For Bourassa, equivocation was not only a matter of personal style. It was a philosophy.

It amounted to the proposition that there was some magical middle way for Quebec, a place where it could enjoy all of the benefits of Confederation and none of the costs, where it could be an independent nation yet part of Canada. Special status, asymmetric federalism, distinct society, call it what you will: it was not on, it was never on, and it is less likely now than ever before. It was not only perhaps for Bourassa that Daniel Johnson wept.

A decent man by all accounts, he remained captive to this false ideal all his life. In this he was hardly alone: not only Quebecers but large sections of the Canadian elite seemed bewitched by the prospect, the philosopher's stone of Canadian federalism. If at its best it was ennobled as the search for compromise and accommodation, at its worst it amounted to crude opportunism.

In common with so many of those who represented themselves as federalists in Quebec, Bourassa was all too willing to use the secessionists for his own ends, to ride the uglier undercurrents of Quebec nationalism when it suited him. Yet few could do so with such insouciance. The memory will not soon be cleansed of such sordid Bourassisms as "federalisme rentable" (profitable federalism). Only Bourassa could publicly cry, "we want our booty!" without apparent shame, or boast of his willingness to invoke the notwithstanding clause to deny Quebec's minorities their constitutional rights.

In the climate of the time, however, this made him a statesman. Compromise is one of the virtues, but in Canada it became the only virtue. The Bourassa who desired "social peace" above social justice, from Bill 22, the first language law, to Bill 86, the last; who flirted with nationalist extremism for thirty years, from "sovereignty-association" (the term is his invention) in the 1960s to the Allaire report in the 1990s; who swerved and dodged at every turn was, by the end of life, hailed for his lack of principle, expediency having been exalted as the highest form of nation-building.

Yet what was his accomplishment in this regard? His first run in office, from 1970 to 1976, ended with the election of a separatist government; his second, after the Johnson interregnum, with another. Can we say that Bourassa kept the wolf at the door? Or did he let it in?

The recent history of Canada, indeed, is strewn with the might-have-beens of Bourassa's long career. What if, instead of buckling before the fulminations of Claude Castonguay and Le Devoir, he had not reneged on his acceptance of the Victoria Charter in 1971, allowing patriation of the constitution to procede? Would we then have been spared the melodrama of Rene Levesque's "betrayal" in 1981?

What if, at Meech Lake, he had contented himself with the "five demands" of the Quebec Liberal Party platform -- which spoke, for example, of the distinct society only as part of the preamble to the Constitution, not as an interpretive clause -- and had not allowed the other premiers' obvious gullibility to tempt him further? What if, in the matter of the sign laws, he had kept his promise from the 1985 election, what if he had accepted the 1988 Supreme Court ruling, and upheld the equal rights of all Quebecers?

Could a constitutional accord have been reached that did not turn Canada into a pretzel?

What if, what if, what if. In the end, Bourassa was not the maker of his times, but was made by them. It was only the Canada that could not rise to its own defence that allowed nationalist blackmailers to define the national agenda, and it was only in such a climate of moral ambiguity that such a quintessentially ambiguous figure as Bourassa could flourish.

What Robert Bourassa never understood about Canada is this: It is not just a country. It is a moral argument. It is not a place on the map, or an economic and political "superstructure." It is a series of moral propositions: about the equality of its citizens, about their collective obligations to one another, about the purpose, no, the mission of nationhood in the New World. A federalist he certainly was. But it was never more than a convenient institutional arrangement: no matter, then, if we achieved national unity at the expense of national integrity.

The Canada he leaves behind is less inclined to accept that arid view of itself. Perhaps we are beginning to understand the true terms of our national debate: It is not so much about keeping the country together, but about the kind of country we want to keep.