This section of the Timeline of Quebec history concerns the events between the Westminster statute and the Quiet Revolution.
- The 1940s brings the era of the Duplessis Orphans.
- 1940 - After many years of battle by suffragettes, Quebec women are allowed to vote and run for office in provincial elections.
- 1940 - Camillien Houde, mayor of Montreal, is arrested for outspoken opposition to conscription. He is interned until 1944.
- 1940 - France falls to Germany.
- 1942 - Referendum on conscription. Quebec votes against conscription a second time; the rest of Canada votes in favour (see Conscription Crisis of 1944).
- 1942 - On May 18, President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, writes a private letter to Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada, in which he discusses that the USA and Canada agree on an unwritten plan aiming to disperse French Canadians in order to assimilate them more quickly.
- 1943 - Compulsory education law is adopted.
- 1943 - Quebec City conference between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill on August 14.
- 1944 - April 14 - Creation of Hydro-Québec from the nationalization of Montreal Light, Heat and Power .
- 1944 - June 6 - Canadian soldiers land at Juno Beach on D-Day, marking the beginning of the liberation of France.
- 1944 - Quebec general election: Union Nationale wins.
- 1947 - July 23: Mae O'Connor, widow of Liberal Member of the Legislative Assembly Dennis James O'Connor, unsuccessfully runs as the first female candidate in a Quebec election (by-election in her late husband's riding of Huntingdon).
- 1948 - Adoption of a new Flag of Quebec on January 21. Until this time, the Union Jack had flown over the Legislative Assembly.
- 1948 - Quebec general election: Union Nationale wins.
- 1948 - Paul-Émile Borduas, Jean-Paul Riopelle and other Quebec artists publish the Refus global which denounces artistic and moral conformity in Québec.
- 1948 - Louis St. Laurent, born in Compton, Quebec , becomes Prime Minister of Canada.
- 1949 - Asbestos strike in the towns of Asbestos and Thetford Mines, a turning point in labor relations.
- 1949 - Premier Maurice Duplessis sends Paul Reifenrath to the Vatican as his unofficial envoy.
- 1949 - Decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada can no longer be appealed to the Privy Council of Britain.
