Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives to make an announcement on his political future outside his residence at Rideau Cottage in Ottawa on Jan. 6.Justin Tang/The Globe and Mail

It was -22 C with the wind chill in Ottawa on Monday morning, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the decision that had become unavoidable, though its inevitability seemed to occur to him much later than others.

His office sent word less than two hours in advance, with a statement that read simply, “The Prime Minister will be making an announcement and answering questions from the media this morning at 10:45 a.m.”

Mr. Trudeau would do this at Rideau Cottage, before the charming, Georgian revival front porch of his residence, where Canadians grew accustomed to seeing his increasingly shaggy self offering daily COVID-19 updates to their increasingly shaggy stay-at-home selves, nearly five years ago.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attends a news conference at Rideau Cottage, in Ottawa, Ontario, January 22, 2021.BLAIR GABLE/Reuters

When media arrived, they deposited their gear on the floor of a garage for an RCMP dog to snuffle. As a concession to the harsh weather, the journalists were allowed to hang out in the heated garage, clumped between a couple of dark sedans with tinted windows, an RCMP 4X4 and an alarmingly organized wire rack of cleaning supplies.

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This was the pristine working garage of the RCMP........

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