Last Saturday at 9 p.m., as residents across the Quebec sat indoors to hear a new pandemic bell, police patrolled the sleepy town of Sherbrooke, observing a perhaps unlikely crime: a woman walking her boyfriend attached to ‘ a leash, while on his way the sidewalk was four-legged.
When asked by police why she broke the curfew, which requires residents to stay indoors between 8pm and 5am, the woman replied that she only went for a walk with her dog. After all, dog walking near the house is one of several activities, along with a pharmacy, released from the evening clock. Police, who were not convinced, beat the couple with a total of nearly $ 3,100 fines.
This week I called the Sherbrooke Police Department to confirm the human dog story as it resonates around the world. A police spokesman, Martin Carrier, told me that the couple was part of a small movement of protesters across the country who were struggling under new coronavirus restrictions and endangering their own lives and the lives of others.
“It is discouraging to see people not taking the rules seriously at a time when hospitals are being overwhelmed,” he said. Carrier said.
It is inevitable that the story of the boyfriend-walk also inspired some attempts at humor and some unfortunate puns. Some people think on Twitter that relationship facilities should be respected. “Totally amazed and amazed that it happened in Canada and not here in the US,” added one American.
The couple is apparently not alone in their rebellion. According to reports, some people locked up in Spain last year by walking stuffed animals or turtles.
The Quebec incident and others suggest that even in a country like Canada, where we usually accept rules and adopt scientific authorities, some people lose their patience or rebel against ennui, even though the pandemic is getting stronger.
Hundreds of people have taken to the streets in Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta in recent weeks. There have been several protests against the curfew in Quebec this past weekend – shortly after the curfew was first set – and police handed out 750 tickets across the province, where fines can be up to $ 6,000.
Although the protests so far have been widespread and relatively small, they nevertheless underscore the cognitive dissonance regarding the pandemic. A state of denial looks particularly bad in Quebec, my fun, extroverted home province and the epicenter of the pandemic. As of Friday morning, the 8,878 people who died of Covid-19 in Quebec were responsible for more than half of the country’s total of 17,538 deaths.
Quebec’s health minister, Christian Dubé, spoke in the television program “Tout le monde en parle” last year about a party culture in the majority of the Francophone province for the resistance of Quebecers to pandemics. “I think we have a Latin side,” he said. “We like to party.”
Epidemiologists cited other factors, such as inadequate contact detection, the Quebec government’s unwillingness to strike businesses and a too bad attitude in closing schools.
Quebec is hardly alone in experiencing a coronavirus boom. This week, Ontario, the country’s largest province, also met restrictions with a somewhat confusing home order. Critics point out, for example, that Ontario’s premier Doug Ford said people should only go to buy essentials such as groceries and exercise, but that the regulations allow all stores to remain open when picking up or using delivery.
Quebec’s evening clock turned Montreal, a usually precious, cosmopolitan city, into a ghost town.
In my bourgeois-bohemian Plateau-Mont-Royal neighborhood, which is full of hipster cafes and restaurants, the streets are largely deserted after 8pm, except for the walkers of dogs (leading dogs of the hairy variety).
Even before the evening bell, the usually noisy environment was terribly quiet during the holidays. At the state liquor store near my house, people lined up on New Year’s Eve to buy champagne. But the mood was gloomy, and several people in line told me they were planning to spend a quiet night at home and play board games.
Some Canadians have found pandemic comfort in pets, a dynamic that is being observed around the world. In New York, applications for pet care exploded last year. In March, during a partial exclusion in Spain, when dog walking was considered a necessary outing, one cunning man repeatedly tried to rent out his dogs on Facebook so people could walk them, before being approved by the police.
Many Montrealers apparently escape the claustrophobia of confinement and evening bells by doing winter sports. On a recent Sunday, dozens of families and friends roamed the picturesque Beaver Lake. It was nice to see people having fun, but scary that so many do not keep rules for social distance.
As for me, I escape my curfew by going on urban photography safaris and taking photos of my surroundings. I also do workouts with a high-octane kettle and a cardio video routine that includes Irish dancing.
The pandemic caused a certain Hitchcockian voyeurism because we were all sitting at home. I shudder to think what my neighbors across the street must think when they see a 40-year-old man jumping through their windows on the third floor, at eye level with mine, jumping wildly into his apartment.
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