Word: quebecers
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...some 200,000 Quebeckers staged a joyous wake for the accord that failed -- the three-year effort to meet the province's demands for special constitutional status. Time ran out on the so-called Meech Lake accord only two days before St. Jean- Baptiste Day, the traditional holiday of Quebec, and French Canadians made the most of the coincidence. Revelers and elaborate floats jammed three miles of Montreal's Rue Sherbrooke last week, celebrating the pride and power of nationalism. "Quebeckers to the streets," they shouted, "Canadians on the sidewalk...
That was not the definitive answer to the question of what next for Quebec. The crowd in Montreal was venting some of the frustration that had built up during years of wearying constitutional dispute about the status of the Gallic province of 6.5 million people in the midst of a predominantly English- speaking country of 26.5 million. The fervor of the throng was real, but when the party was over, Quebec's future course was no clearer...
With the collapse of the 1987 agreement that would have formalized the province's right to "preserve and promote" its "distinct society," centered on 5.5 million French speakers, Quebec remains outside the 1982 constitution. It must now decide where it wants to go: to full independence, to sovereignty inside an economic union or simply to a further loosening of Canada's confederation. Like people from the Soviet Union to Western Europe to Southern Africa, Quebeckers will have to choose what compromise between central power and national autonomy will serve them best in the 21st century...
...supported by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and approved by eight of ten provincial legislatures representing 94% of the population could have been blocked by a handful of politicians in provinces like Manitoba and Newfoundland. The answer, it seems, is not so much that the naysayers were hostile to Quebec as that they were determined that other Canadians must be granted the same recognition...
Canada's 123-year-old confederation has been based on a "misunderstanding" all along, says Charles Taylor, a political science professor at Montreal's McGill University. "Quebec already has a de facto special arrangement. We have our own provincial pension plan, immigration arrangements, income tax. But as soon as you say to the rest of Canada, 'Let's make it legal,' all hell breaks loose...