Quebec's English-speaking Seniors

The English-speaking communities of Quebec form a minority language population within Quebec and an Official Language Minority Community (OLMC) within Canada.

Quebec’s English-speaking seniors (aged 55 and over) by the numbers: 
  • More than one quarter of Quebec’s English-speaking population is 55 years of age and older. There are 1,058,250 English-speaking people living in the province of Quebec; 268,696 of them are 55 or over. This senior group represents one quarter (25.4 per cent) of Quebec’s English-speaking minority.
  • The majority of Quebec’s English-speaking seniors live in Montreal and the Montérégie on the south shore of the metropolitan area.  They represent a combined total of 196,545 individuals aged 55 and over.
  • In the Estrie (Eastern Townships) and Gaspésie-Iles-de-la-Madeleine regions, just over one in three English speakers is 55 or over. The English-speaking communities of the Estrie and Gaspésie-Iles-de-la-Madeleine regions have the largest proportion of English-speaking seniors at 37.7 per cent and 36.5 per cent respectively.
  • English speakers Quebecers who are 85 and older tend to live longer than their francophone counterparts.

Other characteristics:
  • Quebec's English-speaking seniors, even as a sub-group of their language
    minority, are numerically large and geographically dispersed. Think of it this way: this group is larger than the population of Prince Edward Island and spread across an expansive provincial territory three times the size of France.
  • There are more English-speaking women than men in the senior group and senior women also display lower levels of bilingualism.
  • There is a high level of income disparity among Quebec's English-speaking population. Quebec's English-speaking population displays high levels of low income (without income or less than $20k) and high levels of high income ($50k and over). This is observed within the 55+ group, between age cohorts and across regions.
  •  Nearly half of English-speaking seniors across Quebec were born outside of Canada. Among Quebec’s English-speaking population, there are 138,000 seniors (age 65 and over) and almost half (47.8 per cent) are immigrants. Among Quebec’s French-speaking population there are 969,000 seniors (age 65 and over) and 8.2 per cent of these claim immigrant status. 
  • Quebec’s English-speaking seniors claimed a higher proportion of individuals who are members of a visible minority. 
  • English-speaking seniors are almost five times more likely than their Francophone counterparts to have been born in a province outside of Quebec.
 

- Sources: 2011 Canadian Census Data; 2011 National Household Survey