On Oct. 29, the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada (MISC) hosted its 2025 Mallory Lecture. Daniel Béland, professor in the Department of Political Science and director of the MISC, began the event with a land acknowledgement, followed by an overview of previous lectures MISC has held since 1995 in honour of James Russell Mallory.
“After retiring in 1982, [Mallory] was appointed professor emeritus, and continued to teach for another 10 years. Professor Mallory passed away in 2003,” Béland contextualized. “[Previous] lectures featured such renowned speakers as Bob Rae, Andrew Cohen, Alain Dubuc, Tom Kent, John Gomery, Elizabeth May, and many others.”
Béland then introduced the speaker for the 2025 lecture, Chantal Hébert, a bilingual freelance political columnist. In 1975, she started her career in Toronto in Radio-Canada’s regional newsroom, before covering federal politics on Parliament Hill. She has since written for a range of newspapers, including La Presse and The Toronto Star.
In 2015, Hébert’s book The Morning After: The 1995 Quebec Referendum and the Day that Almost Was was published in both English and French. Hébert started the lecture by describing her inspirations for writing the book.
“I suggested that I do a story about the 1995 referendum, and that my plan was to go around to everyone […] in an elected political position, I would ask them […] what would happen if the ‘yes’ had won?” she said. “The morning after the last referendum and in the year that followed, nobody wanted to talk, […] because once the votes were counted, there was one question on everyone’s mind […] and the question was: Did no mean no?”
Hébert continued to comment on Quebecers’ evasive attitude towards the question of a sovereign Quebec.
“Since that night in 1995, [Quebecers] have had 18 opportunities to use the ballot box to rekindle the sovereignty debate,” she said. “If you were to connect the dots between all those votes, what you find is that over the past three decades, Quebec voters have gone out of their way to avoid revisiting the issue.”
Hébert ended her lecture by referring to Paul St-Pierre Plamondon’s vow to organize another potential referendum.
“The next Quebec campaign is going to feature a referendum commitment, a real one, apparently, for the first time since Jacques Parizeau was elected in 1994,” she said. “In the world that I’ve lived in, we only had a referendum in 1995 because the rest of Canada really created the conditions for it during the Meech Lake Debate.”
Hébert then moved on to a Q&A session. An attendee asked Hébert about her thoughts on how some ‘spoiled’ ballots were destroyed by electoral officers during the 1995 referendum. Hébert responded by saying that both the federalist and sovereignist sides were responsible for tampering with the results.
“With 94 per cent of voters voting, I don’t believe that one side stole it from the other,” she said. “The federal government [also swore] in people as citizens to make sure that they showed up to vote, so [it would be] kind of a waste of time [to compare the sides].”
As one of the final questions, an attendee asked Hébert, “What [do] you think the motivations for this referendum are, and how would they be different from the referendum 30 years ago, especially considering the rise of support for independence among young people?”
Hébert explained that the idea of a new referendum still centres on creating a country that protects the French language.
“The Parti Québécois [(PQ)] wasted 30 years and drew too much distance from not just newer Quebecers, but you cannot, in the same breath, say we’re proud of les enfants de la loi 101 and then not realize that your French-rooted kids went to school with people who are not from necessarily the same background,” she responded. “I think the PQ has failed to work its way into finding a way for Quebec’s diversity to be part of its project, and that would cost a vote [because] if you feel that your kids don’t fit in because of [la loi], you’re less likely to want to vote ‘yes’ [in the next referendum].”
