Last Saturday at 9 pm, while Quebec residents sat at home to obey a new pandemic curfew, the police patrolling the sleepy town of Sherbrooke observed a perhaps unlikely crime: a woman “walking” with her boyfriend, stuck to a leash as he walked the sidewalk on all fours.
Asked by the police about the reason for violating the curfew, which requires residents to stay indoors between 8 pm and 5 am, the woman replied that she was just taking her dog for a walk. After all, walking the dog close to home is one of several activities, along with trips to the pharmacy, exempt from curfew. The police, unconvinced, slapped the couple with a total of nearly $ 3,100 in fines.
This week, I called Sherbrooke Police to confirm the human canine story, which reverberated around the world. A police spokesman, Martin Carrier, told me that the couple were part of a small movement of protesters across the country who were angered by the new restrictions on coronavirus and put their own lives and that of others at risk.
“It is disheartening to see that people are not taking the rules seriously at a time when hospitals are overloaded,” said Carrier.
Inevitably, the boyfriend’s story also inspired some attempts at humor and some unfortunate puns. Some meditated on Twitter, the peculiarities of the relationship must be respected. “Completely surprised and surprised that this happened in Canada and not here in the USA”, added an american.
The couple is apparently not alone in their revolt. Some people reportedly disregarded a blockade last year in Spain, walking with stuffed animals or pet turtles.
The Quebec incident and others suggest that even in a complacent country like Canada, where we generally embrace the rules and submit to scientific authorities, some are losing patience or rebelling against boredom, even as the pandemic intensifies.
Hundreds of people have taken to the streets in Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta in the past few weeks. There have been several protests against Quebec’s curfew over the past weekend – shortly after the curfew was first imposed – and the police have handed out 750 fines across the province, where fines can reach $ 6,000.
While the protests so far have been dispersed and relatively small, they underline cognitive dissonance when it comes to the pandemic. A state of denial seems particularly acute in some neighborhoods in Quebec, my hometown outgoing and fun, and the epicenter of the pandemic. As of Friday morning, the 8,878 people who died from Covid-19 in Quebec were responsible for more than half of the country’s total 17,538 deaths.
Speaking at the end of last year on the television program “Tout le monde en parle”, Quebec’s health minister, Christian Dubé, blamed a party culture in the French-speaking majority for Quebecers’ resistance to pandemic measures. “I think we have a Latin side,” he said. “We like to party.”
Epidemiologists cited other factors, such as inappropriate contact tracking, the Quebec government’s reluctance to close deals, and an excessively relaxed attitude when it comes to closing schools.
Quebec is hardly alone in the event of an outbreak of coronavirus. This week, Ontario, the country’s largest province, has also tightened restrictions with a somewhat confusing order to stay home. For example, critics point out that while Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford said people should only go out to buy essentials like groceries and exercise, regulations allow all stores to remain open if they use pickup or delivery on the sidewalk.
Quebec’s curfew has transformed Montreal, a generally arrogant and cosmopolitan city, into a ghost town.
In my bohemian-bourgeois neighborhood of Plateau-Mont-Royal, which is full of trendy cafés and restaurants, the streets are almost deserted after 8 pm, except for dog walkers (guided dogs of the furry type).
Even before the curfew, during the holidays, the normally turbulent neighborhood was strangely quiet. At the state liquor store near my home, people at noon were already lining up to buy champagne on New Year’s Eve. But the mood was bleak, and several people in the queue told me that they planned to spend a quiet night at home, playing board games.
Some Canadians have found solace in the pet pandemic, a dynamic seen around the world. In New York, pet adoption requests exploded last spring. In March, during a partial blockade in Spain, when walking dogs was considered an essential excursion, an astute man tried several times to rent his dogs on Facebook so that people could walk, before being sanctioned by the police.
Many Montrealers seem to be escaping the claustrophobia of confinement and the curfew playing winter sports. On a recent Sunday, dozens of families and friends were tobogganing on the city’s scenic Lake Beaver. It was exciting to see people having fun, but alarming that so many were not obeying the rules of social distance.
As for me, I have escaped the stagnation of curfew by taking part in urban photography safaris and taking pictures of my neighborhood. I also do some high octane kettle bell exercises and a cardiovascular video routine that includes Irish dancing.
The pandemic generated a certain Hitchcockian voyeurism, since we are all stuck at home. I shudder to think what my neighbors across the street must think when they see a man in his 40s through his third-floor windows, at the height of mine, leaping madly into his apartment.
Trans Canada
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