When Kristy Findlay moved to Quebec City after her American-born husband accepted a job there, she soon developed a longing.

“I would go to parks with my young children, I would hear a little English spoken, and I feel like: Oh my gosh, I’m hungry for it,” said Ms. Findlay, who was raised in Ontario.

As the capital of a province that vigorously defends its use of French from the sea of English that surrounds it, Quebec City has become a place where Canada’s otherwise majority language is almost an afterthought: Just 2.3 percent of its population, about 17,000 people, identify as primarily English speakers in Canada’s census.

A series of provincial laws enacted over the last five decades that were meant to assert the dominance of French, along with Quebec’s separatist movement, prompted an exodus of many English speakers to other parts of Canada.

But even in this Francophone redoubt, Ms. Findlay was ultimately able to find a place where her craving for conversation in her native language could be sated.

At a former jail and Presbyterian college standing amid the cobblestone streets of the city’s historic Upper Town, a discreet sign above the entrance, reading simply “Morrin,” gives no hint of the linguistic heterodoxy taking place inside.

The Morrin Cultural Centre acts as a hub for Quebec City’s English speakers much the same way as outposts of the Goethe-Institut do for Germans living abroad. It’s a place for books, education, conversation and, above all, it’s a reminder to English speakers that they aren’t alone.

At its heart is the city’s only English-language library. With its cast iron balcony railings and green leather chairs, it still has a decided 19th-century flavor, even if its wooden shelves are filled with contemporary titles.

While the library is a wonder, and the center’s exhibitions, lectures and children’s programming are welcome bonuses, the center is most important for Ms. Findlay and many others as a sanctuary where English conversation flows without embarrassment or apology.

“We have this precarity with the government, but the Morrin Centre belongs to us — this is ours,” said Ms Findlay, who moved to Quebec City about 15 years ago. “It’s a place we can go and hear English and speak English — a safe space.”

While the Morrin Centre has become the English-speaking community’s hub, it’s not the only local institution helping bind the members: There’s a weekly newspaper, a local CBC Radio station, English-language churches, English public schools and a junior college.

The position of Quebec City’s small English minority has not always been so comfortable.

Richard Walling’s memories of attending high school in Quebec City during the 1970s, a peak time for Quebec nationalism, are not all fond ones.

“When you were outside of the school environment, you would not dare speak English in public, on the city bus or anything like that,” said Mr. Walling, the head of Jeffery Hale Community Partners, a charity that provides health and social services to the English-speaking community. “It was really a tough time.”

Diane Kameen, who moved from Manitoba to Quebec to study French in 1980 and never left, recalled how the community generally kept a low profile in those days, trying not to ruffle any feathers.

“We have a small but very dynamic population that’s managed to hang on and ride out that storm,” Ms. Kameen said.

Still, official antipathy toward English continues. The provincial government recently introduced a series of measures mandating French, including requiring most public servants to work exclusively in French; limiting access to English services for immigrants; and introducing a tough French test for English-speaking junior college students. And many more private companies now must conduct business in French after the threshold was lowered to 25 employees.

But Mr. Walling said the general hostility toward English speakers in Quebec City has dissipated, in large part because of the city’s economic transformation. During his high school years the main employers were the provincial government, which did not value English-language skills, and industries that mostly served other companies within the province.

Now the city is a center for video game developers and other tech companies that sell their products worldwide and that have to recruit employees, many of whom are English speakers, from outside Quebec.

Nevertheless, Mr. Walling offered English-speaking newcomers some advice for living in Quebec City.

“If you come here thinking you’re going to be able to live everything in English, you had better leave because you won’t be happy,” he said. “If you embrace both the English and the French, it’s a wonderful place.”

With the exodus of English speakers in the 1980s, the Morrin Centre suffered something of a slump, with much of the building uninhabitable and decaying.

Money was so tight, remembers Ms. Kameen, a board member at the time, that “the big decision as a board member back then was if we would get an electric typewriter.”

A series of fund-raising events and government grants financed extensive renovations, and the building’s history became an asset.

The cells from its days as a jail had never been removed from the basement, largely because they held up the foundation. They were transformed into a claustrophobic, if evocative, museum about the prison and prison reform in 19th-century Quebec.

The torrent of tourists who descend on Quebec City who now pay for tours of the library and jail have created a reliable revenue source to maintain the building and fund programs.

On a recent evening, a lecture by Sandra Tomayla, a local photographer and filmmaker, attracted a diverse group of people — including a French speaker, Christian Shriqui,

Originally from Montreal, Mr. Shriqui said he belongs to a book club at the Morrin and regularly attends workshops and poetry readings here — all in English.

“It’s a very rare jewel, a gem,” Mr. Shriqui said, adding that he regularly encounters other French speakers at the events.

Ms. Tomayla, the night’s speaker, arrived in Quebec City at the age of 7 with her family from Peru and was schooled in French, a requirement for most immigrants to Quebec. She had known little about the Morrin Centre until she used the library for a photo shoot.

For someone like her, attracted to English-speaking culture, it has filled a void in her Quebec life.

“I do appreciate Quebec culture, but it’s not my culture,” she said. “I just thought it was a library and a museum and that they did some events like any other place. But I didn’t know they had so many activities and that they had a community. It’s amazing. I should have come here earlier.”