Word: quebecers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Progressive Conservatives could easily regain their penchant for bickering over ideological and regional issues. In a parliamentary majority this lopsided, Tory backbenchers may grow restless, or find it safe to dissent from the government line, or even−form cabals to pursue narrow issues. The 58 Tory members from Quebec may prove especially difficult to control. Most of them are parliamentary newcomers with little experience in the customs and folkways of Ottawa−and with much dedication to their province's distinct identity. Mulroney is no doubt aware of the hazards. Diefenbaker, his onetime mentor, won a large majority...
Weary of separatism, Quebec decides to give Canada a chance...
...Quebec has often struck outsiders as a byword for radicals and recalcitrance. The French-speaking province sends its own delegates abroad and calls its legislature the National Assembly. In 1970 a lunatic fringe agitating for Quebec's secession from Canada murdered a Cabinet minister, kidnaped a British diplomat, and set off so many explosions, both verbal and physical, that Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act, Canada's equivalent of martial law. Even today the nation's most eccentric voice of disaffection, the nonsensical Rhinoceros Party, is based and enjoys its greatest following in Montreal...
This year, however, the province made a stunning about-face. During the past 67 years, the Progressive Conservatives, perceived in Quebec as the party of English-speaking Canada, had carried the province only once, in 1958; in the last election, they managed to win just one of Quebec's 75 seats. Last week they captured 58. The remarkable shift emphasized just how dramatically the political tide in Quebec has turned: after 25 years of mounting autonomist fervor, the urge to unmerge is subsiding. "On the scale of things outdated," wrote Lawrence Martin, a Montreal-based columnist for the Toronto...
Both nature and culture have long conspired to excite Quebec's yearning for autonomy. As Canada's largest province, with twice the area of Texas and a gross domestic product double that of New Zealand, Quebec is confident that its thick forests and clear mountain lakes afford it the resources to go it alone. As a pocket of Europe, American-style, graced with both fairy-tale cobbled streets and shiny futuristic shopping malls, the province seems already to belong to a different country from Newfoundland or the Yukon...