Chicken Milk and Clown Car Ideology

B R

04 Jan 2026 — 4 min read

It is officially the end of our second year in Quebec! I've talked about this place quite a lot but let's pick up some parts on the cutting room floor.

Too Fast Too Flurryious

Yes there is no avoiding this: during the winter Quebec is pretty cold. A good coat and boots will only get you so far and they know this - which is why virtually every outdoor event (and there are quite a few) has some kind of hot beverage featured. The Christmas markets have hot mulled wine in generous portions. Many of these are themed as "German" markets because Canadian had all the waves of immigration the US had and then some.

All Hail God Empress Dion

This isn't a joke. They aren't playing it for laughs. Celine Dion is not just one-of-many quirky cultural exports.

You might have been under the impression the movie Titanic was staring some love-struck couple transcending class during a disaster but you would be wrong.

Eggnog is called Chicken Milk

Incredible that they found a worse name for my favorite holiday swill. Fantastic stuff. I discovered this at a Rocky-Horror-esce showing of the film Christmas Vacation - the audience arrived en costume, the beverages were on theme, specific things were to be yelled at the screen at correct times, and they employed lip-syncing actors on stage for key scenes.

The French title is *Le Sapin à des Boules* which kinda translates to "The Tree with some balls" or "baubles" and given the quantity of physical comedy I would not be surprised to learn it is a double entendre.

Nationalists Are All The Same

"Listen there are only three viable choices" - the guy currently polling third place.

Credit to The Onion for the second image, with some minor edits on my part.

In the lead for next year's election is the Parti Quebecois (PQ) and, as is typical, they are planning another referendum on leaving Canada. Sure, last two attempts have eaten shit, but the world appears to have gotten somehow dumber since 1995 so I guess we can roll the dice again.

Anyway lets check in on another nationalist project which involved separating from a relatively loose federal system by means of a popular referendum.

And Britain already had/has a bunch of stuff Quebec would need to actually build - like a central bank with its own currency, a military of any kind, etc. Supporters will explain they'll keep that stuff after leaving Canada somehow but, while I now understand what they are saying perfectly well, it still sounds like a clown car honking wildly.

To both the current ruling party (the Coalition Avenir Quebec or CAQ) and the PQ, it is immigration that is the principal problem plaguing the province. Immigrants are driving up housing costs and speaking English everywhere.

This is the principal motivation on the question of sovereignty this time around. The PQ contends separating will let them effectively zero-out immigration. The CAQ basically likes that idea, but believes they'll lose a referendum and it'll leave their bargaining position with Ottawa (on immigration and everything else) in shambles.

Honestly all this is pretty rich. Quebec was a colony of the French empire that was then colonized by the British and finally the landing point of dozens of waves of immigration - the Irish, Italians, Lebanese, Spanish, Algerians, French, Portuguese - too many to name. Biggest self-reported ethnic/cultural origin? Canadian. Bring up indigenous people, whose settlement of these lands predates any of this and speak their own languages, and the anti-immigrant politician will respond with "oh yeah, them" and basically try to change the subject.

No other inconvenient facts - that social housing growth has been drastically lower than overall population growth, that all population growth is from in-migration, or that French is still the dominant spoken language in public virtually everywhere including the city they consider a "problem" (Montreal) - has any impact on those beliefs.

The third party in this formulation are the Liberals who, as recently as 1980, were more like FDR-style social democrats but are now currently mostly known for comical bribery scandals. This very winter one such scandal toppled the recently elected leader of the party after it was found that 100$ in envelopes were being passed around for...reasons!

The kids are alright tho.