It's generally understood that French-speaking Québecois were marginalized before the Révolution Tranquille (Quiet Revolution) of the 1960s, secularization, and the rise of Québec nationalism; for example, it's thought that the owners of Québec's industial and financial corporations tended to be overwhelmingly Anglophone, while the working classes were predominantly French-Canadian.
And yet, most of Québec's political leaders during this period were French-Canadian themselves. Why, then, did inequities presist for so long - were those leaders simply more "in touch" with other social and political elites than with the (predominantly French-Canadian) working classes? How did class and language intersect in Québec before the 1960s?
It had to do with the provincial State being relatively unimportant. It is true that Prime Ministers and most of the MNAs were French Canadians, but this political power wasn't worth much, as the State was a very small thing. It didn't even control Education or Healthcare before the 1960s.
Meanwhile, the Anglophone minority had key roles in the industrial and commercial sectors. Canada being a colony, links to the outside were instrumental in bringing wealth. Big money was in these networks (with the UK at first, and with the US after that), to which French Canadians had little access.
It led many commentators, like André Laurendeau, to call the Quebec government a collaborationist government: a corrupted bunch of autocrats who were turning a blind eye to the extraction of natural ressources and human labor.
True, there was a French Canadian bourgeoisie, its heritage tracing back to the French seigneurial system, but it didn't enjoy the same access to international networks and capital: English clubs, universities and so on were all restricted. Even getting a loan was complicated.
The overwhelming majority of French Canadians were uneducated workers, but there were uneducated workers among Anglophones too, most of them living in urban areas. There were also many poor immigrants (Jews, Chinese, Poles, Greeks, Italians...) who were counted as "Anglophones" without enjoying Golden Square Mile privileges.
Things started to change with the Quiet Revolution, as many new institutions were created, providing higher paid jobs for French Canadians (we would call this "affirmative action" today, but don't say it too loud if you're not French Canadian). Unions also started to make a huge difference from the 1940s to the end of the 1960s, with the economic boom benefitting to now upwardly mobile workers accessing the "middle class". Most importantly, CEGEPs and universities like the UQAM opened their doors to thousands of working class kids now able to access (almost) free education.
Meanwhile, the French Canadian bourgeoisie benefitted from the new nationalism, being more than happy to oblige and take the benefits of loans and investments for the "modernization" of Quebec. Many of today's fortunes in the province (Guy Laliberté, Pierre-Karl Péladeau...) were made with public investments. This led famous columnist Pierre Foglia to write : "I thought that the PQ election in 1976 would be a great thing for the independence "mouvement", but it ended up being a great thing for the Mouvement Desjardins".