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Louise Charbonneau could have made other plans for her Labour Day weekend, but instead she decided to make the 90-minute drive down to Montreal from Trois-Rivières.

“I wouldn’t miss this for anything,” she said outside École Le Plateau on Monday, where Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe gathered with candidates for a party council meeting and rallied his supporters with a 30-minute speech.

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“We’re here because we believe,” said Charbonneau, a campaign director in Trois-Rivières. “We’ve been pushing for Quebec to become a country since René Lévesque. For us, Quebec can’t go without the Bloc Québécois in Ottawa.”

Cars decorated with Quebec flags and Bloc Québécois stickers filled the parking lot outside the school as hundreds gathered from all over inside, using small Bloc pamphlets to wave off the heat.

Duceppe used the event to rebrand the campaign itself: after displaying the slogan “Qui prend pays, prend parti” around the province in recent weeks, the party will now be running behind “On a tout à gagner.”