Short answers, pulled from the story.
The name Quebec comes from an Algonquin word meaning 'narrow passage' or 'strait.' It originally referred to the area near Quebec City where the Saint Lawrence River narrows. French explorer Samuel de Champlain chose the name in 1608 for the colonial outpost he founded there.
Samuel de Champlain founded the Habitation de Québec, now Quebec City, on the 3rd of July 1608 with the backing of King Henry IV. He established it as a permanent fur trading outpost and made it the capital of New France.
The Quiet Revolution was an intense period of modernization, secularization, and social reform that began when Jean Lesage's Liberal Party came to power in 1960. It transferred control of education, health, and social services from the Catholic Church to the Quebec government, and included the nationalization of private electricity companies into Hydro-Québec at an estimated cost of over $600 million.
The 1995 Quebec independence referendum ended with 50.6% voting no and 49.4% voting yes, one of the closest referendum results in democratic history. Over 60% of francophones voted yes, while over 90% of anglophones voted no. Premier Jacques Parizeau had called the referendum within a year of his 1994 election victory as he had promised.
French is the sole official language of Quebec and the native language of 74.8% of the population, or slightly more than 6.5 million residents, according to the 2021 census. In total, 93.7% of the population understands and speaks French. Quebec is the only Canadian province with a majority Francophone population.
Bill 101, formally the Charter of the French Language, came into force in 1977 under the Parti Québécois government of René Lévesque. It was designed to protect Quebec's French-speaking majority from cultural absorption by its English-speaking neighbours and to address a historical imbalance in which the Anglophone minority had been economically favoured since the British colonial period. The Office québécois de la langue française was assigned to oversee its application.