigency and unprecedented centralisation of power. She went to war with Pakistan in support of the independence movement and war of independence in East Pakistan, which resulted in an Indian victory and the creation of Bangladesh, as well as increasing India's influence to the point where it became the regional hegemon of South Asia. Citing fissiparous tendencies and in response to a call for revolution, Gandhi instituted a state of emergency from 1975 to 1977 where basic civil liberties were suspended and the press was censored. Widespread atrocities were carried out during the emergency. In 1980, she returned to power after fair elections. After Operation Blue Star, she was assassinated by her own bodyguards and Sikh nationalists on 31 October 1984; the assassins, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh, were both shot by other security guards. Satwant Singh was executed after being convicted of murder. In 1999, Indira Gandhi was named "Woman of the Millennium" in an online poll organised by the BBC.
Indira Gandhi was born as Indira Priyadarshini Nehru in a Kashmiri Pandit family on 19 November 1917 in Allahabad. Her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a leading figure in India's political struggle for independence from British rule, became the first Prime Minister of the Dominion of India, she was the only child, grew up with her mother, Kamala Nehru, at the Anand Bhavan. She had a unhappy childhood, her father was away, directing political activities or incarcerated, while her mother was bed-ridden with illness, suffered an early death from tuberculosis. She had limited contact with her father through letters. Indira was taught at home by tutors, intermittently attended school until matriculation in 1934, she was a student at the Modern School in Delhi, St Cecilia's and St Mary's Christian convent schools in Allahabad, the International School of Geneva, the Ecole Nouvelle in Bex, the Pupils' Own School in Poona and Bombay, affiliated to University of Mumbai. She and her mother Kamala Nehru moved to Belur Math headquarters of Ramakrishna Mission where Swami Ranganathananda was her guardian she went on to study at the Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan.
It was during her interview that Rabindranath Tagore named her Priyadarshini, she came to be known as Indira Priyadarshini Nehru. A year however, she had to leave university to attend to her ailing mother in Europe. While there, it was decided. After her mother died, she attended the Badminton School before enrolling at Somerville College in 1937 to study history. Indira had to take the entrance examination twice, having failed at her first attempt with a poor performance in Latin. At Oxford, she did well in history, political science and economics, but her grades in Latin—a compulsory subject—remained poor, she did, have an active part within the student life of the university, such as the Oxford Majlis Asian Society. On 26 September 1981, Indira was conferred with the Honorory Degree of Doctor at the Laucala Graduation at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. During her time in Europe, Indira was plagued with ill-health and was attended to by doctors, she had to make repeated trips to Switzerland to recover.
She was being treated there in 1940, when the German armies conquered Europe. Gandhi was left stranded for nearly two months, she managed to enter England in early 1941, from there returned to India without completing her studies at Oxford. The university awarded her an honorary degree. In 2010, Oxford further honoured her by selecting her as one of the ten Oxasians, illustrious Asian graduates from the University of Oxford. During her stay in Great Britain, Indira met her future husband Feroze Gandhi, whom she knew from Allahabad, and, studying at the London School of Economics; the marriage took place in Allahabad according to Adi Dharm rituals though Feroze belonged to a Zoroastrian Parsi family of Gujarat. The couple had Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi. In the 1950s, now Mrs Indira Gandhi after her marriage, served her father unofficially as a personal assistant during his tenure as the first Prime Minister of India. Towards the end of the 1950s, Indira Gandhi served as the President of the Congress.
In that ca
Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II is Queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms. Elizabeth was born in London as the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, she was educated at home, her father acceded to the throne on the abdication of his brother King Edward VIII in 1936, from which time she was the heir presumptive. She began to undertake public duties during the Second World War, serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. In 1947, she married Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, a former prince of Greece and Denmark, with whom she has four children: Charles, Prince of Wales; when her father died in February 1952, she became head of the Commonwealth and queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Ceylon. She has reigned as a constitutional monarch through major political changes, such as devolution in the United Kingdom, Canadian patriation, the decolonisation of Africa. Between 1956 and 1992, the number of her realms varied as territories gained independence and realms, including South Africa and Ceylon, became republics.
Her many historic visits and meetings include a state visit to the Republic of Ireland and visits to or from five popes. Significant events have included her coronation in 1953 and the celebrations of her Silver and Diamond Jubilees in 1977, 2002, 2012 respectively. In 2017, she became the first British monarch to reach a Sapphire Jubilee, she is the longest-lived and longest-reigning British monarch as well as the world's longest-reigning queen regnant and female head of state, the oldest and longest-reigning current monarch and the longest-serving current head of state. Elizabeth has faced republican sentiments and press criticism of the royal family, in particular after the breakdown of her children's marriages, her annus horribilis in 1992 and the death in 1997 of her former daughter-in-law Diana, Princess of Wales. However, support for the monarchy has been and remains high, as does her personal popularity. Elizabeth was born at 02:40 on 21 April 1926, during the reign of her paternal grandfather, King George V.
Her father, the Duke of York, was the second son of the King. Her mother, the Duchess of York, was the youngest daughter of Scottish aristocrat the Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, she was delivered by Caesarean section at her maternal grandfather's London house: 17 Bruton Street, Mayfair. She was baptised by the Anglican Archbishop of York, Cosmo Gordon Lang, in the private chapel of Buckingham Palace on 29 May, named Elizabeth after her mother, Alexandra after George V's mother, who had died six months earlier, Mary after her paternal grandmother. Called "Lilibet" by her close family, based on what she called herself at first, she was cherished by her grandfather George V, during his serious illness in 1929 her regular visits were credited in the popular press and by biographers with raising his spirits and aiding his recovery. Elizabeth's only sibling, Princess Margaret, was born in 1930; the two princesses were educated at home under the supervision of their mother and their governess, Marion Crawford.
Lessons concentrated on history, language and music. Crawford published a biography of Elizabeth and Margaret's childhood years entitled The Little Princesses in 1950, much to the dismay of the royal family; the book describes Elizabeth's love of horses and dogs, her orderliness, her attitude of responsibility. Others echoed such observations: Winston Churchill described Elizabeth when she was two as "a character, she has an air of authority and reflectiveness astonishing in an infant." Her cousin Margaret Rhodes described her as "a jolly little girl, but fundamentally sensible and well-behaved". During her grandfather's reign, Elizabeth was third in the line of succession to the throne, behind her uncle Edward and her father. Although her birth generated public interest, she was not expected to become queen, as Edward was still young. Many people believed he would have children of his own; when her grandfather died in 1936 and her uncle succeeded as Edward VIII, she became second-in-line to the throne, after her father.
That year, Edward abdicated, after his proposed marriage to divorced socialite Wallis Simpson provoked a constitutional crisis. Elizabeth's father became king, she became heir presumptive. If her parents had had a son, she would have lost her position as first-in-line, as her brother would have been heir apparent and above her in the line of succession. Elizabeth received private tuition in constitutional history from Henry Marten, Vice-Provost of Eton College, learned French from a succession of native-speaking governesses. A Girl Guides company, the 1st Buckingham Palace Company, was formed so she could socialise with girls her own age, she was enrolled as a Sea Ranger. In 1939, Elizabeth's parents toured the United States; as in 1927, when her parents had toured Australia and New Zealand, Elizabeth remained in Britain, since her father thought her too young to undertake public tours. Elizabeth "looked tearful", they corresponded and she and her parents made the first royal transatlantic telephone call on 18 May.
In September 1939, Britain entered the Second World War. Lord Hailsham suggested that the two princesses should be evacuated to Canada to avoid the frequent aerial bombing; this was rejected by Elizabeth's mother. I won't leave wit
Fairmont Hotels and Resorts
Fairmont Hotels & Resorts is a chain of luxury hotels headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. It was established in 2001 following the merger of Canadian Pacific Hotels and Resorts and Fairmont Hotels. Fairmont operates 75 properties in 24 countries, with a strong presence in Canada and the United States; the hotel chain is owned by AccorHotels, which acquired FRHI Hotels & Resorts in 2016. Canadian Pacific Hotels was a division of the Canadian Pacific Railway Hotels department; the division operated a series of hotels along their rail lines as early as 1886. Many of these resort hotels were built and operated by the railway's hotel department, while a few were acquired from Canadian National Hotels, a hotel division of the Canadian National Railway. Over the years, a collection of grand railway hotels was put together throughout Canada, both rural and urban. By the 1980s, CP Hotels' collection included the Chateau Lake Louise, the Banff Springs Hotel, the Château Frontenac, the Empress Hotel, the Palliser Hotel, the Fairmont Royal York, others.
In addition to its properties in Canada, the hotel chain operated a small number of hotels outside Canada, with properties in Germany, Israel and the United States. CPR's rival Grand Trunk Railway and Canadian National Railway copied Van Horne's approach by building hotels such as the Jasper Park Lodge in Jasper and the Château Laurier in Ottawa. CPR purchased Canadian National Hotels, Canadian National Railway's hotel division in 1988, making CP Hotels the nation's largest hotel owner. In the 1990s, CP Hotels began to expand and purchased the Canadian Delta Hotels chain and the international Princess Hotels chain in 1998, which became wholly owned subsidiaries of CP Hotels. In 1999, the CP Hotels purchased the San Francisco-based Fairmont Resorts chain. During the 1890s, James Graham Fair bought the land where the Fairmont San Francisco now stands, the first hotel to bear the Fairmont namesake; the nearly completed structure survived the earthquake of 1906. Although damaged by the subsequent fires, the hotel was renovated under the eye of architect Julia Morgan and opened in 1907.
In 1926, the Penthouse Suite was created with three secret passageways to access it. In 1945, the Fairmont San Francisco was acquired by Benjamin Swig. Beginning in the 1960s, the Swig family developed Fairmont into a small chain of luxury hotels throughout the United States. Operating as Fairmont Hotels Management, the hotel chain acquired, built a number of hotel properties; the chain acquired the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans in 1965 renaming it the Fairmont Roosevelt, Fairmont New Orleans. The Fairmont San Jose was opened by the hotel chain in 1987; the company assumed management of the Plaza Hotel in New York in 1995 and purchased the Copley Plaza Hotel in 1996, renaming it The Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel. By 1998, the company managed seven properties in the United States. In addition to those properties, the company operated the Colony Square Hotel in Atlanta as Fairmont Colony Square Hotel from its opening in 1974 to 1977, The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia as Fairmont Philadelphia from 1979 to 1980.
In April 1999, Canadian Pacific Hotels, Kingdom Hotels International and Maritz Wolff & Co. bought Fairmont Hotels Management L. P. with Canadian Pacific Hotels holding the majority of the shares. In 2001, Canadian Pacific Limited, the parent company of both Canadian Pacific Hotels and Resorts, Canadian Pacific Railway, was reorganized. During this reorganization, Canadian Pacific Hotels and Resorts was renamed to Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, borrowing the name of Fairmont Hotels, the company it had purchased in 1999; the newly re-organized Fairmont company shuffled several properties to its Delta Hotels subsidiary, while retaining its other "signature" resorts and hotels from its former CP Hotel and Fairmont properties under the new Fairmont banner. That year in October 2001, Canadian Pacific Limited spun off all of its subsidiary companies into separately traded "independent" companies, including the Canadian Pacific Railway and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Companies like Fairmont Hotel and Resorts, the Canadian Pacific Railway were split into smaller companies in a 2001 "starburst" move designed to increase the valuations of its individual divisions.
In the early 2000s, Fairmont multiplied its openings in the United States. In 2001, Fairmont introduced the Willow Stream Spa prototype, a $7 million 2-floor 8,000-square-foot spa located inside the Fairmont Empress Hotel; the signature spa brand was implemented in many of Fairmont’s locations. In July 2001, Fairmont Hotels signed a joint-venture with Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan for a minority-stake purchase and the management of a luxury 393-room hotel in Dubai; the Fairmont Dubai property was the first Fairmont branded hotels in the Middle East. In 2003, Fairmont introduced Fairmont Heritage Place, a chain of timeshare hotels, with the first opening in Mexico. In 2004, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts Inc. paid $70 million to take full control of the management company that runs its properties. In early 2006, a cluster of Fairmont Hotels & Resorts was sold for $3.9 billion USD to Colony Capital, LLC. As a result of that purchase, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts was united with Raffles Hotels and Resorts and Swissôtel to form Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, though the four chains still operate under their individual names.
In April 2010, Kingdom Hotels sold 22% of its shares of FRHI to Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment, giving them 40% of FRHI and became the second largest shareholder of the company. The remaining 60% belonged to a private shares holding in Sweden, trusted in AC
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
Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral
Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral is a minor basilica in Montreal, Quebec and the seat of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Montreal. It is the third largest church in Quebec after Saint Joseph's Oratory and the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré east of Quebec City; the building is 101 m in length, 46 m in width, a maximum height of 77 m at the cupola, the diameter of, 23 m. The church is located at 1085 Cathedral Street at the corner of René Lévesque Boulevard and Metcalfe Street, near the Bonaventure metro station and Central Station in downtown Montreal, it and the connected Archdiocese main buildings form the eastern side of Place du Canada, occupies of dominant presences on Dorchester Square. The sacrament of baptism is celebrated in the small chapel; the marble baptismal font is surmounted by an impressive stucco crucifix sculpted by Philippe Hébert. The crucifix is one of the most important pieces of religious sculpture in Quebec; the construction of the cathedral was ordered by Mgr. Ignace Bourget, second bishop of Montreal, to replace the former Saint-Jacques Cathedral which had burned in 1852.
His choice to create a scale model of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome was in response to a rivalry with the Sulpician order, the feudal seigneurs of Montreal, with the Anglican Church, both of which favoured the Neo-Gothic style instead. The site sparked controversy due to its location in the western part of downtown, in a predominantly English neighbourhood far from the homes of the French-Canadian church-goers; the first architect, Victor Bourgeau, refused the project after studying St. Peter's, claiming that it could not be reproduced on a smaller scale. At the time, the Holy See and the Papal States were threatened by the nationalist troops of Victor Emmanuel II, king of Piedmont, attempting to assert control over all Italy; the undeterred bishop Bourget replied to these events by sending a total of 507 Canadian Zouaves to defend the Papal territories in Italy, whose names are engraved in gold letters on the marble slabs in the cathedral. Their motto is: "Love God and go your way." A painting depicting Colonel Athanase de Charette, commander of the Papal Zouaves, was made in 1885 by Lionel Royer.
Fr. Joseph Michaud, the chaplain of the Papal Zouave volunteers of Montreal, was sent to Rome to secretly produce a scale model to work from. Work began in 1875 and the new church was consecrated in 1894 as Saint James Cathedral, after Saint James the Great, the patron of the parish the church served. At the time it was the largest church in Quebec, it was made a minor basilica in 1919 by Pope Benedict XV. It was rededicated in 1955 to Mary, Queen of the World, by Pope Pius XII at the request of cardinal Paul-Émile Léger. Between 1955 and 1960, several restoration works have been executed. On March 28, 2000, the cathedral was designated a National Historic Site of Canada. In the last few years, the cathedral's esplanade and narthex have undergone significant reconstruction; the exterior statue of Bishop Ignace Bourget was cleaned and restored in 2005. Instead of the statues of the 12 apostles on the façade of St. Peter's, the front of the cathedral is topped by statues of the patron saints of 13 parishes of Montreal who donated them, including St. John the Baptist and St. Patrick.
All of the statues were sculpted by Olindo Gratton between 1892 and 1898. These statues represent: Saint Anthony of patron of the Saint-Anthony-of-Padua parish. Next to the church, there's a monument for Mgr. Ignace Bourget; the aisles of the nave and the arches in the transept contain painting depicting historical events in the early days of Montreal. It contains nine paintings and still three empty spaces; the paintings are: The aforementioned painting of colonel Athanase de Charette, commander of the Papal Zouaves of Montreal. Work by Lionel Ryder. Marguerite d'Youville singing "Te Deum" to children during the fire that destroyed her hospital on May 18, 1765. Work by Georges Delfosse. Marguerite Bourgeoys teaching her Amerindian pupils in 1694 at the foot of one of the historic towers on ground belonging to the Sulpicians. Work by Georges Delfosse; the martyrdom of Fathers Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant in the land of the Hurons. The Iroquois tortured the Jesuit missionaries, of whom Father de Brébeuf can be seen in the centre with his hands tied to a stake.
Work by Georges Delfosse. Father Barthélemy Vimont saying the first mass in Montreal on May 18, 1642. Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance, the co-founders of Montreal, can be seen attending the mass; this work by Ernest Laurent was a gift from the French government to Archbishop Paul Bruchési. The consecration of the Associates of Montreal's project. On February 3, 1641, noble man and women, priests, who dreamed of founding the city of Ville-Marie in New France, attend a mass celebrated by Jean-Jacques Olier in the Notre-Dame of Paris to pray for the protection of Our
