The New Nationalism: Quebec 1980

“Is Quebec still part of Canada?” asks the traffic policeman in Boston. The New York Times quotes an administrator of multicampus Antioch College as opposing a “Canadian solution” to his troubled institution. There seems to be an idea abroad that Canada is about to fall apart. I propose to argue that the possibility of disintegration is remote.

American awareness of current Quebec developments may be dated to November 1976, when the separatist Parti Quebecois (it has no English name, hereafter the PQ) received 42 percent of the popular vote and 60 percent of the seats in the Quebec National Assembly. Curiously, the platform of the PQ, while not disguising its ultimate aims, excluded the specific promise of Quebec sovereignty, except for a commitment to hold a referendum (technically a plebiscite) on the independence issue at some unspecified time while in office. The major promise of the PQ in the 1976 campaign was good government.

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