RIVIERE-DU-LOUP, Que. - It is easy to confuse the hometown of Action democratique du Quebec Leader Mario Dumont with a sleepy rural hamlet -- it's the kind of place where cars give way to snowmobiles and there is a theme park dedicated to church bells.
But with 1,800 businesses in the region employing some 14,500 people, Riviere-du-Loup is a more bustling economic hub than the idyll of its tourist brochures.
"It's grown a lot in the last 10 years,'' cabbie Jacques Michaud says on a tour of his city, which includes century-old churches and modern factories.
Michaud, who is in his 60s, has lived in Riviere-du-Loup, about 225 kilometres northeast of Quebec City, his whole life and points out that locals are used to the good times.
That Dumont's business-friendly message is finally reaching other parts of Quebec brings a smile to Michaud's face.
"It's exciting,'' he says. "People are getting behind him.''
Regardless of how the ADQ fares in Monday's election, the party's surging popularity underscores a new political reality in Quebec -- conservative ideas are becoming more popular.
"The election clearly shows there's a change going on in Quebec politics that we haven't seen in a very long time,'' says Tasha Kheiriddin, a conservative observer based in Montreal and co-author of Rescuing Canada's Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution.
There was a time when conservative forces dominated Quebec politics. After all, Maurice Duplessis and his Union nationale ruled the province for close to 20 years between 1936 and 1959.
But the Quiet Revolution and the rise of the Parti Quebecois in the 1970s created a two-party system tilted toward the left.
The legacy of those years -- Quebec's vaunted welfare model -- is now under the strain of an aging population, while Quebecers have made sport of grumbling about high taxes and longer emergency-room wait times.
"There seems to be dissatisfaction with the Quebec model in general and there is a sense that we need to fix it, change it or abandon it altogether,'' Kheiriddin says.
Dumont's success isn't surprising given the breakthrough the federal Conservatives made in the Quebec City area, a region where the ADQ stands to do well Monday.
"Quebecers are not as inward-looking as they were before,'' Kheiriddin says.
This shift is being played out on campuses and in chat rooms across the province as young conservatives feel emboldened to support free enterprise and criticize such sacred cows as the province's tuition freeze.
"Before in Quebec, you were not well thought of as soon as you favoured such positions -- you were somebody who was unacceptable socially,'' says Vincent Geloso, an economics student at the Universite de Montreal.
Geloso runs a popular website called Coalition des Esprits Libres, a meeting place designed to give Quebec conservatives "moral support.''
"Quebec is now moving in the right direction,'' he says. "It's moving more towards rationalism, a more free-thinking society and ... trying to stop government paternalism.''
Of course not all conservatives are cut from the same cloth and Dumont's campaign has been an exercise in trying to appeal to urban fiscal conservatives while also reaching out to social conservatives in rural areas.
Any confusion about this urban-rural divide was quickly erased when, midway through the campaign, Saguenay radio host Louis Champagne called the Parti Quebecois a "club of fags'' and questioned whether local factory workers would vote for the openly gay Andre Boisclair.
In a written "apology,'' Champagne defended his "right to think differently from Montrealers.''
Kheiriddin suggests that Boisclair's weak numbers in rural areas where PQ support was once strong speak to an "unspoken sentiment that perhaps Quebec is not ready for a gay premier.''
Others, meanwhile, have credited part of Dumont's success to his hardline stand against accommodating religious minorities, which has allowed him to attract Quebec nationalists from the PQ.
Kheiriddin even accuses him of being "a populist surfing a conservative wave.''
But back in Riviere-du-Loup, where rural work ethic has met big-city business acumen, the focus is not so much on specifics.
"People here will welcome anyone with open arms,'' Michaud says. "They just want the city to keep growing.''
