Under the Hoodie

If you type “Catherine Dorion” into YouTube, you find video of a seemingly confident young woman doing a devastating takedown of the media baron Pierre Karl Péladeau in an Assemblée nationale committee hearing. If you google “Catherine Dorion hoodie,” you see that the BBC and other international outlets reported the story of that same young woman being refused entry to the Quebec chamber in 2019, for wearing a sweatshirt. Closer to home, Dorion’s unconventional clothing choices ate up acres of newsprint and inspired hours of sophisticated sociological analysis. She went on to mock the attention with a Halloween costume: a well-tailored suit, the sort that most female politicians wear every day.

Given all the exposure, I imagined Catherine Dorion to be a rather self-assured politician, knowingly provocative and supported by her radical colleagues in Québec solidaire. But no.

Les têtes brûlées: Carnets d’espoir punk (roughly translated, Hotheads...