“If It Stays like This, They’re Going to Win!”: The 1995 Referendum That Nearly Ended Canada

Inside the moment a Montreal journalist realized Quebec might actually leave the country and tried to warn everyone

BY PAUL WELLS

From our Editor-in-Chief, Carmine Starnino:

I spent the lead-up to the 1995 referendum on edge. A lifelong Quebecer, I understood for the first time that a country—my country—could come apart. Canada suddenly seemed less inevitable, almost provisional. Emotionally, it was a lot to take in.

A similar distress runs through Paul Wells’s remarkable 4,000-word memoir, which we’re proud to publish today. Wells walked Montreal’s streets as a young reporter expecting to document a dying separatist dream. Instead, he found Quebecers who spoke of feeling unseen and disrespected and seemed ready to risk everything for dignity. Wells realized, almost too late, that Canada’s unravelling was possible.

The vote was narrowly turned back, but the aftershocks remain. Quebec is today suspended between two identities: a nation that longs to be sovereign and a province still bound, warily, to Canada. Now, as Trump’s predatory presidency threatens not only the country but Quebec’s hard-won cultural and linguistic protections, the question of its place in the federation takes on new urgency.

From its start, The Walrus has worked hard to bring the Québécois perspective into Canada’s conversation. The province has shaped the country profoundly, even as it resists it. I hope you’ll take some time with our stories that explore that tension.

• Is Quebec a Traitor to Canada’s Francophone Minorities?

• How Quebec Fell in Love with Documentary Theatre 

• How Quebec’s Human Rights Commission Drove Out Its First Black Female President 

• Bilingual, Educated, Qualified—and Still Not Welcome in Quebec 

• The Case for Reading Quebec’s Most Reclusive Author 

• A Small Press Finds Success by Refusing to Ignore the World 

• Montreal Fights about Everything—except the Canadiens

• The Unspoken Contradictions of Quebec’s Immigration Policy 

• The Original Reality Show