Canada was founded as a state (panstwo) by the act of Confederation in 1867 (formally known as the British North America (BNA) Act, which was passed by the Parliament of Westminster in London) – out of the union of four pre-existent historical regions – Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, which became the first four Provinces of Canada. It was also a union of two, long pre-existent historical nations – English (British) Canada and French Canada (Quebec). The Aboriginal peoples were included insofar as they had been traditionally considered to be under the special protection of the Crown.

While Prince Edward Island joined Confederation in 1873 (as a full province), the Western provinces of Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia entered Confederation in their present borders by 1905. To be precise, Manitoba and the North-West Territories joined Confederation in 1870, British Columbia in 1871, and the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan were created in 1905. Newfoundland remained a British Crown Colony (and had also been a self-governing Dominion of the British Empire) until 1949. The thinly-settled far-northern territories of the Yukon and the North-West Territories have remained under direct federal jurisdiction. However, in 1998, the semi-sovereign entity of Nunavut (the Inuit homeland) was created. It received a federal subsidy of $580 million dollars (Canadian) in its first year, and is likely to have to receive similar amounts of federal aid in the future.
Throughout the 1990s and today, some militant Aboriginal activists have pushed towards semi-sovereignty or sovereignty for those areas that had formerly been called the reservations.
The main focus of separatist tendencies in Canada, however, has clearly been the province of Quebec. Lord Durham’s Report in 1840 had warned that the future of Canada might consist of “two nations warring in the bosom of a single state” – and that has largely happened. Until 1896, the powerful Macdonald-Cartier coalition of English-Canadian Conservatives and Quebec “Bleus” kept the country together well. However, in the 1896 federal election, the French-Canadians voted en masse for the federal Liberal Party.
In the Twentieth Century, the French-Canadians have mostly continued to vote for the Liberal Party in federal elections. By combining nearly every seat from Quebec, and a minority of seats from English Canada, the federal Liberal Party has hugely dominated Canadian federal politics. While mostly voting for the Liberal Party federally, at the provincial level in Quebec, the French-Canadians have often supported Quebec-nationalist parties, such the Union Nationale of Maurice Duplessis (who gave Quebec its current, distinctive flag in 1948) – and who represented an ultra-traditionalist, ultra-Catholic outlook.
In the early 1960s, the election of Liberals at the provincial level resulted in the so-called Quiet Revolution, where most of the hold of the Roman Catholic Church on French Quebec was removed. In a time of intellectual ferment and uncertainty, mostly left-wing-inspired anti-Canadian, Quebec-separatist tendencies, acquired some urgency. While mostly disdaining Quebec’s Roman Catholic past, the Quebec activists embraced a form of nationalism expressed mostly in the promotion of the French language, and in the economic struggle against the English who had largely dominated Quebec commercially. As the Quebec nationalists put it: “the social question is the national question.” The movement was galvanized by Charles de Gaulle’s 1967 pronouncement: “Vive le Quebec libre!”
In 1970, a small, violent Quebec separatist faction, the FLQ (which had murdered a Quebec Minister and kidnapped a British diplomat) was suppressed by the declaration of the War Measures Act (martial law) by Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

Mark  Wegierski

(Partially based on an English-language text that appeared in Polish translation under the title, “Tendencje separatystyczne w Kanadzie.” (Separatist tendencies in Canada) trans. Olaf Swolkien, Nowe Sprawy Polityczne (New Political Affairs) (Wolomin, Poland) no 30 (2004-2005), pp. 77-81.)

Dalsza część artykułu dostępna po wykupieniu subskrypcji. Kup tutaj!