MONTREAL -- Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante took to Twitter Wednesday to urge Montrealers to postpone Halloween festivities by a day to avoid the bad weather forecast for Thursday.
At the risk of understating matters, it has not gone over well.
Parents (and others) irate at Plante's pronouncement have not been shy about taking to social media to express that displeasure - to the point where the mayor herself has chimed in to defend herself.
Plante's response came to a tweet posted Thursday morning by Quebec pop star Ariane Moffatt, who said she was imagining the mayor doing a rain dance all day in her office in hopes of bringing along a tornado tonight (presumably to justify Plante's decision).
That was enough for Plante:
To paraphrase: Plante said #halloweengate - a hashtag Moffatt used in her initial tweet that the mayor was using ironically - was a classic case of being damned if you do and damned if you don't. Plante on Thursday refused to speak to CTV News Montreal about her Halloween statement.
Moffatt was hardly the only public to figure to criticize Plante's postponement idea.
Former Mayor Denis Coderre - who lost to Plante in the 2017 Montreal mayoral election - posted the two tweets below criticizing her decision, in one sarcastically wondering whether Christmas should be moved due to snow forecast for December, and in the other comparing Plante's administration to sheep for following other municpalities' decisions to postpone Halloween. (Coderre was also not so obliquely referring to a recent report that Plante bleated like a sheep at a recent city council meeting).
