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Macleans.ca

Canada’s magazine

On your marks, get set, pay!

The entire time I lived in Montreal, I observed a simple but sacred rule: When the F1’s in town, I’m not. It wasn’t the race itself that made me flee to Quebec City or to a campground in Charlevoix; it was the people who attended the thing—and, more specifically, their compulsion to take over the city with their Merit Badges of Midlife Crisis. Needless to say, I didn’t mourn the F1’s disappearance from Montreal’s summer calendar.