Ottawa is the federal stage on which the Parti québécois victory of November 15, 1976, becomes both a national crisis and a private rupture for Loïc. From the Langevin Building, across the street from Parliament, he watches the evening darken while the government prepares for a result that could alter Canada’s future. The city gathers the opposing claims that have shaped his life: his Québécois identity and his loyalty to Régis, the cousin who brought him into the prime minister’s cabinet.

Federal Power and the Election Night

The novel places Loïc in his office in the Langevin Building as polling stations are about to close. At six, the descending notes of the Westminster carillon mark the hour from the great clock in Parliament’s tower. The precise civic signal fixes his private suspense inside the machinery of federal government: the election is not merely approaching as news, but as a decision whose consequences the people around him are already trying to manage.

That apprehension has been sharpened by a recent poll giving the Quebec independence movement close to 50 percent support. In Ottawa, the political class and those whose work depends on Canadian federalism are on edge; people around the prime minister had not expected the possibility to become so immediate. The city’s offices thus register a failure of political foresight as well as fear. What had seemed improbable has become a contingency requiring prepared language, official judgment, and an answer from the federal center.

Preparing the Federal Response

Régis has spent the weekend working on possible statements for the prime minister. Called upstairs to a meeting with Pierre Elliott Trudeau and his senior advisers, he returns visibly flushed after arguing against what he calls the soft line. He condemns the Parti québécois program, led by René Lévesque, as betrayal, and Trudeau agrees with him. The episode makes Ottawa a place where national unity is argued over not only as an abstraction but as a practical question of what the government should say when the result is known.

Trudeau assigns Régis and Loïc to draft a telegram in the event of a Parti québécois victory. They must acknowledge the legitimate election of a sovereigntist government without offering congratulations or adding pointed criticism. For Régis, even that restrained recognition feels like accepting the victory of evil. The assignment exposes the difference between the two men inside the same office: one sees the result as a threat to be resisted, while Loïc is drawn toward the independence it represents. Their official task requires a common formulation precisely when their private convictions are diverging.

An Office Divided by Unspoken Loyalties

The tension follows Loïc through Ottawa’s government rooms and corridors. Kept at the office with the prime minister’s advisers and assistants, he hesitates to visit Régis in the adjoining room. They serve the same leader, yet their loyalties pull in opposite directions. Régis sees a rupture; Loïc sees the prospect of emancipation. Neither openly states the disagreement. Their self-censorship preserves the appearance of cooperation while making the silence between them increasingly oppressive.

The wider staff’s response gives that silence a public setting. In the cafeteria, people discuss the results almost in whispers, their anxiety visible; Loïc pays for a sandwich and leaves when he notices acquaintances who might draw him into conversation. Later, in the prime minister’s quarters, the advancing sovereigntist lead holds the staff’s attention. They watch the television, grumble and rage, while a buffet and opened bottles of wine and liquor go largely ignored. Loïc avoids meeting anyone’s eyes, afraid that spontaneous conversation might expose what he believes. Ottawa’s institutional life becomes, for him, a series of rooms in which even ordinary contact threatens disclosure.

The Result and Its Distance

When victory is confirmed, Lévesque speaks to his jubilant supporters at the Centre Paul-Sauvé in Montreal. His declaration of pride in being Québécois is heard in Ottawa through the television, but the celebration makes Loïc feel profoundly remote from the people gathered there and from young people across Quebec who share their elation. He imagines himself as far away as Timbuktu, Vladivostok, or the Orion Nebula: not a participant in the collective moment, but someone displaced from its time and place. The political distance between Ottawa and Montreal becomes an inward distance as well. Loïc no longer feels easily joined to the collective “we” that once seemed his own; his “I” has separated from it, perhaps irreversibly.

The Aftermath in Ottawa

After the election, Loïc recognizes that Trudeau and his team are already preparing to oppose Quebec’s new government. He can no longer maintain an invisible balance between the federal camp and the sovereigntist cause without remaining permanently out of alignment. Making this clear to Régis is especially difficult because Régis has taken on a fatherlike significance for him, recalling the older division between his biological father and his adoptive father. In Ottawa, political allegiance repeats an intimate conflict: attachment to one side must be concealed from the other.

The strain becomes bodily and practical. Loïc sleeps poorly and writes resignation letters at night, only to tear them up at dawn. When Régis undergoes open-heart surgery and spends more than three months recovering at home, Loïc takes roughly the same interval to prepare his own departure from Trudeau’s cabinet. Ottawa is therefore not simply the site of the election-night crisis; it is also the workplace from which Loïc must disentangle himself. The city’s federal offices turn the conflict over Quebec’s future into a test of whether he can remain faithful to Régis without betraying his own convictions.