The Opera

How reinvesting government funds into the arts made my Jennifer Coolidge dreams come true

Photo by Gabriel Varaljay on Unsplash

During the provincial elections last Fall, the party seeking reelection in Quebec promised to send a check to all eligible Quebecers should they make it to another term. People like money so people voted for that party. And as promised, the government sent out the inflation-fighting checks at the beginning of December.

I was eligible to receive the check, and while I didn’t vote for that party, it was nice to have a little surprise in my bank account. Many people were raging about the millions the government was handing out. They argued the money would have been better spent elsewhere: our crumbling healthcare system, our public schools, and other deserving organizations and causes. People, they said, would waste it on Christmas presents and shit they didn’t need. They were right, of course.

I’m one of those people who bought Christmas presents with the check. Specifically, a present for my husband. I hadn’t gotten him a present in years. We were at that point in our relationship where it wasn’t necessary to exchange gifts anymore, especially since becoming parents eight years ago, and especially since becoming a one-income household. “Our quality time together is the real gift,” we’d say, or perhaps it was something like “we’ve been together for so long we’ve run out of ideas.”