Staying Canadian

In October ’95, under the control of the Quebec Liberal Party, the NO campaign avoided all mention of the key arguments against secession. Liberals never talked about the unconstitutional nature of the PQ’s proposals, avoided all mention of why 50% + 1 in a Quebec-only referendum is no basis on which to break up the country, and never once said that if Canada is divisible, so is Quebec. Staying Canadian documents the long journey provincial Equality Party leader Keith Henderson undertook in 1993 to help get the Quebec nationalist threat to Canada’s territorial integrity before the Supreme Court and onto the national agenda.

AUTHOR

Keith Henderson

Keith Henderson
has published two novels and a prize-winning book of short stories. He lead a small provincial political party in Quebec during the separatist referendum of 1995 and championed anglo language rights and the ‘poison pill’ strategy of partitioning Quebec if ever Quebec partitioned Canada, positions covered in full length articles in the Los Angeles and New York Times as well as on CBS 60 Minutes. He has extensive media experience.

Reviews

“A talented journalist as well as a politician, Henderson…is to be commended for assembling [these articles] into one collection.” — Canadian Book Review Annual “Perhaps its time someone admitted that Keith Henderson is a fidgety, shifty-eyed political genius…. He and his Equality Party were the first to point out that any Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) by the National Assembly would be the illegal and revolutionary act of a rogue state… They forced Ottawa to refer the UDI matter to the Supreme Court, and the nation’s nine wisest magiatrates decided, in effect, that Equality was right.” The Mirror, Montreal