WALKING WITHIN THE ROPES.

A correction: Contrary to what I wrote last week, Quebec's COVID curfew does allow pet owners to walk their dogs after 8 p.m., while unaccompanied two-legged creatures have to stay in. Walker and dog must remain within one kilometre of home, however. At this time of year, the length of the nighttime walk is restricted by the temperature. It has been unseasonably mild in Montreal but still: in January neither man nor beast wants to stay out too long after dark.

We received a cellphone alert Saturday around six reminding us the curfew was coming — which is better news than that a child has been abducted. I went out both weekend nights after the witching hour (or maybe snitching hour: we'll see). We live in a quiet neighbourhood that, unless it was my imagination, did seem even quieter. On Saturday I saw a police car a block over, though police cruisers are not unknown. It seems Montreal police were busy ticketing curfew violators over the weekend, though in several instances the violators were asserting their freedom of assembly to protest the curfew. That cost them at least $1,500.

Quebec experienced widespread civil disobedience a decade back in our supposed “maple spring.” It will be interesting to see whether the rates of ticketing and arrest are the same for curfew-opposers as they were for young leftists aggrieved by having to pay slightly more of their university costs.

COVID rules are turning markedly Jacobin — i.e., don't anyone rich or powerful go anywhere nice and warm while the rest of us are locked up in winter. A couple of anomalies

LET EVERYONE GO ABOUT THEIR BUSINESS SO LONG AS THEY TAKE RESPONSIBLE MEASURES AGAINST THE VIRUS.

do stand out. Though most things “non-essential” are shut down, film crews and the Montreal Canadiens may go about their business in some semblance of normality.

I suppose the arts lobby persuaded the government continued production of Quebec films — and American films shot here — is somehow essential, though if the world lost a full year of local cinematic output, that wouldn't be like a child losing a full year of education. Or maybe it's just that some of the output feeds Netflix and Netflix is deemed essential these days.

For millions of us, the Montreal Canadiens are at least as essential. What are we to with ourselves these winter evenings without live hockey on TV — especially with the team having made off-season moves that seem likely to improve its position in the standings, even the new, all-Canadian standings. The NHL demonstrated over the summer it can run itself in a COVID-responsible way. This time players won't be in the same bubble, as they were in Toronto and Edmonton from July on. But teams will be doing their best to take their bubbles with them as they move around the country.

Which is really how our COVID policy writ large should work. We shouldn't have a minister decide what's essential and what's not. We should let everyone go about their business so long as they take responsible measures against the virus, which is what police ought to check, not what time people go out at night.

A curfew is clearly an abridgement of people's freedom. But there are curfews and there are curfews. As it happens, I'm currently reading about life in Germany in 1933. I know: “First they come to make me wear a mask etc., etc.” But COVID-deniers aren't yet being sent off to camps. In 1933 in Germany if you failed to make the Nazi salute as a parade of storm troopers marched by, you stood to be punched out and worse. On a family trip, exactly that happened to the son of U.S. broadcaster H.V. Kaltenborn, the Walter Cronkite of his day. It changed the broadcaster from Germanophile to critic of the Nazi regime.

Many commentators suggest the U.S. had a taste of 1933 last week. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose action movies have done little to encourage civil resolution of disagreement, nevertheless warned eloquently on Twitter about how in his birth country of Austria things had slid out of control.

Words count, even when expressing outrage. Terrorists shoot people or blow things up. Insurrectionists and coup leaders have a plan for taking over the government: merely camping out on the Speaker's rostrum or in her office doesn't suffice. Last week's mob clearly was bent on intimidating lawmakers. They and their inciter-in-chief sought to influence Congress's largely ceremonial decision on the election. But in execution and outcome the episode was more like Hitler's 1923 beer hall putsch than 1933. Hitler was sentenced to a five-year prison term of which he served nine months, a sufficient gestation period for Mein Kampf.

To my mind the most telling photos from last week are not of the nut bar in horns or the dude walking off with the Speaker's lectern. They presumably will be sent off to jail, too, to begin their own scribbling or tweeting. Rather, they are of the invaders, at least early on, walking through Statuary Hall within the velvet ropes, like tourists, capturing the majesty of it on their cellphones.

The goal of policy, here and in the U.S. over the next few years, will be to keep everyone walking within the ropes.