Turmoil in the Peaceable Kingdom: The Quebec Sovereignty Movement and Its Implications for Canada and the United States

Terry A. Crowley is an associate professor of history at the University
of Guelph and the author of Agnes Macphail and the Politics of Equality.

For those who have not expired in the great Canadian constitutional
maladies that have struck the country five times since 1970, there are
few recent books as useful as this discerning summary of the country’s
most recent traumas. Originally published by the National Planning
Association in the United States, this report by the executive director
of the International Centre for Family Enterprises deserved to be
re-issued in Canada because it succeeds in establishing the context for
Quebec’s continuing challenge to the country as a whole. Rather than
embarking on new avenues, Lemco provides a competent and dispassionate
survey of the principal constitutional and economic conundrums
surrounding Quebec’s possible separation from Canada.

Following an able analysis of the wellsprings for independence in
Quebec and of the failure of constitutional reform since 1982, Lemco
outlines various models for the political future of Quebec and Canada in
the light of sovereignty or sovereignty-association, devoting much
attention to assessing the economic repercussions of such developments.
While he is pessimistic regarding the high financial cost of Quebec’s
independence, his account remains a reliable guide to these debates.
Concluding chapters examine the reaction of American foreign-policy
officials to Canada’s situation and raise a host of worthwhile
questions.