Yesterday was election day in the province of Quebec, where I live.
The elections were called by the party in power, the Parti Quebecois who had won a minority government back in late 2012. They had launched this campaign due to what they claimed was a schism with other parties on a "Charter of Quebec rights and values" which was not only seen as sometimes borderline xenophobic(in theory, it was supposed to promote secularism in the province but in practice has been perceived as an open charge against jewish and muslim people within the province) but as just another strategy for the Parti Quebecois to pick fight with the Canadian federal government to create "winning conditions" for a future referendum on separation.

Before the election, the political was such with 54 seats for the Parti Quebecois, 50 for the Liberals(the federalist previous government led by Jen Charest), 19 for the centre-right Coalition Avenir Quebec(CAQ) and 2 for left-leaning Quebec Solidaire(QS).

After the electoral campaign of the last month, one of the ugliest I've recently seen which saw many xenophobic or racist remark by PQ candidates and one of the strongest media magnates of the province present himself for the PQ in a presentation which took immediate extremely nationalists airs, the results became such:

70 seats for the liberals, now led by Phillipe Couillard, past health minister under the Charest government and a neurosurgeon by trade.
30 seats for the Parti Quebecois.
22 seats for the CAQ
3 seats for Quebec Solidaire

I can barely describe how happy I am. I need to explain.
Though I am not extremely old.... I am old enough to recall the 12 years of PQ majority government that preceded the Charest liberals' rule.
And though I was only a kid back then, I am old enough to recall the 1995 referendum on separation. Old enough to recall walking in my parent's house's street to find a "Loto-referendum" propaganda faux lotery ticket implying in borderline anglophobic/xenophobic terms how Quebec would be better off if it separated from the rest of Canada.
Old enough to recall how if you were french canadians but federalist you would be in the eyes of many separatists I met someone who "didn't get it". An idiot. An "assimilated". Or worse, a traitor.
I can all recall all the mocking, all the shaming of those who didn't share the separatists' beliefs in medias, how anglophones(and later other races in general) had no other goals but to assimilate Quebeckers and how french in the separatists' eyes could only be defended/promoted at the expenses of other languages on cultures.

And if you looked outside the province? Because of the vocality of the Parti Quebecois, you would be automatically assumed a french supremacist xenophobe. Because you came from Quebec, and the PQ's position taking so much place in the provincial debate.. you could not be seen as any other ways. People/medias within your own province would paint you as a traitor to your "nation" because you prefer to remain in Canada.... and some people outside the province would often see you as quarelling xenophobe because of the mere fact you came from this province.

To see the PQ launching one of their most xenophobic fear-mongering campaign of the last decade.... and to see it so widely rejected by the grand majority of the province... I could not be happier.

I feel like I can finally breath for the upcoming four years.
I'll be taking a small break from public online stuff for today and work on art offstream.
Expect to see me to resume streaming tomorrow.