In the mythology of Quebec nationalists, the “night of the long knives” refers to an all-night bargaining session at Ottawa’s Château Laurier hotel during the constitutional talks in the fall of 1981.
That night, provincial representatives reached an agreement among themselves to support Pierre Trudeau’s wide-ranging reforms.
Then Quebec premier René Lévesque, for reasons that are still debated, was not present and felt betrayed, and ultimately refused to sign the Constitution.
But it was at that meeting that the provinces made
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