Did Justin Trudeau Get His Awful New Haircut In Quebec? — An Investigation

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined the ranks of male political leaders with questionable haircuts this week, debuting extra short tufts and high, choppy bangs during a visit to Gatineau on July 15. But unlike the unruly wisps his former counterparts in the U.S. and U.K. strategically plastered around their craniums — like sticky helmets jealously guarding their fragile professions of youthfulness — Trudeau's unfortunate new hairstyle can't be explained as a desperate attempt to mask rapidly advancing male pattern baldness.

So the questions are: (1) why? (2) who would do this to him? and (3), perhaps most importantly for Montrealers' claim to Canadian style superiority, where?

The haircut made its first appearance after a road tour of central Canada that included stops in Montreal and the Eastern Townships. Could the PM have lopped off his famous waves east of the Ontario-Quebec border?

Rest assured, readers who probably did not care to consider this problem before reading this article and are now still only tepidly interested, the timeline of events seems to suggest the new haircut is a product of Ontario (could Justin Trudeau's hair be Ontario's worst export?).

Here's a breakdown:

July 11: Justin Trudeau was spotted at a Montreal terrasse, his beloved locks still visible even in grainy footage from a bystander.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a Montreal terrasse.@mtl_stories | Instagram

July 12: Trudeau photographed shaking hands and eating ice cream in Coaticook, Quebec, his eyes still brimming with sultry boyish allure from beneath a curtain of still long, windblown tresses, tossed to the left like an unspoken, seductive invitation to approach — but not touch.

July 13: The prime minister crosses the border into Ontario, snapping a selfie with yet another ice cream cone and his equally sweet cascading locks.

July 14: Trudeau returns to the National Capital Region. There were no other events on his public schedule, leaving plenty of time to make a style mistake.

July 15: and the new 'do makes its first public appearance at a children's summer camp in Gatineau — a seemingly perfect, uncritical crowd for a soft launch, except for the one child at Trudeau's side who threw a knowing look at the camera as his media team snapped the photo that would become the haircut's social media debut.

Despite the Gatineau unveiling, Trudeau's return to the capital area would suggest he got the haircut at home in Ottawa — perhaps the result of a single dissatisfied glance in the bathroom mirror and the unfortunate proximity of a personal buzzer.