Sovereignty at an Impasse

Historian Denis Vaugeois describes the state of mind that prevailed during this protracted period as one of profound alienation,11 and historian Gilles Laporte speaks of a people paralyzed by the Conquest.12 My hypothesis is that the inability to chart a course toward change did not derive from the harshness of the domination or the fear it instilled, but rather from the paradoxes that punctuate h [...] Thus a constitutional convention developed within the Parliament of the United Province of Canada whereby issues related to the cultural identity of the communities in question (education, municipal affairs and so forth) could be handled differently in each of the two sections.20 In another reversal, the government became “responsible” to the Parliament of United Canada in 1848, thanks to the comb [...] Those winds of change resonated around the world — in the decolonization movements of Africa and Asia, the demonstrations against the Vietnam war in the US, and even the Vatican II re- forms in the Catholic Church. [...] In the first half of the 1960s, the Liberal Party of Quebec was the home of this new nationalism, at least as far as the first three changes I have notedabove were concerned. [...] Of the four factors that defined the transition from the old nationalism to the new, there remains one that split Quebec society: the issue of independence.