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Two news segments from April and September 1981; the first concerns a coalition attempt by all the provincial leaders except Bill Davis and Richard Hatfield (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland), to take control of the constitutional renewal process from the federal government. Following his unexpected but successful return to power in early 1980, and his defeat of Rene Levesque and his Parti Quebecois government referendum on the question of Quebec's sovereignty and association with the rest of Canada, Pierre Trudeau once again, as he had many times over the years as prime minister, attempted work towards an agreement with the rest of the first ministers on patriation; when this latest attempt again came to nothing, Trudeau did something no prime minister before him had considered: he made a declaration to bring home the BNA Act unilaterally, without provincial consent - he would include an amending formula and also ground a charter of rights in the fundamental document; and this is what spurred the creation of the Gang of Eight, who variously took Ottawa to court over this position until the case went up to the consideration of the Supreme Court of Canada, which in late September of 1981 judged that though the prime minister was technically within his authority to take such action, to do so would be a contradiction of the tradition of compromise and common grounds found between the prime minister and premiers of Canada since the time of Laurier.

So with all this around them, on November 5th 1981 nine provincial leaders and prime minister Trudeau finally came to agreement, a feat that had eluded first ministers in Canada for more than fifty years, in what was generally considered to be the last effort for a long time to reach a deal on the constitution.

February 1984 - Pierre Trudeau resigns as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. A second news clip from June of the same year shows Trudeau bidding farewell at the party convention that would select John Turner as the new leader.

April 1968 - The Liberal Party of Canada hits the ball out of the park and chooses Pierre Trudeau as its new leader to replace Lester Pearson, a decision that would keep it in power for another 16 years.

March 16th 1983

Two days of constitutional discussion concerning the broad issue of native rights.

Toward the end of overcoming the increasingly interminable intransigence of provincial governments toward constitutional reform, the Prime Minister announces a plan to carry out the matter unilaterally. (June 1978)