Night of the Long Knives (1981)

At the constitutional conference held in Ottawa in September 1980, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau had insisted on repatriating the constitution and enshrining within it a charter of rights and freedoms. On the night of 4–5 November 1981, during a fateful gathering at which Quebec premier René Lévesque was not present, nine other provincial premiers made a deal in favour of patriation. The event became known as the “night of the long knives,” so named because the anglophone premiers had figuratively stabbed Lévesque in the back by reaching an agreement without him. Bitterness would linger, but patriation went forward.