4 - Wednesday, September 28, 1988 - North Shore News Bop FRUNTE ail he BY © strictly personal © IT WAS an odd feeling, yet strangely familiar. We'd taken a few days off to drive down to Quebee City. To thrill the kids, we rented a horse-drawn carriage and were be- ing taken ona leisurely tour. As we rode across the Plains of Abraham, ! was bursting with questions, having never visited this epic battlefield before, merely read about it. Yet } felt oddly constrained when it came to asking our young French-Canadian guide any ques- tions. My wife remarked later that it reminded her of going to the Pearl Harbour memorial and noticing the discomfiture of the Japanese tourists — as though, somehow, we were to blame! Moreover, while the Japanese were visiting the site of a battle in a war that was conclusively won, we were visiting the site of a strug- gle that is a Jong way from being over. We arrived in Quebec just a few days after Parti Quebecois leader Jacques Parizeau announced that in the event of a PQ victory at the polling booth, the separatists would immediately start negotiating independence from the rest of Canada. Standing on the ramparts of the great stone fortress above the St. Lawrence, looking out across the rolling, golf-green Plains of Abraham, one has to face the fact that this is still contested territory. In the English-language press viewed as amounting to political suicide, Atatime when Premier Robert Bourassa’s Liberals are riding high in the polls with 60 per cent of the Quebcee electorate favoring them, it does indeed seem rather stupid of Parizeau to come out with a hard core separatist platform. ate wh Muster the require £159 members in cach riding to ficld a full slate of candidates. For a while -~ back when Ed Broadbent's boys were peaking in the national polls -- the New Democrats were also riding rapidly in popularity in Quebec itself. They were, in fact, cating into the fading PQ’s membership. Upon taking over the PQ, Parizeau decided his first task was «the official opposition sooner or later becomes the government.”’ The PQ's defeat at the polls in the next provincial election — ex- pected to be next year — is virtual- ly assured. So why did Parizcau give up on moderation? The answer, apparently, is that the PQ sensed doom coming from the Left. Bourassa’s Liberals have long since evolved into Quebec’s pro- vincial conservative party in much the same way that Social Credit has in B.C. The public sparring between Bourassa and federal Liberal lead- er John Turner reveals as much, even if Bourassa was not already holding hands in public with Brian Mulroney. From its beginning, the PQ was asma!l ‘‘s’’ socialist party, so close in spirit to the New Democrats that to save the party from oblivion, never mind worrying about winn- ing an election in the short run. So while it may seem to the rest of Canada that the PQ extremists are shooting themselves in the foot by taking a radical stand now, at this late date in history, the feeling is different in Quebec. In fact, ac- cording to pollsters, Parizeau is doing what he must do to arrest the PQ’s slide. And it has worked. By espousing the hard line, which was ratified at a party conference a week ago, Parizeau has not gained any con- verts, but he has stopped dropp- ing. This reflects in part the NDP’s spent national standing, of course, but in the nearly tribal context of Quebec, it seems Parizeau’s first major manoeuvre has been suc- He knows (he PQ will fail to so much as budge Robert Bourassa’s conservative Liberals next time arennd,. Bur itis the time after that he is looking at. There is an immutable political law ina demogracy that says that the official opposition sooner or fater becomes the government, As long as the PQ cuy hang on to its position as the number two party, sooner or fater it will gain office. The separatists are biding their time, binding their wounds. They have not given up by any stretch of the imaginanon, Wolfe and Montcalm both died happy atter the clash on the Plains of Abraham — the general know- ing he had won the battle, the marquis knowing that even though the British had swept the field, they were unable to take the great stone fortress itself, The sore things change, eh?@ vw a COMBINED . PRR ~ * Service with Aplomb!* * *« * Foret peisale onc ofpardte entertaisiag * * Trost as ta imiuhte you. * tase tere fee sorta * Ana wealth: af panache we oy * ky i MERCHANT CATERING CO. 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