Parliament of Canada

Parliament of Canada is both a seat of federal power and a charged setting in the novel: a place where political work is done amid institutional ceremony, personal loyalties, and the persistent suggestion that the past remains present. Its portrayal extends beyond the capital, setting the cabinet’s political world against provincial and local contests in which party organization can reach into public employment and the conduct of elections.

Federal Power and the Parliamentary Setting

In one period of the narrative, the prime minister’s cabinet is housed in Édifice de l’Est, described as the only parliamentary building to have remained largely intact since the beginnings of Confederation. Loïc’s route to his first-floor office passes up a broad, two-flight staircase lined with portraits of successive viceroys. Pointed Gothic arches, long corridors, and marble fireplaces make the building feel more like a palace than a modern workplace. Its architecture gives federal government a visible weight: the people working there occupy rooms and corridors already layered with the authority of earlier generations.

The cabinet’s location in Édifice de l’Est is temporary. It is the final year in which the prime minister’s office will be based there, lending Loïc’s time in the building the quality of a passing interval. Parliament is not presented only as a debating chamber or a constitutional abstraction; it is also a workplace with offices, stairways, colleagues, and the routines of political service. That close, practical view gives the institution a human scale without diminishing the history its buildings embody.

Cabinet Work and Political Allegiance

Loïc comes to work alongside his cousin Régis D’Anjou, serving in the prime minister’s circle as a ghostwriter. Régis asks whether Loïc’s political opinions would prevent him from working there; Loïc replies that working with Régis is what attracts him most. Régis makes clear that the office will not impose a test of political orthodoxy. The exchange places personal attachment beside political difference: Loïc’s entry into federal service depends not on a declaration of ideological conformity but on his relationship with the cousin who brings him into the work.

The appointment is approved after Régis consults Pierre Elliott Trudeau, with whom he has a longstanding informal relationship. The arrangement is accepted without a formal test or prolonged proceedings. Yet Loïc’s nationalistic sympathies continue to affect his relationship with Régis. The cabinet therefore becomes a site where private kinship and public allegiance meet, rather than a space in which political divisions simply disappear. Loïc’s ghostwriting also makes his institutional role deliberately indirect: he helps shape the prime minister’s public voice while remaining, in the novel’s formulation, a figure behind the scenes.

Political Performance and Unease

The parliamentary world is presented as a theatre of political performance. During a night of crisis, Loïc sees Pierre Elliott Trudeau hurry toward Parliament with his usual entourage. The narrative contrasts the confidence associated with his rise to prominence with the severity of his appearance that night. A verbal slip before journalists, in which he momentarily speaks of continuing to preach separatism in Quebec before correcting himself, becomes material for political opponents. The episode makes the public institution a place where an unguarded phrase can expose the instability beneath a practiced political image.

The building’s atmosphere also takes on a Gothic cast. Loïc believes he sees movement behind the Gothic windows of Édifice de l’Est and recalls an earlier sight of a demonic-looking figure in the darkened rose window above his office. The narrative leaves open whether this perception reflects latent anxiety about his political work or something more disturbing. Elsewhere, stories of officials dressing as Romanian Orthodox prelates to bless a water tower and a senator receiving a tattoo of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper contribute to the impression of a parliamentary culture behaving strangely after hours. These episodes do not define the institution’s formal structure; they show how Loïc experiences its political world as a mixture of official ceremony, private eccentricity, and supernatural unease.

Provincial Politics and Local Consequences

The novel sets the federal cabinet’s political tensions alongside provincial contests, while keeping their distinct levels of government clear. In the campaign launched by Maurice Duplessis at the Château Frontenac, the defense of Quebec against Ottawa is presented as a central appeal. In Touladi, Roland Bolduc and his associates organize for the Blue faction, while Clovis Lacroix, whose mother belongs to the D’Anjou family, gathers young supporters of the Red faction. The dispute shows political affiliation being organized through local relationships and public influence, not only through speeches delivered by prominent leaders.

That local contest has direct consequences for employment and electoral participation. Clovis is warned that he may lose his teaching post if he continues his political activity; the school-board president who delivers the warning is aligned with the Bolducs. Clovis resigns rather than abandon the campaign. On election day, young Red supporters barricade themselves in Roland’s garage, intending to prevent the Blue faction from getting voters drunk and then registering their votes. The confrontation escalates, and the following day Clovis is arrested for attempted murder by the sheriff accompanied by Gilbert Rougeau, who serves as a constable locally and is also one of Roland’s enforcers. Clovis spends months in the Rimouski penitentiary and, despite his cousin Jean D’Anjou’s efforts, loses his chance to return to teaching. These events do not take place within Parliament of Canada, but they broaden the novel’s account of political power: against the ceremonial authority of the capital, provincial and local politics appear through the pressure exerted on jobs, votes, and individual futures.