A week before the 1995 referendum on the separation of Quebec, 100,000 Canadians converged in Montreal from across the country in the hope of convincing Quebeckers that they should vote to stay in Canada. The rally created a rare moment of national joy, and engendered hope in English Canada about the future of this country. But after the very narrow victory of the NO side in the referendum, Canadians quickly returned to a hard line on the issue of Quebec. And in Quebec, commentators called the rally's emotion false. What are the roots of these two such separate interpretations? How do we share the same land and yet see identical events through different eyes?
Impossible Nation is a heartfelt, moving, and deeply affecting essay on the mutual misunderstandings embedded in Canadian and quebecois cultures, how we arrived in this conflict, and what we can do about it.

Ray Conlogue, author of Impossible Nation: The Longing for Homeland in Canada and Quebec, writes for The Globe and Mail. He was the Globe’s theatre critic in Toronto from 1980 to 1991 and was the winner of a National Newspaper Award for arts journalism in 1986.

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