Peter McAuslan, the businessman behind McAuslan Breweries and past president of the St. Andrew's Society, is one of Montreal's best known Scottish Canadians.
And while he's paying attention to what's going on in Scotland, he said he’s not getting involved.
“It's really not our game, and you recall we lived through our own exciting times with various referendums,” he said while taking in the Robbie Burns statue downtown.
McAuslan isn’t the only Quebec resident whose memories of 1995 are being roused by this latest effort, and the way Quebec's last referendum unfolded is very similar to what’s happening in the United Kingdom right now.
When both campaigns started, the yes sides were both around 35 per cent support and days before the vote, they were running neck and neck.
“I think that in both cases you had a no side that was quite complacent, thinking that it was just going to waltz towards an easy no victory and realizing that a week to 10 days before the finish line ‘Oh my God we are losing this,” explained McGill political analyst Daniel Weinstock.
Quebec separatists are practically salivating at the thought of a yes win in Scotland. The head of the hardline separatist party Option Nationale even produced a YouTube video to try and persuade scots to vote yes.
“Vote no like we did and you'll be the laughing stock of the world,” Leader Sol Zanetti warns at the end of the spot.
The PQ’s Jean-Francois Lisee said he thinks a yes win in Scotland would make more Quebecers embrace sovereignty.
“One-hundred fifty countries became independent in the last four decades, but the Scotland experiment is the closest to Quebec -- a modern economy, an advanced democracy within the British Empire -- so it gives a template to what could happen to us,” he said.
With a week to go before the vote, the yes side was dealt a sudden blow Thursday -- the Royal Bank of Scotland said it will move its headquarters to England should Scots vote to separate.
“If I had to make a guess my guess is that two or three per cent of the population will look at the uncertainty that sovereignty would lead to you and say you know what we're pulling back from the abyss,” Weinstock said.
McAuslan says he isn’t too worried about Scotland – he's just happy it's not Quebec going through another referendum.
“We're proud of our Scottish heritage. This is Scottish business, it's not our business.”