The coat of arms of Quebec () was adopted by an order-in-council of the Government of Quebec on 9 December 1939, replacing the arms assigned by royal warrant of Queen Victoria on 26 May 1868. On 23 January 2026, the Government of Quebec announced it was amending the coat of arms by removing the Tudor Crown as a crest.

The blazon set out in the federal Register of Arms, Flags and Badges of Canada

History

thumb|left|1939 arms of Quebec

Arms were first granted to the province in 1868 by Queen Victoria. They were blazoned as follows:

:Or on a Fess Gules between two Fleurs de Lis in chief Azure, and a sprig of three Leaves of Maple slipped Vert in base, a Lion passant guardant Or.

The fleurs-de-lis were placed in the senior position on the shield but were only two in number and were blue on gold, as opposed to the three gold on blue fleurs-de-lis on the arms of the Kingdom of France. This was done as a tribute to the former French monarchy whilst avoiding any impression that the British monarch claimed the throne of France, a claim which had been dropped in 1801. Furthermore, at the time some heraldists asserted that the royal crown could be properly used only by the federal authorities and not by the provinces. Quebec is the only Canadian province to have adopted arms by its own authority. Simon Jolin-Barrette, Quebec's Minister of Justice and the French Language, said that the removal was because "The vast majority of Quebecers have no attachment to the British monarchy and reject it", whilst the Crown Society of Canada criticized the move as counterproductive to the provincial government's nationalist aims because the inclusion of the crown asserted a direct link to the monarch that bypassed the federal government.

See also

  • Symbols of Quebec

References

Further reading

  • Gouvernement du Québec. "Les armoiries du Québec", in the site Drapeau et symboles nationaux of the Government of Quebec, updated on 14 January 2008
  • Luc Bouvier. "Les armoiries du Québec d’hier à aujourd’hui", in L'Action nationale, February 1999.
  • Gaston Deschênes (1990). Les symboles d'identité québécoise, Québec: Publications du Québec, 39 pages