The Province of Québec is more than the setting for elections in the novel: it is the political community whose claims of identity and self-government pull Loïc between his roots and his work in Ottawa. From the provincial sovereignty victory of 1976 to the coercive factional politics of an earlier local election, Québec appears as a place where public choices reach into family loyalties, employment, and private conscience.

A Province Contested Between Québec and Ottawa

The novel frames the Province of Québec through its strained relationship with Ottawa. On the evening of November 15, 1976, Loïc waits in his office at the Langevin Building as the provincial election results arrive. The outcome may determine Canada’s future, but for him the suspense is personal as well as national: he feels rooted in his Québécois identity while serving in the federal prime minister’s office as a close collaborator of his cousin Régis D’Anjou. The image of being caught between a tree and its bark gives this political division an intimate form. Québec is his home in the sense of identity and belonging; Ottawa is where his professional loyalty has placed him.

Loïc privately hopes the Parti québécois will win. In his youthful idealism, he sees the sovereignist party’s accession to power as a means of resisting the contraction of the French-speaking nation in North America and breaking a cycle of defensive nationalism and diminished self-regard. His colleagues in Ottawa, despite the polls, try not to believe that such a result is possible. As early returns give the Parti québécois an advantage, the atmosphere at the Langevin Building shifts from anxious expectation to alarm. The election registers there as a shock to federal political authority, while for Loïc each advance also intensifies the strain of concealing his hopes.

The 1976 Election and Divided Belonging

The meaning of the election becomes unmistakable when René Lévesque addresses jubilant supporters at the Centre Paul-Sauvé in Montreal after victory is secured. His declaration of pride in being Québécois is followed by public rejoicing across Montreal and the Province of Québec. Loïc, watching from Ottawa, feels suddenly remote from the young people celebrating in the province. He no longer experiences their collective excitement as an uncomplicated expression of his own belonging: his private self has separated from the once-familiar political we.

The result also makes his position at work harder to sustain. Once he sees that Pierre Elliott Trudeau and his team are preparing to oppose the new government in Québec, Loïc understands that he cannot remain balanced between the federal camp and the province. He fears being drawn into a conflict against the people whose political choice he recognizes as legitimate. In a difficult conversation with Régis, he explains that his generation cannot share the older man’s view of Canadian federalism. He points to the sovereignist party’s support among a clear majority of Québec’s francophones and insists that this population is theirs as well as his. He says he does not have the heart to join a campaign against Québec and would rather stand outside the fray, perhaps returning to his former profession as a journalist.

Provincial Politics in Local Life

An earlier campaign shows how the province’s political divisions operate beyond the federal offices and public celebrations of 1976. In Touladi, Maurice Duplessis launches an election campaign at the Château Frontenac by presenting himself as a defender of Québec against Ottawa and as a protector of its language, faith, and French-speaking population. This political language is taken up in local party organization: Roland Bolduc and his brother Romuald Bolduc campaign for the Blues, while Clovis Lacroix, whose mother was a D’Anjou, organizes young supporters of the Reds.

The local struggle is not limited to competing speeches or votes. Roland Bolduc publicly belittles the young Reds and threatens that they will be crushed. Clovis is warned that he may lose his teaching position if he continues his political activity. The threat comes from the president of the school commission, described as a creature of the Bolducs, after other warnings from the priest and from Roland. Clovis resigns rather than give up the freedom to organize. The episode links the province’s political contest to local influence over public employment: the election is formally about votes, but participation carries consequences for a teacher’s livelihood.

Elections, Coercion, and Consequences

On election day, the conflict moves from pressure to a violent confrontation. Roland, already angered by the young Reds’ resistance, is determined not to let them thwart his side. They barricade themselves in his garage to keep the Blues from getting voters drunk in an effort to secure their votes; they intend to cast their own ballots later, after the opportunity for that manipulation has passed. Roland summons his usual strongmen, including Gilbert Rougeau, and the standoff ends with Clovis arrested the next day, accused of attempted murder. He spends several months in the Rimouski penitentiary before his cousin Jean D’Anjou, a prominent Québec lawyer, defends him.

The consequences outlast the election. Clovis misses the start of the 1952 school year, and although Jean works to keep him from carrying a criminal record for life, the doors of teaching remain closed to him despite his diploma. He must find other work, first in Québec City as a proofreader and clerk at the Garneau bookstore, and later in Montreal, where he moves among beatnik and revolutionary circles. The Province of Québec thus connects political conflict at the ballot box to lasting changes in individual lives. Read alongside Loïc’s divided loyalties in 1976, the earlier campaign makes the province a recurring arena in which political identity is never purely abstract: it is tested through relationships, work, and the price of taking a side.