It was the middle of the night when the Bloc Québécois realized they had achieved the improbable. For weeks, the separatist party in Canada’s francophone province had been campaigning hard to steal an electoral district in Montreal long held by the Liberals.
When the trickle of votes finally stopped on that September evening, the Bloc’s Louis-Philippe Sauvé had emerged victorious by a narrow margin of 200 votes.
Chastened by the loss, the then prime minister, Justin Trudeau, admitted his Liberals had “a lot of work to do”. The defeat reflected a governing party in tatters and a leader losing his grip on power.
