WHO GETS NORTHERN QUEBEC?
All but the most extreme Canadian nationalists would admit that if Quebeckers decide democratically by a reasonable majority that they want to leave Canada, there is no point trying to force them to stay. As Joe Clark, who for better or worse epitomizes Canadian values, told a Mohawk from Oka in 1991 at a public meeting, force is not the Canadian way. But there’s no consensus among Canadians on the territorial question. The flashpoints are most likely to be the lands formerly belonging to the Hudson’s Bay Company that were granted to Quebec in two separate parcels in 1898 and 1912. (There is some question about whether the 1898 parcel was really an addition to Quebec as it had been the subject of a dispute between France and the Hudson’s Bay Company that was never settled.) The balance of this territory, called Rupert’s Land, which consisted of the lands drained by rivers flowing into Hudson Bay, was granted to Canada in 1869 and eventually divided among Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan
