My Little Corner of Canada, May 22

Quebec separatism has come back to the media headlines after Pierre Karl Péladeau was recently elected as the new leader of the Parti Québécois.

The separatist party was ousted by the Liberals in the last provincial election. The next election in Quebec is expected in about three years.

If the PQ is successful in returning to power, Mr. Péladeau promised to make independence for Quebec his top priority. In his victory speech he made it clear that he wants a third referendum on the issue. Mr. Péladeau owns a large media empire in the province.

From the outside looking in, it is difficult to gauge how much support separatism has in the province.

Some observers note that that most supporters of independence are grey-haired members of the PQ. The younger members appear to have other priorities and independence is not high on their list.

If and when another referendum is held in Quebec, the Aboriginal peoples in the province will have to state where they stand.

An important question is what would an independent Quebec look like on a map? Where would the borders be?

Three-quarters of Quebec in the northern regions are the ancestral homelands of the Inuit, the Cree, and the Innu. Other Aboriginal groups have their own territories in the remaining one-quarter of the province.

If these Aboriginal groupings are unwilling to allow their homelands to separate from Canada, how much land does that leave for a new country?

Way back in history, an obscure king in England unilaterally declared that three-quarters of what is now Canada was to be known as Rupert’s Land. Rupert happened to be a cousin of the king. The Aboriginal nations were never consulted or informed of this new situation.

Somewhere along the way, the Hudson’s Bay Co. were given vast territories which they used to enrich the company through the fur trade.

In 1912, the Crown, through the Quebec Boundaries Extension Act, gave Quebec what remained of Rupert’s Land. The Inuit, the Cree, and the Innu were completely excluded from this act of imperialism.

In the 1980s, when the Aboriginal peoples of Canada were in the middle of the Constitutional Wars, Zebedee Nungak drew a map of what an independent Quebec might look like. It included small strips of land on the north and south shores of the St. Lawrence River.

It created a political storm among the separatists and the media in the province. If and when the next referendum comes, Zebedee will have to clean the dust off his map so he can show it to Mr. Péladeau.

This Corner Quotes

“Is that Nungak, the cartographer?”

— Jacques “The Joker” Parizeau, the separatist premier of Quebec at the time.