Word: quebecers
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...classified State Department study of French-Canadian nationalism speculated that the secession of Quebec might lead the other nine provinces to sue for union with the U.S. Some Americanized Canadian businessmen dreamed of the ultimate merger. But the author of the report called the dissolution of Canada, even if it doubled the size and vastly increased the natural resources of the U.S., a "worst-case scenario...
...Several years later, the KGB station in Ottawa leaked some phony documents on CIA letterhead purporting to show that U.S. agents were secretly aiding the Quebec Liberation Front and in various other ways trying to destabilize the central government. An American spook took his Soviet counterpart to lunch and said, "You really want to play this game? Your country may someday have secession problems a lot bigger than Canada...
Early in the Carter Administration, a flare-up of Quebec separatism led a U.S. official to guess that the big divorce would occur in 1990. He predicted that Pierre Elliott Trudeau, still vigorous at 70, would come out of semiretirement and run for the U.S. Congress. There were chuckles at the joke, but no joy at the prospect of Canada's cracking...
...redefining international politics. He was instrumental in bringing about the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement and progress toward reducing the cross-border curse of acid rain. So far, however, his luck and skill have failed him at home. History and domestic politics seem to be conspiring against him. Quebec today is a would-be nation-state chafing against the vestiges of empire...
...bodies and outward toward commonwealths and common markets, but also downward toward freer units of federation that would allow "distinct societies" to preserve their identity and govern themselves -- without bolting altogether. If Canadians, French and English speaking alike, choose to be part of that pattern, the current crisis over Quebec will pass just as those earlier ones did, perhaps never to be repeated again...