Quebec and Canada at the Crossroads: A Nation within a Nation

Abstract. I argue first that there are many different concepts of the nation, and advocate a certain conceptual pluralism. I also argue that a population as a whole cannot constitute a nation unless it has a certain national consciousness. I then show that we must adopt a fundamental principle of tolerance. I also try to attend to the complexities of the relations between Quebec and Canada, and argue that different populations represent themselves as nations in different ways and with different concepts. 1 show that Quebec constitutes a nation within a nation. I then wonder what it would mean for Canadians to accept a Quebec nation. Finally, I try to explain why a very large proportion of the population of Quebec has increasingly been favourable to sovereignty, and favourable to making a partnership proposal to Canada.     

Interview with Stephen J. Pyne

Born in California in 1949, reared and educated in Arizona, Pyne earned his bachelor's degree in English at Stanford University and his master's and doctoral degrees in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Pyne has written about fire on earth as none did before him. He has fought fires on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, collected a unique library on how different cultures have used and misused fire in the past, and consulted on fire management for many agencies throughout the world. He has published seven books, three monographs, fourteen reports, and over fifty articles and essays. A MacArthur Fellow from 1988 to 1993, Pyne is a professor of American Studies at Arizona State University West. He and his wife, Sonja Sandberg, were married in 1977 and have two daughters. They live in Glendale, Arizona, where this interview was conducted in September 1994 by Roger Adelson.