Marian Scott writes for the Montreal Gazette.

Did the British Conquest benefit the 70,000 inhabitants of New France, or impede their “normal” political development to nationhood?

Did the defeat of the 1837-38 Rebellions thwart the dream of a French-Canadian state, or protect the French fact in North America from being absorbed into the American melting-pot?

Such fundamental debates at the heart of Quebec’s history get a fresh and even-handed treatment in An Illustrated History of Quebec, by historians Peter Gossage of Concordia University and Jack Little of Simon Fraser University. Rather than focusing on the usual dualities ­— French vs. English, Catholic vs. Protestant, nationalist vs. federalist — Gossage and Little have chosen a different lens through which to view the evolution of Quebec: the struggle between tradition and modernity....