QUEBEC

Social media reacts to our story on social malaise in Quebec

Readers had a lot to say about Andrew Potter’s piece on the meaning behind Quebec’s snowstorm

A man cross-country skis past cars buried in snow as a late winter storm that dumped more than two feet (60 cm) of snow in certain areas of Quebec, closed schools and some roadways causing multiple highway collisions and incidents of trapped motorists, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada March 15, 2017. (Dario Ayala/Reuters)

A man cross-country skis past cars buried in snow as a late winter storm that dumped more than two feet (60 cm) of snow in certain areas of Quebec, closed schools and some roadways causing multiple highway collisions and incidents of trapped motorists, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada March 15, 2017. (Dario Ayala/Reuters)

While a snowstorm barrelled through Montreal earlier this month, 300 cars were stranded on a major highway. Some people spent the entire night in their cars, running out of gas, with no help in sight. This chaos that ensued is being called a political scandal, and as Andrew Potter, the Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada wrote this week, the incident revealed the “essential malaise eating away at the foundations of Quebec society.”

Potter’s commentary on Quebec’s “mass breakdown in social order” garnered some less-than-pleased reactions from readers. Some even labelled the piece “fake news.” In the meantime, Potter corrected some aspects of his piece (read his note here.) Here’s what you had to say:

Since this story was published, McGill University tweeted that it was distancing itself from the views expressed. Emmett Macfarlane—a University of Waterloo political science professor and occasional Maclean’s contributor—slammed the university for the “chilling effect” of the tweet.

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