The Last Act: Pierre Trudeau, the Gang of Eight, and the Fight for Canada (History of Canada) - Hardcover

Graham, Ron

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670066621 ISBN 13: 9780670066629

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2011

Synopsis

Between the morning of Wednesday, November 4, and the morning of Thursday, November 5, 1981, a fateful drama unfolded that changed Canada forever. In one last attempt to renew the constitution with the consent of the provinces, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau met behind closed doors in Ottawa with the ten premiers. It was the culmination of more than five decades of constitutional wrangling, and has been called the most important conference since the Fathers of Confederation got together in Quebec City in 1864. Faced with the threat of Quebec independence, the ambitions of Western Canada, and the provinces' demands for more power, Trudeau was embattled. But he was fiercely determined to make Canadians fully independent and to entrench a Charter of Rights and Freedoms.What happened that day still reverberates. It severed the last important link to Canada's colonial past. It d individual liberty and minority rights in the future. It weakened the grip of the elites and gave

About this title

About the Author

RON GRAHAM is an award-winning author and journalist. His books include One-Eyed Kings, God’s Dominion, and The French Quarter. He has written for Saturday Night, The Walrus, The Globe and Mail, and the New York Times. He also edited The Essential Trudeau and the two volumes of memoirs by Rt. Hon. Jean Chrétien. With his wife and three children, he divides his time between downtown Toronto and a cabin in Quebec.

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Alberta also stepped forward to take Quebec ’s side in combating Ottawa. Politics has seldom seen stranger bedfellows than the stiff conservative from Calgary and the slovenly social democrat from the Gaspé. Circumstances made them as tight as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They had a common enemy in Pierre Trudeau and the federal government. They respected each other’s courage and needed each other’s strength. . . . Lougheed was Lévesque’s sole line of communication to the Gang of Eight and the one premier he trusted to be with him to the very end. Calling him “the most remarkable man on the prairies in his time,” Lévesque concluded that the Albertan was “so passionately concerned about sovereignty in his own way that, even though opposing us, he can understand our position.”

“Likeable isn’t the right word,” Lougheed said of the Quebec premier. “He was shrewd, affable, and naturally friendly. He saw me as an ally, and we worked closely together to stop Trudeau’s unilateral action. But dealing with a separatist who had just tried to take Quebec out of Canada was always front and centre in my mind, and it made me uneasy about where we were at and where we would end up.”

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0670066621
• ISBN 13: 9780670066629
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336