Woman tries to dodge curfew by walking leashed man in Canada

MONTREAL–Canadian police have fined a woman whose dogged determination to dodge a strict new curfew saw her taking a man for a walk — on a leash.

Quebec province has imposed an 8:00 pm curfew in a bid to slow the spread of the coronavirus, but residents are allowed to take dogs for walks close to home.

Police in Sherbrooke, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) east of Montreal, on Saturday stopped a woman who was walking with a man on a leash.

When they confronted her, she replied with a straight face “that she was walking her dog.”

Sherbrooke police spokeswoman Isabelle Gendron said police believed the woman was “testing us.”

The woman was fined Can$1,500 (US$1,175), but refused to accept limits on her freedom, telling police she would be back out on the streets every night during the lockdown.

In the same city, a drunk motorist was stopped and fined. He “just wanted to see what it was like to be outside during the curfew,” Gendron said.

A curfew of this scale — province-wide from 8:00 pm to 5:00 am for the next four weeks — has not been seen in Canada since the Spanish flu a century ago.

Across the province, 740 tickets have been issued for curfew violations so far, according to official data.