Voting in the Quebec Plebiscite, 1889.
The Justice and Peace Party was one of three political parties that formed in Quebec in the run-up to the Quebec Plebiscite of 6 July 1889.
The Justice and Peace Party favored devolution to associated status, with a great degree of local autonomy but without full membership in the Confederation of North America. Most members of the Justice and Peace Party were middle-class farmers and residents with ties to Nova Scotia, which had always been an associated province of the C.N.A. Members of the Justice and Peace Party were targeted for violence by the pro-independence Free Quebec Coalition, suffering death threats and bombing attacks on their offices. The violence led a number of Quebecois to have second thoughts about independence, fearing that the campaign violence offered a foretaste of life under the F.Q.C. in an independent Quebec.
On the day of the plebiscite, the Justice and Peace Party received 995,289 votes, 54% of the 1,844,089 cast. Within three months, the Quebec legislature met in a special session to ratify the results of the plebiscite and establish associated status.
Sobel's source for the Justice and Peace Party in the Quebec Plebiscite is Armond Fleur's We Leave as Friends: The 1889 Plebiscite (New York, 1945).