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    Larry Smith: Mon nom est québécois

    When Chantal Hébert predicted this whole Larry Smith business in an eerily well-informed Dec. 3 column, I took a moment to mourn the spectacle of a Conservative party so unmoored from modern-day Quebec that its next star candidate would be named “Smith.” Don’t get me wrong: A guy named Smith or Wells is always greeted with a smile in Chicoutimi or Quebec City, but he is unlikely to pick up a lot of votes from a Ouimet or a Côté. Smith is a well-regarded professional-sports executive with solid French, but that’ll get an anglo the same sort of cool respect a James Moore or a Jack Layton gets among francophone voters.