LIKE A RECURRING NIGHT-mare, it is the issue that will not go away. And just when you think that nothing further can be said or written about Quebec's often strained and tortured relationship with the rest of the country, along come two new books that tackle the subject from relatively novel angles.

Although both works are dependent on the small army of Canadian historians, political scientists, economists, politicians, and journalists whose lives have been devoted to studying and analyzing this subject, the chief objective of each book is quite different. In Canada and Quebec, the University of Toronto historian Robert Bothwell has transformed a 12-hour radio series he created for the radio station CJRT in Toronto into a fascinating oral history survey of the Canada/Quebec question; in Beyond Quebec, the political scientist Kenneth McRoberts has amassed and edited a collection of papers delivered at a 1994 conference organized by the Robarts Center for Canadian Studies at York University (where McRoberts teaches), principally concerned with examining the cohesiveness of Canada outside Quebec. In short, if the sky ever did fall and the separation of la belle province finally became a reality -- despite the public opinion polls that have consistently indicated a majority of Quebeckers prefer to remain a part of Canada -- would the rest of the country stay together?

For far too many years, the main question preoccupying Canadian thinkers has been: what does Quebec want? In fact, as Robert Bothwell points out, many frustrated Canadians are now asking, "What does Quebec not want?" In tracing how we have got to this present situation, with the future of the country in limbo yet again, Bothwell has sought out the wisdom of a generation of scholars, politicians, and journalists who have immersed themselves in 300 years of French-Canadian history; everyone from the historians Ramsay Cook and Fernand Ouellet to Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Lise Bissonnette, the editor of Le Devoir. He has woven their views and opinions with his own to produce a readable and insightful historical work.

Unlike many academic treatises, the writing is clear and the arguments, for the most part, straightforward and easy to follow. There are, however, few surprises. Starting with the French arrival in North America in the 1500s, Bothwell traverses familiar territory, from the British conquest of Quebec in 1759 to the awakening of a nationalist spirit in the 1800s through to the political confrontations over religion, language, and culture that have bedeviled Canada from Confederation to Meech Lake.

But facts are one thing, historical interpretation another. And what Canada and Quebec reveals is how much our understanding of the past is shaped by the biases and values of those doing the interpreting. Few subjects in the book generate a wider number of diverging viewpoints than the actions of the former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, particularly his decision in 1982 to go forward with constitutional change without the Quebec government's consent.

There is more unanimity of opinion about the current crisis: much of the blame is placed on the constitutional wheeling and dealing of Brian Mulroney and the kowtowing of Robert Bourassa to Quebec's nationalist elite, a group who clearly will never be satisfied with any version of federalism. At the same time, many of the scholars and writers Bothwell interviewed regard Mulroney and Bourassa's failed efforts to ratify the Meech Lake accord as a wasted opportunity of tragic proportions.

The contributors to McRoberts's Beyond Quebec are less concerned with the constitutional wrangling of the past decade and more interested in future political, economic, and social developments. By design and purpose this academic book will be less accessible to the general reader than Bothwell's survey, but as McRoberts argues, the 20 essays he has included do explore and ask some relevant questions that demand answers. This will make it a useful reference work for students and scholars alike.

In general, the essays are divided along two lines. Several, such as the ones by the UBC political scientist Philip Resnick and the University of Western Ontario English professor Frank Davey explore the concept and problems in the development of an English-Canadian identity and culture. But the majority of the articles examine current Canadian political and economic issues and the attendant consequences of Quebec separatism. Most end on an optimistic note: either the separation of Quebec will have little or no effect or the forces of globalization and continentalism already at

work will continue to shape and influence Canadian society.

The historian H. V. Nelles and the political scientists Roger Gibbins and Robert Finbow, for example, take stock of the political situations in Ontario, the West, and Atlantic Canada respectively. They conclude that the three regions would survive the turmoil of a Yes vote in a future Quebec referendum and that popular support would be great enough to keep the rest of Canada together in a revised federal system. Gibbins further speculates that Quebec's departure and the accompanying transformation of the House of Commons might, in fact, be the only way for the Reform Party to ever form a national government.

Beyond this, in possibly the most significant and instructive essay of the collection, Frances Abele of Carleton University argues that both the history and values of Quebec and English Canada (or ROC) have yet to embrace or make a place for the country's aboriginal population. Indeed, as Robert Bothwell shows in his book, this has been an ongoing problem since 1763 and will be a major factor in Quebec's sovereignty demands today and in future skirmishes with Ottawa.

On the other hand, after more than a century of haggling, many Canadians have rightly had enough of the Quebec issue. As John Honderich, the publisher of the Toronto Star, succinctly put it when he was interviewed by Bothwell: