From the Battle of London to the Battle for Truth with Dr. Frédéric Bastien

Room H 1220, Henry F. Hall Building, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West.

After the referendum in 1980, Pierre Elliott Trudeau turned his sights on repatriating the Constitution in an effort to make Canada fully independent from Britain. What should have been a simple process snowballed into a complicated intrigue.

The dissenting provinces, known collectively as the Gang of Eight, which thought their prerogatives would be threatened if the Constitution were repatriated, mounted a diplomatic offensive to convince the British of rejecting Trudeau’s proposals. An epic political and judicial battle followed and lasted almost two years before a compromise was found.

Historian Frédéric Bastien will be talking about the new English and updated version of La Bataille de Londres. When first published in French, the book triggered a political and media storm. Among other things, it led the Supreme Court to conduct an internal probe while the National Assembly voted a unanimous resolution demanding that Ottawa released all the federal documents related to the patriation of the constitution. The author will also be talking about those reactions.