The 1978 edition, published at the French publishing house of the Union générale d'éditions, displayed upon the cover the mention "Pour un Québec libre" (For a Free Quebec). This was a decade after the Vive le Québec libre speech of French President Charles de Gaulle, two years after the first election of a contemporary independence party in Quebec, the Parti Québécois, and two years before their promised referendum on independence occurred in 1980. Lévesque had also made an important state visit to France a year before.