La fin d’un règne (end of an era)
This article draws on Gerald Fortin’s writings to analyze his critical approach to what the concepts of “urban” or “rural” had been understood to mean until the 1960s. In 1971, he wrote in La fin d’un règne that he had witnessed the disappearance of rurality in Québec and described Québec as a “city” in the making, sociologically speaking. The documents in this collection illustrate the evolution of Fortin’s contribution to the later phases of a thirty-year-long debate on the past and future of Québec and his challenges to the conventional understanding of what was meant by “urban” and “rural”. To Fortin’s way of thinking, these were evolving concepts to be worked toward and interpreted as the basis of an ideal for development, a view in strong contradiction with those of many other thinkers. The article contrasts his analyses with other writings on the subject and presents his vision of the past, present and future of rural and urban Québec, within the framework of a three-phased sociological approach still relevant today.