Verse
Petrie, Paul
we in the Maritimes would have to follow suit, whether enthusiastically or reluctantly. If Ottawa has shown little use for us to date, one can imagine what our impoverished and colonial status...
...In fact the possibility of Maritime separation was voiced in an article published in MacLean's in 1936...
...many Qudbdcois believe that the confederation that resulted has in fact realized MacDonald's preference...
...The French fact is still with us...
...JORDAN BISHOP (Jordan Bishop, a regular contributor, teaches at the College o] Cape Breton in Nova Scotia...
...Trudeau's interpretation of the question may assume too much with respect to the relative merits of alternative forms of political organization now that it is possible to argue that small is beautiful...
...13 May 1977:296...
...The Canadas and the Canadian provinces are happily spared the need to become a superpower...
...Whether in fact separation would be a tragedy might well depend on how the rest of us react to it...
...In view of the Maritime tradition separation would not be unthinkable...
...Trudeau has charged that the separation of Quebec would be an international tragedy, "a crime against the history of mankind," the tragic failure of a pluralist dream...
...MacEwan, "Nova Scotia was taken into Confederation entirely as a result of political maneuvering, by statesmen who had no mandate to do any such thing...
...According to Mr...
...If I say he had a wife who was a scold, that his children grew up neither rich nor happy, that he played favorites, worked all his life at McClery's fixing stoves, and died at last unknown I speak as a sworn witness, now that those crimson ears are underground, to what prodigious magic, drifting through summer mornings, those roses heard...
...000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 THE GARDENER PAUL PETRIE And there were the roses, drenching the summer's air with a thousand shining scents-And there was the roses' keeper, stoop-backed, wrinkle-faced, with a gold-toothed smile, pruning the red-barbed stems, picking off the blossoms that were overripe and searching the tight-sheathed buds for aphids, beetles, grubs-I walked beside, small shadow on the dew-soaked lawn, while on he talked---of Buddha, Gandhi, Tolstoy, Jesus Christ--all the morning prophets of the world-not understanding much, but understanding that this was the garden and this the garden's keeper whose very hands were wise, and running from rose to rose drinking the fragrant ichors of the sun...
...It could be argued that whatever Canada is or will be, it cannot be assimilated simply to the formula of the nation state...
...Sir John A. MacDonald forging (or railroading) confederation in 1867, would rather have had a unitary state to guarantee English ascendancy than a confederation...
...There was never any plebiscite or referendum until after the fact, when the people rejected Confederation overwhelmingly...
...If Ottawa has shown little use for us to date, one can imagine what our impoverished and colonial status would be were we geographically separated from Upper Canada by another country" (Confederation and the Maritimes, Windsor, Nova Scotia, 1976...
...The idea of sovereignty does not carry as much weight today as it did in the eighteenth century, and the decentralization that everyone talks about and most people despair of achieving might better be realized through alternative forms of political organization resuiting from the separation of Quebec...
...Regional identities are strong and wellestablished, while across the country "Canadian identity" remains an open question...
...The French translation of the Prime Minister's words as "un crime contre l'humanit6" has already raised some hackles in Quebec, and not only in separatist ranks...
...Even the name "Canada" was originally applied to "the Canadas," Upper (Ontario) and Lower (Quebec) until 1867...
...In many ways Canada is not a nation and perhaps never will be in the sense that Quebec already is a nation...
...Yet he was forced to accept a confederation rather than a unitary state because of the "French fact...
...Indeed, Quebec may well be the only place in the country where "nationalism" makes any sense, or better, is a force to be reckoned with...
Vol. 104 • May 1977 • No. 10
