Hello, and thank you for downloading the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World

Service with me, Kevin Caners.

Today, we're going back to October 1995, in the Quebec referendum, as the predominantly

French-speaking province went to the polls to decide whether to declare independence

from Canada.

I'll be speaking to people on both sides of a debate which exposed deep divisions

within Canadian society.

Shaq Parizo is the man who's fighting to split Canada in two.

I'm convinced we'll win the referendum.

Quebec will become a sovereign country.

Basically, it's freedom, and you want to be completely responsible for your successes

and for your failures.

Jean-François Lise was a Kebacard journalist who had been working in Washington and had

believed in the cause of Quebec independence since he was 15 years old, but he was tired

of sitting on the sidelines.

There was a good chance in 94 that independence could happen in short order, and I wanted

to be in the team that would bring that about.

So, he reached out to the separatist party's leader, Shaq Parizo, and after they won

the election, he landed a job as Parizo's speechwriter.

Before too long, he also became the head of referendum planning, and in the summer of

1995, they decided to pull the trigger for an autumn referendum.

We started the campaign pretty certain that we would lose, but that at least we would

...