Quebec: Clowns

From Ottawa, with my car back in my possession after leaving it just outside of Ottawa while I was in the West, I drove to Shebrooke, QC, the home constituency of Quebec Premier Jean Charest. An interesting aside on Jean Charest is that his real name is not Jean. It's actually John. John James Charest. It all sounds suspisciously anglophonic to me, but considering the pathetic state of my French-speaking abilities, I am not one to criticize.

I was considerably worried about getting the photograph in Quebec, both because of the language barriers and because Quebecois law, from what I had heard, was a little more concerned with privacy regulations than most of the rest of Canada. My worries were well founded as Quebec had the same privacy laws as Alberta in regards to land titles. I was not allowed to do a title search by Premier Charest's name, which forced me into contacting everyone I thought might have a clue as to where he lived: the media outlets, the tourist information centre, the constituency office, the Premier's office. I spent a good amount of time on Google, searching everything I could find. The farthest I got was a woman at the info centre letting me know that he had a vacation home in North Hatley, QC, about half and hour drive from Sherbrooke. I would have prefered not to use a vacation home for this project, but as I was getting nowhere with finding his actual residence, I decided that I would try and search out that address.

That's when I came upon a bizarre website that was clearly an anti-Charest pdf pamphlet of some sort where he was poorly Photoshopped into a clown. It was fervently trying to provoke outrage in the Quebecois over the amount of money that Premier Charest spends on various items. One of these things happened to be his house. And there, in plain French, was his home address in Montreal.

Now, I couldn't exactly trust a document that used Photoshop so poorly and depicted premiers as clowns, but now that I had an address, I called up the Land Titles office and asked who owned the home. 'Jean Charest.' So, realizing I was in the wrong city (but Sherbrooke really is a very nice place to visit if you get the chance), I drove back to Montreal. From then on, the process went smoothly - visited the house, took the photograph, nobody was home, and I was on my way. 9 for 10. The unbearable thing about the whole experience was the incredible heat and humidity of Montreal while I was there. Bleah. Blinking caused you to sweat profusely. I love summer, but that was a little much.

From Montreal, I got into the car and went back to Halifax to set up and attend the 'Power Houses: Halifax Regional Municipality's City Council' exhibit. The opening is on Tuesday, 8 August from 5.30 pm to 7.00 pm. This is an open invitation for anyone who can make it to attend. I would love to see you there.

And as a side note...on the way home to Halifax, I received a phone call. Alberta has now officially said 'yes' to photographing Ralph Klein's condo (but not his house). Grrrrrrr...if they could have told me that 3 weeks ago, I would be much happier. So, at some point in September, I will be flying back out to Calgary for the photograph. The good news is that, technically then, I can say that I will be 10 for 10 so far. And that's cause for celebration.