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Macleans.ca

Canada’s magazine

A big tent it isn’t

You can say many things about Pauline Marois, and many have. She’s bourgeoise, she has an Imelda-type infatuation with high heels, she lives in a garish chateau in the exburbs, she has an uncanny resemblance to a Tintin character. She is also politically savvy enough to have realized, after her party’s embarrassing defeat last year, that the PQ’s commitment to holding a referendum during its first mandate in power was the mother of all albatrosses. Marois said she would only return to the party if the referendum clause was put to pasture – and it was, officially and quickly, last month, with hardly a whimper.