The Morning After: The 1995 Quebec Referendum and the Day That Almost Was

Chantal Hébert with Jean Lapierre

A #1 national bestseller, winner of the QWF Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction, and finalist for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction and the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, The Morning After is a sly, insightful and wonderfully original book from one of Canada's most popular political analysts, Chantal Hébert, and one of Quebec's top political broadcasters, Jean Lapierre. Only the most fearless of political journalists would dare to open the old wounds of the 1995 Quebec referendum, a still-murky episode in Canadian history that continues to defy our understanding. The referendum brought one of the world's most successful democracies to the brink of the unknown, and yet Quebecers' attitudes toward sovereignty continue to baffle the country's political class. Interviewing seventeen key political leaders from the duelling referendum camps, Hébert and Lapierre begin with a simple premise: asking what were these political leaders' plans if the vote had gone the other way. Even two decades later, their answers may shock you. And in asking an unexpected question, these veteran political observers cleverly expose the fractures, tensions and fears that continue to shape Canada today.