Michèle Ouimet writes about anglophone blues in choosing a mayor and candidates to vote for today. She's normally an acute observer but I think she misfires here, not least in portraying local anglos as elderly one-trick ponies of debate.

I did not vote for Louise Harel or any of her people. I did not like Vision Montreal even when Benoit Labonté was in charge, and obviously his visible fall from grace didn't encourage me to give it more consideration. I never lived in a place directly blighted by the forced mergers, although you could say that the entire city is still living under some shadow of that blight. I have always felt, as a Montrealer, that many sovereignists longed to minimize the importance of this city as an unmanageable and vibrant multi-ethnic world they could never completely dominate, and I did not and do not welcome the idea of a sovereignist mayor coming to rule it directly.

But my problem with Harel is not the simple issue that she is a sovereignist. My problem is that her being a sovereignist, and her wanting to reopen the issue of borough powers, does not appeal to me because I've seen this pattern eat Quebec up for decades. It suggests four years of sterile constitutional-type debate, and my heart sinks on even thinking about it. Let her take her broom and ride away on it. posted at 20:12