Several hundred sovereignists from a variety of parties took part in a meeting in Montreal Saturday in an attempt to thrust the stalled separatist movement forward.

The event, called DestiNation, was organized by Gilbert Paquette and actor-turned-politician Pierre Curzi, a former PQ MNA who bolted from the party from under Pauline Marois.

The conference aimed at patching over festering divisions in the movement, which has seen the decline of the Parti Quebecois and increased support for other parties such as the Option Nationale and Quebec Solidaire.

Support for separatism has lagged in polls and also suffered at the ballot box, as the now-leaderless Parti Quebecois received its worst result in the last 44 years last April, following the near extinction of the once-powerful separatist Bloc Quebecois in Ottawa.

Nonetheless, those assembled Saturday still hold out hope.

“Despite the defeat there’s a lot of energy, intensity and willingness to rebound,” said Jean-Francois Lisee.

He said that 80,000 people enter adulthood each year in Quebec and efforts should be made to bring them into the movement.

Some have questioned whether a split in the sovereignty movement has emerged between right and left. Some pundits have envisaged a Parti Quebecois led by media mogul Pierre Peladeau, possibly even with former PQ MNA turned London financier Martin Aussant by his side.

Francoise David of the Quebec Solidaire party maintained, however, that a leftist view must prevail.

“We won’t succeed in the realization of the sovereignist project if we don’t choose to be with the people, the workers, the families, the poor, so we have to be social democrats, if not we’ll never see an independent Quebec," she told CTV Montreal.

Martine Desjardins, a former student leader who failed to get elected in her first run for office last spring, said that the weekend discussions should, “give us a plan to follow for the next several years.”

Oragnizer Pierre Curzi argued that things are too muddled in their current state.

“There is a problem and we haven’t solved that problem. Until we find a solution to that problem we won’t have any speed for cultural economic and open-minded development. If we want to exist in the world we must clarify our situations,” he said.