The spectre of a Quebec-wide shutdown following news of the passing of Bill 78 loomed somewhat intriguingly as my girlfriend and I crept along Highway 40, waiting to enter Montreal on a sultry, late Friday afternoon. With the road packed for kilometres with drivers going away for the Victoria Day long-weekend, I managed to catch up on the controversy surrounding the Charest government’s decision to pass a law that makes it illegal for a group of ten or more people to gather on a street without prior notice to the police, among other things. In the face of this absurdity, it only seems logical for a province proudly steeped in a history of uprisings and protests to respond with hundreds of thousands of galvanized students and activists on the streets the following week.

But none of this had any bearing on why I was stuck in this rush-hour gridlock.

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