Buy peace

Family bubbles, poles and frenzied hand washes, this is what Halloween will look like in the “new normal”. We had a practice last year, when the party was postponed due to bad weather. I would have thought that with a global pandemic we would cancel this celebration of refined sugar.

I understand that Halloween is a favorite holiday for many children. It’s mine, too. I love to dress up the little ones, go through houses and return to the fold to see the extent of the family loot.

I like to arbitrate the exchanges (“I give you a bar of chocolate against two mini-bags of chips”) before going to eat too much candy in front of a film of fear.

We could have reinvented ourselves

This is what I promised myself to do this year: respect tradition while following health rules. This is why the government’s announcement left me perplexed.

While Mr. Legault made it clear to us recently that he was not there to make popular decisions and that his mandate was to govern taking into account the recommendations of Public Health, I wonder.

Children kings

Did we want to buy peace? Did they want to force-feed us nananes before extending the famous “28 days”?

I am not in the secret of the gods, and I want to believe that with everything that falls on them, our children need to be cheered up, but I consider that to go door to door is to take a risk for nothing.

In fact, when I asked virologist Benoit Barbeau if he would pass Halloween on to his children, his answer was unequivocal: “No! ”

Legault has acted like a good father since the start of the pandemic. So he knows it’s much easier to say yes. But he also knows that every good parent, for the sake of the children, sometimes has to say no.