“For all of the seemingly endless federal-provincial conferences on the matter, for all of the essays and papers the subject generated for thirty years beginning in the 1950s, the repatriation of Canada’s constitution, Ron Graham masterfully tells us, was essentially a matter of a two-day duel between two men, Pierre Elliott Trudeau and René Lévesque, fought in Ottawa in November, 1981. Graham challenges the myth that has long nourished Quebec separatism that English Canada “ganged up” on Lévesque during the “Night of the Long Knives”. Instead, Graham draws on new interviews and new research to frame this important and enduring moment in Canada’s history as a very personal struggle between two remarkable individuals.” – 2011 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing Jury (David Akin, Charlotte Gray, and Janice Gross Stein)