Lisee, Jean-Francois. In the Eye of the Eagle. Toronto: HarperCollins
Publishers Ltd, 1990. 353 pages.
Since the early 1960s, French-Canadian nationalism in Quebec has been a
major issue in Canadian politics. In 1995, Quebecers rejected secession by a
margin of only one percent. At that time, some separatists wanted to develop
their own military to protect their sovereignty if the referendum was
successful, and Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien reportedly was ready
to ask for U.S. troops if things turned nasty. Another referendum can be
expected soon. The climate of uncertainty reached a peak in 1970, when
Pierre Trudeau invoked martial law after a kidnapping committed by a tiny
terrorist group called Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ). Since then,
some Quebecers suspect that CIA agents are lurking behind every Mountie.
This books addresses the question of how policymakers in Washington
and Wall Street felt about an independent Quebec at various points in time.
Author Jean-Francois Lisee obtained thousands of documents from the U.S. and
Canada, and conducted 240 interviews. The history he reconstructs is useful
because it gives a feel for the situation in Quebec. But his conclusions
about U.S. attitudes are fairly ho-hum: Wall Street doesn't care as long as
they don't lose money, and Washington has generally responded in one of two
ways: either the issue had such a low priority that there was no policy at
all, or the dominant policy was to stay out of Canada's internal affairs.
ISBN 0-00-637636-3
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