As a blizzard swept Ottawa in February 1984, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau decided to take a walk. The next morning, he woke up and organized a hasty meeting of his senior staff to let them know that he was retiring.

Trudeau’s walk in the snow has, in the 40 years since it happened, become shorthand in Canadian politics for taking some time to reflect, sleeping on it, and quitting.

As a blizzard swept Ottawa in February 1984, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau decided to take a walk. The next morning, he woke up and organized a hasty meeting of his senior staff to let them know that he was retiring.

Trudeau’s walk in the snow has, in the 40 years since it happened, become shorthand in Canadian politics for taking some time to reflect, sleeping on it, and quitting.

Today, many in Ottawa are checking the weather forecast for storms, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau—Pierre Trudeau’s son—faces mounting calls to take his own walk in the snow. Down a finance minister and facing the dueling prospects of an internal revolt and a snap election triggered by the opposition parties, the prime minister has, nevertheless, refused.

Over the past year, Justin Trudeau’s personal popularity has sailed off a cliff, accompanied by support for his Liberal Party. Facing the back end of an inflationary spiral, a cross-country housing crisis, declining social services, rising taxes, economic sluggishness, and a general fatigue with a leader who’s been in power since 2015, things were already looking dour for Trudeau.

But, as I wrote during his first real period of turmoil in 2019, Trudeau’s support inside his own party borders on cultish. So, even if his unpopularity prompted some teeth gnashing,........

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