TERRIBLE TOWN — This likely is not news to you, but JUSTIN TRUDEAU and SOPHIE GRÉGOIRE TRUDEAU have jointly announced a legal separation. The three Trudeau kids will stay at Rideau Cottage. Their mom will live at a separate residence in Ottawa. The whole family is vacationing next week, and the parents will officially start co-parenting. This is far from a strange phenomenon on the Hill. And the consensus on Wednesday was something resembling a shrug. Basically: "Not my business, let's move on." Trudeau is not even the first member of his own Cabinet to endure a split. Plenty of his party caucus and other MPs in the House will empathize, having watched their own marriages succumb to a life in politics. — The plainly obvious: Ninety-hour workweeks. More travel in a month than most Canadians see in a year. Unpredictable schedules. Missed birthday parties. Job insecurity. Lonely nights in hotels and a cocktail circuit — with free drinks — just down the street. Even when MPs get back home, community barbecues, town halls, cultural events and constituents often come first. Hill culture can even be corrosive to relationships that show no signs of rust. "Ottawa" can become shorthand for that other place where mom or dad spends most of their time. And it's not only elected people. Small armies of overworked staffers, lobbyists and journalists log endless hours, miss out on their own family time and make the same evening rounds. Ottawa is the town fun forgot, if you believe what columnist ALLAN FOTHERINGHAM said before anybody else. Or maybe the problem is there's either too much fun or not enough, and no political party or job title or position in the hierarchy is immune from the consequences. — More common than not: This past June, Liberal MP PATRICK WEILER claimed in the House that up to 85 percent of MPs experience divorce. Weiler did not cite his source, but Maclean's reported the same rate in 2013 based on a Library of Parliament study. Then-MP JEFF WATSON claimed a minister's office he refused to identify had requested the research. — Case study: In an emotional speech at the procedure and House affairs committee last October, then-Government House Leader MARK HOLLAND described his personal struggle after losing the 2011 election that also ended the political careers of many fellow Liberals. "When I lost, because I had thrown my entire universe into this enterprise at the expense of, unfortunately, a lot of other things that I should have taken better care of, I was in a really desperate spot," he told the committee, then considering the merits of hybrid Parliament. "I was told that I was toxic, the Conservatives hated me, no organization would want to hire me. My marriage failed. As I mentioned, my space with my children was not in a good place. Most particularly, my career, my passion, the thing that I had believed so ardently in that was the purpose of my life, was in ashes at my feet." — Perverse effects: Relationships that should probably end sometimes don't, a Hill staffer reminded Playbook. "Being in the political arena can sometimes keep people in a relationship much longer than they would be otherwise," they said. "There's an instinct towards stability and banding together when you're in such a turbulent sector." — Culture change: KEVIN BOSCH, a managing partner at Sandstone Group and longtime Liberal staffer, has one small fix for Ottawa's long hours and solitary lifestyle: close shop on Friday. The House, Bosch tells Playbook, could learn something from the Senate, which sits three days a week. The skeleton crew of MPs and ministers who sit in the House on Fridays — a day when few items of consequence crack the agenda — are already watching seconds tick by before they can zip to the airport and fly home. End the misery, says the Hill vet. Adjourn for the week on Thursday. Let the MPs go home. — Business as usual: The PM did not take Wednesday off. His office posted a readout of a conversation with South African President CYRIL RAMAPHOSA. Among other things, the leaders spoke about Canada hosting the 2025 G-7 summit — a confab that could fall in the middle of a federal election year. Unless the election comes sooner, of course. | 
