Not the ideal start to the provincial election here in Quebec, as Mad Max tore across the landscape running down federal Conservatives drawing enough attention to knock the election off the front page of Le Journal de Montréal.
It's not just Andrew Scheer's weekend that's been thrown off kilter by the antics of Maxime Bernier.
So, what promises to be a strange election got off to an appropriately weird start.
At midday, Premier Philippe Couillard was visiting the Lieutenant Governor getting the legislature dissolved.
The nice thing about the start of an election is it hasn't turned ugly yet. No one's been backed into a corner, their hopes dashed and heading down the drain. Everything's a bit jolly and ephemeral and if anyone's attacking anyone else, it's hard to take seriously.
Which brings us to the Parti Québecois bus.
It's an acid-trip homage in spirit, if not in actuality, to Ken Kessy and his Merry Pranksters' own psychedelically painted bus, "Further". The psychedelic decals are by artist Jean-René Douville Tessier and have all sorts of allusions to Quebec — cranes, water, yada yada — but the woman's hand playing the guitar is pretty evocative of the famous Woodstock poster. (Would you believe the last trip by Further was to Woodstock?) It's a nice change from the usual giant-leader portrait style of campaign bus, and I know Tom Wolfe's just died, but maaaaaaaaaaaaan.
The party's election slogan — and this isn't some kind of setup for an Abbott and Costello bit — is a single word, "Sérieusement" ("Seriously"). They draw that out a bit on the bus "Vous n'avez encore rien vu. Sérieusement." ("You ain't seen nothing yet. Seriously.") It's all a fucking trip on the PQ side, and the passé allusions all kind of fit for the intended audience of boomers, still living with their great and dying dreams of an independent Québec.
And that's the message leader Jean-François Lisée is selling. That Québec should be an independent state, and a vote for anyone else — he says explicitly, the CAQ — is a vote to kill that dream. (He says he wouldn't hold a vote until after 2022, though.) But with all the psychedelic imagery, I have to wonder if he's forgotten how everything went to shit in 1969, once the peace, love, and good government* of the summer turned into Hells Angels, pool cues, and face smashing that winter at Altamont Speedway.
Anyway, the real battle this election still looks to be be fought on other ground, by other foes.
Françios Legault and his Coalition Avenir Québec are still the presumed front runners, but it won't be an easy path.
Things got off to a bit of a shaky start Thursday, when a report from La Presse forced Legault to insist his CAQ was standing behind their candidate in a Montréal riding, who had pleaded guilty in 1985 for theft under $1,000.
While it's probably not how he wanted to be spending his first day on the trail, it was kind of nice to see a party leader stand behind someone for something that happened well in the past. It shows a certain self-confidence not to panic in such situations. In recent years we've seen parties dump candidates at the drop of a hat. (And that one time a guy peed in a coffee mug, which probably wasn't an overreaction.)
In sharp contrast to the PQ — of which he was once a member — Legault rolled out his first big promise Thursday to be premier narc. The CAQ leader said if his party formed government, they'd raise the minimum legal age to buy cannabis to 21. Right now it's set to be 18, the same legal drinking age.
Mostly though, Legault's shot at becoming premier hinges on the province's desire for change. And no matter how much Couillard will point to how well the economy is doing — there have been years of surpluses, in Québec! — there's something sclerotic about his Liberals. They've more or less been in power for more than a decade, and people are tired of them.
Couillard's health minister is deeply unpopular, mostly because he's a huge jerk, but also because as he reorganized the health system he relished every fight he could pick along the way. He's widely loathed. But, that all seems to have changed Friday, when sources told Radio-Canada Barrette would be shuffled off to the treasury if the Liberals won again.
That the selling point of re-electing the Liberals is the guy in charge of health will be promoted to finance gives you an idea of why people are ready to try out another party for government.
But Couillard is not going down without a fight. He spent Thursday looking to remind people how well things are going in Québec. He's got an arms-length boost from the feds when the National Infrastructure Bank gave a $1.3-billion loan, the day before the election started, to a light rail project in Montréal.
Will it be enough? It's hard to say. Couillard has until Oct. 1 to convince people in this province that things are pretty good. If he can bring enough of them around, he can keep the big chair in Québec City.
Until then, we've got a long, strange trip to take.
