On September 10, 1960, some 20 people founded the Rassemblement pour l'indépendance nationale (RIN) at the Auberge Le Châtelet of Morin Heights, in the Laurentides region of Quebec.

[A 1] The lectures Chaput gave on the subject of independence as part of the public meetings organized by the RIN placed him in the media spotlight.

Contributing to his notoriety was the controversy aroused by the contrast between his political positions and his status as a federal public servant who had sworn an oath of allegiance to the Queen of Canada.

The book opens with an 8-page foreword in which the author invites all "free men" able to rid themselves of their preconceived ideas to read the essay he has to offer, while warning them that they must not hope to find in its pages all the answers to their questions, nor a political programme, nor an accomplished literary work.

The essay only pretends to treat of "permanent elements" on the basis of four postulates: The author discards not only the question of a hypothetical pro-independence political programme, but also that of the "modalities of power", all the while reassuring his readers by declaring himself personally favourable to the birth of a democratic republic.

Chaput believes that the greatest evils caused by the confederation of 1867 are to have distorted, in the minds of French Canadians, the sense of their own borders, and to have made them a minority people.

The Canadian nation, a purely political and artificial construction founded, claims the author, on the force of arms and submission, is being erected on the negation of French-Canadian identity.

Despite the dark tableau he renders of the position of the French-Canadian people at all levels, the author believes in their capacity to regenerate and calls upon them to choose the highest degree of collective liberty to which they are entitled.

In the conclusion of this first section, Chaput invites French Canadians to learn from the unbreakable will of the Jewish people, who, after centuries of exile, were finally reborn on the land of their ancestors, where they have been building the State of Israel since 1948.

The logic of assimilation is implacable, and those who advocate it among French Canadians share with the indépendantistes having had enough of being "second-class citizens" and being "used as innocent victims in the entertainment of an illusion, that of a bilingual Canada".

Provincial autonomy is the solution put forward by a whole legion of "great defenders of the French-Canadian nations" who have fought against the encroachments of the federal government in the jurisdictions of provinces in general and of Quebec in particular.

Militants of independence, Chaput at their head, assert that French Canadians are destined to "subjection and mediocrity" for as long as they form a linguistic and cultural minority undergoing the consequences of the political will of a majority foreign to them.

The French-Canadian people can legitimately choose political independence by virtue of article 1, paragraph 2 of the United Nations Charter, signed by Canada under the government of prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and never repudiated afterwards.

As for the resources Quebec would possess after independence, Chaput believes that no serious person could possibly doubt they would allow a people of five to six million to live and prosper.

To acquire independence, to obtain international personality, is the "normal" solution adopted by dozens of peoples who have jointed the United Nations since its foundation in 1945.

[B 6] Chaput believes that since the cause of Quebec is legitimate, the only thing missing is the will of the people expressed by way of election or referendum in order to meet the conditions of the international community for the recognition of States.

Contrary to what is often asserted on the question, Chaput believes that the independence of Quebec would change the situation of French-Canadian minorities for the better, not only in English Canada, but also in the United States and everywhere else in the world.

Once sovereign, Quebec, like all other independent States, would be in a position to give itself a policy aiming to protect and support its nationals settled outside its borders.

The sixth and final section, The Sole Reason for Our Cause, asserts that the battle for the independence of Quebec is fought above all in the name of human dignity.

Marcel Chaput launched the essay Pourquoi je suis séparatiste on September 18, 1961 at the Cercle universitaire de Montréal.

Jacques Hébert, owner of Éditions du Jour, friend of Pierre Trudeau, is far from being sympathetic to the political opinion expressed by Chaput.