Thirty years on, we must consider the possibility that we are into endgame with the separatists. The remarkable recent poll numbers coming out of Quebec -- a CROP survey taken at the end of March shows the No side leading the Yes by almost 2 to 1 on the same partnership-with-sovereignty question that was asked in the 1995 referendum -- do not mean that the separatist threat has been extinguished.

But they do suggest a historic shift in opinion is under way in Quebec, one that not only casts doubt on separatist claims of historic inevitability, but equally gives the lie to the near unanimous counsel of experts outside the province, which has for many years favoured one form or another of the very constitutional arrangement that Quebecers themselves now reject.

Indeed, probe a little deeper and the numbers are even more shocking to the defeatist assumptions that have governed the debate until now.

Asked to choose, in another poll, between outright independence and the dreaded status quo, long discarded as a nonstarter in the province, Quebecers opt massively for the status quo. A slightly larger majority of francophone Quebecers than anglophones, 88 per cent to 85 per cent, believe, contrary not only to Parti Quebecois dogma but the anglo-Canadian theorists of "multinational federalism" they quote, that "Canadians are a people." In both groups, francophones and anglophones, there is more support for the notion that Canadians are a people than that Quebecers are.

Far from the backlash that was predicted to arise from the Supreme Court reference, a large majority of francophones, 74 per cent, agree that Canada's territory cannot be divided without Canadians' consent, just as earlier polls have shown strong majorities agreeing with the partitionist position, so shocking to respectable opinion elsewhere, that Quebec's territory could be divided in the event of secession.

These trends, it is important to note, predate Jean Charest's arrival on the scene, though they have obviously been given an extra shove by the popular enthusiasm for his candidacy. Support for sovereignty-partnership has in fact been falling ever since the 1995 referendum, from the high 40s in the first year to the mid 40s in the second year to the mid-30s today. Indeed, to trace the roots of the separatists' present disarray, go directly to October 30, 1995.

The planets will never align more perfectly for the separatist cause than they did on that day: The softest possible question, the rules rigged to their advantage, a divided and fearful opposition, and a separatist leader who had quite literally come back from the dead. And still they could not push the vote over 50 per cent.

It is the very narrowness of their defeat that doomed them. There are three reasons for this. One, the near disaster of a separatist win has been a useful cold shower for federalist leaders. The strategy of keeping quiet in the face of separatist outrages, for fear of disrupting the expected federalist victory, has been permanently displaced.

Instead, the federal government has taken to stating that it would not accept certain referendum questions, such as the "partnership" wheeze, as legitimate. It has suggested that a majority greater than 50 per cent would be required. And it has insisted that any secession bid would have to be lawfully negotiated. These are the sorts of conditions that it never dared to suggest before: there was just too much to lose, or so it was thought. So the clearest and most beneficial result of the 1995 nightmare is that there will never be another referendum like it.

Two, the separatists have lost the element of surprise. Any serious analyst of the separatist project knows that it could never be negotiated: it would have to be done unilaterally. As Jacques Parizeau has subsequently revealed, the plan was framed in terms of days, if not hours, a blitzkrieg of manouevres that even then relied on total enervation in Ottawa. Had the separatists won on October 30, they might have just managed to pull it off. But now their hand is tipped.