From Ethnic Nationalism to Strategic Multiculturalism

Abstract

The controversy surrounding Jacques Parizeau.s dramatically rejected address on the evening of the Québécois referendum on October 30th, 1995, provides an opportunity to examine the shifting politics of memory in the Québécois secessionist movement. By tracing the historical tensions between French and English Canadians, the manner in which those tensions were transmuted into language and constitutional law, and how those laws reflect competing articulations of national identity, the Québécois movement is shown to have shifted from an ethnic nationalism based on French Canadien ancestry to a civic nationalism based on strategic multiculturalism.