Following is Parizeau's speech to "Oui" supporters after their
humiliating defeat on October 30, 1995.
Friends, we have lost, but not by a lot. It was successful in one
sense. Let's stop
talking about the francophones of Quebec. Let's talk about us. Sixty per
cent of us have voted
in favour.
We fought a good battle and we did manage to clearly show what we
wanted. We lost
by a tiny margin. What do you do? Well, you roll up your sleeves and you
begin all over
again.
I would have liked for it to go through. I would really have loved
for it to go through.
We were so close to having our country. Well, it's just put off for a
short while, not for a
long time.
We won't wait another 15 years this time, oh no. What has happened
is wonderful. In
one meeting after another, these people who had said the future of our
country isn't that
important were coming along and saying we want that country of our own.
And we will get
it. We will end up with our country.
It's true we have been defeated, but basically by what? By money
and the ethnic vote.
All it means is that in the next round, instead of us being 60 or
61 per cent in favour,
we'll be 63 or 64 per cent. My Friends, at this point in the coming months
. . . there were
people who were so afraid that the temptation to seek revenge is going to
be great.
Never will it be so important to have a Parti Quebecois government
to protect us till
the next round.
The independence of Quebec remains the cement that binds us. We
want a country and
we shall have it. Now, my friends, we are entering another stage during
which each and
every one of us will want to put our fists on the table not to mention
anything else, but let's
stay calm.
Let us resist any provocation. As the Prime Minister of Canada was
saying a few days
ago, we're going to really have to work through this. Let us be calm, let
us smile. The next
round is just around our corner and we are going to have our country.
There's no doubt in my mind that you younger people out there voted
in the immense
majority in favour of a country. But now I'm talking to battle veterans,
people of my own age
who have been seeking a country for years and years, and I'm telling you
don't be
discouraged. The young people are just staring in the battle, it's just a
slight setback, they're
going to be successful in the long run.
But you veterans remain in the fray because we need all of you.
In the coming days people are going to speak out against us, they
will say we don't
know what we want, it is just the way it always was. But it is not. Don't
forget that three-fifths of us voted Yes. It wasn't quite enough but very
soon it will be enough.
Our country is within our grasp. Be calm. Be smiling even if that
doesn't come easily,
and bear in mind that from this solidarity among people from the right and
the left, the
solidarity among people from the union movement and the bosses, the
unemployed and those
who have jobs, altogether.
Here in Quebec we are not going to sacrifice ourselves in that
movement to the right
that the rest of Canada is taking. We are going to demonstrate that we are
able, even if we
don't have a country as yet, that we will raise a French society that has
its heart in the right
place, and in the long run, finally, we will have our own revenge and we
will have our own
country.
Long live hope, long live Quebec.
To give credit where credit is due: I copied this out of the
Globe and Mail. The translation was supplied by Canadian
Press.
