Now or Never! Manifesto for an Independent Quebec

Jean-Guy Quenneville is an associate professor of political studies at
the University of Saskatchewan.

Not since Pierre Valliиres’s White Niggers of America has the English
translation of a French book, by a Québec-nationalist/independentist
advocate, had such an impact in English-Canadian intellectual circles.
Yet Bourgault’s Now or Never! differs greatly from Valliиres’s
book. In fact, Bourgault’s work is intellectually several cuts above
Valliиres’s.

A better comparison and a better fit would be to contrast Now or Never!
with Philip Resnick’s recent book Toward a Canada-Québec Union. Both
books deal with the same political juncture, but differ diametrically in
their perception of the political reality of Canada and Québec. Whereas
Resnick assumes an emotional disaffection between the two communities
and proposes a confederal unity for the two, Bourgault attacks the
communities’ emotional attachment to a common federal government and
favors Québec pursuing independence now—its subsequent relationship
to the rest of Canada to be worked out on a mutual self-interest basis
at a later date.

Even in Homel’s masterful translation, Bourgault’s clear thought
and language operates powerfully and convincingly. This is one of the
few books a layperson may read with a chance of understanding the forces
at play in the current constitutional juncture—or at least those of
the Québec nationalist side.