Life of the Parti

In the summer of 1992, Jacques Parizeau was in love. Then sixty-two, he was a widower and the leader of the Parti Québécois, having returned to the Assemblée nationale three years earlier. Parizeau was a serious figure in Quebec politics: one of the architects of the Quiet Revolution, a key member of the PQ, and René Lévesque’s minister of finance, until he dramatically resigned, along with a third of the cabinet. Now he had fallen for Lisette Lapointe, who had been his press secretary during the 1976 election campaign.

When Parizeau proposed, he told her his plan. First, get the PQ elected to form a government and, eight to ten months later, hold a vote on independence. “If I win, I will stay long enough to get the train on the tracks,” he said. “If I lose, I leave, I pass the torch.” Three years later, he led the PQ to power and, after forming an alliance with Lucien Bouchard of the Bloc Québécois and Mario Dumont of the Action démocratique du Québec, called a...