With coronavirus infections rising and a contagious new variant threatening to accelerate the pandemic, France has implemented a stringent 6 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew. Citizens nationwide are sequestered indoors, and businesses must close down.

In Quebec, Canadian officials imposed a similar restriction earlier this month, running from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. It has frayed nerves: Notably, a woman who was walking her boyfriend on a leash at 9 p.m. has argued that this was permitted during the curfew, surely one of the pandemic’s most unexpected moments.