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An exploration of one little-known mineral, and the social, political, and economic forces that shaped both its history and the twentieth century.

Charles de Gaulle's visit to Quebec in 1967 continues to attract significant scholarly and popular attention. Despite ongoing efforts to broaden our understanding of the evolution of France-Quebec relations during the 1960s, de Gaulle's visit remains the pivotal event of that rapprochement and is believed to confirm the French president's personal support for Quebec's independence, stemming from his efforts to position post-colonial France as the champion of decolonization and self-determination for dependent peoples. This scholarly consensus, however, can be challenged by even a cursory glance at France's policies toward New Caledonia in the 1960s, which reflected a fierce French determination to prevent the loss of its Pacific Ocean territory. Instead of accepting, much less encouraging, New Caledonia's autonomy, the French state in fact re-colonized New Caledonia over the course of the 1960s, a situation that compels us to examine more closely the attitude of de Gaulle and the French state toward \"decolonization\" in Quebec during the same period. The national aspirations that mattered most to France or to de Gaulle were those of France itself.

In April 1961, the federal government announced funding of $300,000 for a programme to provide educational assistance to the countries of French Africa. For most of the 1960s the programme was Canada's principal form of contact with the newly independent French African states. It was also a programme that the government of Quebec felt entitled to direct and for which it was willing to assume large responsibilities. Because education is the preserve of the provinces under the Canadian constitution, officials in Quebec thought that Quebec should bear the responsibility and take the credit for educational assistance to French Africa. Believing that the government of Quebec was the 'national' government of Canada's French Canadians, these officials thought Quebec had a special interest in relations with other French- speaking states, and the educational assistance programme became the vehicle through which to establish initial international contacts. Quebec's desire for a prominent role in the programme, however, challenged federal responsibility for foreign affairs and the ability of the federal government to represent all Canadians internationally. The conflict that resulted was the first skirmish in a long battle between the federal and provincial governments over relations with the international French-speaking community known as la francophonie. The inherent differences between the governments of Canada and of Quebec over this programme were exacerbated by the suspicion with which each government regarded the other's motives. Claude Morin, Quebec's deputy minister of intergovernmental affairs, told [Marcel Cadieux], now the under-secretary of state for external affairs, in May 1966 that Quebec wanted to establish its international identity through a series of small precedents, just as Canada had achieved its independence from Britain. Despite Morin's professions of innocence, the analogy he had drawn merely confirmed Cadieux's suspicion that independence was the ultimate goal of the government of Quebec.(f.25) Many federal officials interpreted the establishment of a Quebec delegation in Paris in 1961, the France-Quebec cultural accords signed in 1965, and Quebec's interest in a greater role in Canada's relations with French African countries as the kinds of incremental steps that had cemented Canada's own independence. Officials from Quebec, for their part, suspected that federal officials wanted to undermine the principle of provincial exclusivity in provincial fields of jurisdiction)(f.26) This mutual distrust undermined efforts to reach a mutually satisfactory solution to the dispute over the educational assistance programme for French Africa. Yet, despite their differences, the governments of Canada and Quebec co-operated throughout the 1960s on the programme to help meet the educational needs of the French-speaking countries of Africa. Canada's aid programme for francophone Africa was designed with input from both the federal government and Quebec, and, by the mid-1960s, Quebec and federal officials conducted joint briefings and information sessions to prepare the teachers for their assignments. The largest contribution that Quebec made to the aid programme, however, was in recruiting and selecting teachers for secondment to the External Aid Office. By the early 1970s, over 200 French-speaking Canadian teachers from Quebec were working in Africa under the auspices of Canada's external aid programme for French Africa. Quebec's Department of Education had sole responsibility for finding the candidates and evaluating their suitability for service overseas. The teachers were the principal means by which Canada hoped to introduce itself to the countries and people of French Africa, and both Canada and Quebec had an interest in ensuring that the teachers reflected well upon the governments that sent them.

L’aide au développement et les relations entre le Canada et la France dans les années 1960 et 1970 Alors que l’état des relations franco-canadiennes se détériorait entre 1960 et 1965, l’aide au développement des pays francophones africains semblait offrir une occasion de démontrer que, au fond, les liens entre les deux pays étaient solides. Cependant, au fil des années 1960, les deux gouvernements se sont rendu compte qu’il leur était impossible de coopérer de façon constructive dans ce domaine. Une défiance mutuelle caractérisait leurs rapports, en particulier en ce qui touchait la nature de la Francophonie en émergence et de la place qu’y occuperait le Québec. Les difficultés de cette période renforcèrent la tendance des deux pays à subordonner leurs programmes d’aide à la poursuite de leurs propres intérêts, aux dépens, à long terme, de programmes d’aide plus efficients et efficaces pour les pays en développement. L’aide au développement et les relations entre le Canada et la France dans les années 1960 et 1970 As relations between the Canadian and French Governments worsened in the early-to-mid 1960s, cooperating on aid for the French-speaking countries of Africa seemed to offer the two governments the opportunity to demonstrate that Franco-Canadian relations remained fundamentally sound. Yet as the 1960s progressed, the two governments found it impossible to cooperate meaningfully on aid for French Africa, a reflection of the mutual suspicions that characterised their relationship in this period, particularly over the question of the nature of the emerging francophonie and the inclusion therein of the province of Quebec. Overall, the experience of this period reinforced the tendency for both Canada and France to subordinate their aid policies to the pursuit of parochial national interests at the expense, in the long-term, of more efficient and effective programmes of aid for the world’s developing countries.

In Canada, the 1960s were years of conflict between the federal government & the government of Quebec. There was competition in regard to foreign aid to French-speaking nations in Africa. Quebec wished to assert its international voice by sending teachers to these countries. The federal government was unwilling to bestow such privileges to a province with a separatist ideology & undermine Canadian unity. Nevertheless, the two governments did cooperate effectively on the compromises they were able to reach. Each government used its expertise & powers, Quebec in selecting teachers & the federal government in overseas arrangements & funding, to make the program a success. This shows that conflict between the two governments was not the only aspect of their relationship in the 1960s. R. Larsen