Ottawa

The Commons: Good morning Montreal

At 9 o’clock this morning, Mr. Ignatieff’s bus stopped in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood. The Liberal leader disembarked and he and Martin Cauchon, the former Liberal cabinet minister and current candidate in Outremont, proceeded to go for a not-quite-spontaneous stroll down Saint-Viateur, a small horde of humanity and technology clamouring around them as they went. On an even colder morning than the one before, Mr. Ignatieff wore his bright scarf and his long black coat. He recklessly went without gloves.

A woman stepped out of a rotisserie to say hi and cheer him on. “Bravo! Bravo!” she clapped. Another half block and then across the street to Cafe Olimpico, where football banners hung on the wall and women’s curling played on the TVs. After sufficiently working the room, it was off to a cafe back up the road, pausing along the way to greet a small boy with a small puppy. Once at the second cafe, he ordered an espresso and chatted up the barista. As cameras clicked away, the barista outlined his concerns about recently installed parking meters on the street.

After sitting to chat with some of the customers, he was off again. Crossing back over the street, he and the horde headed for St-Viateur Bagel. There he posed for the cameras—lightly tossing a hot bagel in the air at one point—and bagged an opportunistic coalition of poppy seed, sesame seed and blueberry.