It is the kind of neighbourhood that cheesy guidebooks – if they give it any thought at all – might call boho, hipster even. Montreal’s once firmly working-class La Petite-Patrie really is gentrifying, internationalising.

This is a district of two-or-three storey terraces and tenements, most with characteristic external staircases. Perhaps one in ten of its residents are out of work and one in five were born outside Canada.

It is a place of bookstores, bike shops and espresso bars, of Salvadoran, Vietnamese and Lebanese takeaways, and of an old Jewish bakery where scores of warm, fresh, loose, chewy bagels, dipped in honey water and sesame seeds, tumble out of a brick oven.

La Petite-Patrie is so archetypical of cosmopolitan but proletarian Francophone Montreal that its very name comes from a novel and TV series that distilled its history. Me? I think it is a joy of a neighbourhood.

It is also a stronghold of progressive, environmentalist Quebec sovereigntism. Earlier this month the local constituency, or riding, of Gouin was retained, easily, by a 32-year-old called Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. He co-leads Québec Solidaire or QS, the second biggest party in “the nation within Canada” by vote share in the October 2022 provincial elections. His politics? He is a social democratic environmentalist who wants independence.

Sound familiar? It should. QS is, kinda, Quebec’s answer to the Scottish Greens. But unlike Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, Mr Nadeau-Dubois commands the biggest parliamentary force for sovereignty. QS has gradually elbowed past the Parti Québécois or PQ, for a generation or more the main force of sovereigntism and, until 2012, shoo-ins in La Petite-Patrie.

Across Quebec, Mr Nadeau-Dubois’ team only just pipped its pro-independence rival on votes – they both get around a seventh of ballots – but took far more seats under Canada’s clumsy first-past-the-post electoral system thanks to its ability to win in urban Montreal.

There are Greens who back independence everywhere democratic where there is a “national question”. Sometimes environmentalist traditions of localism convert into sovereigntism, as with QS or the Scottish Greens.

Is there a contradiction here? Alex Cole-Hamilton seems to think so. The leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats this week appeared to suggest supporting independence was some kind of betrayal of environmentalist values.

“I can’t think of another Green party in the entire world that has so readily ditched its environmentalism for nationalism,” he tweeted. “Literally no aspect of the climate emergency will be made better by a border or a flag.”

It’s maybe unfair to try to unpack the partisan social media patter of our politicians. But this was one, I think, that is worth a little scrutiny.

Mr Cole-Hamilton imagines Mr Harvie or Ms Slater, a Canadian, as it happens, are more nationalist than he is. They are not: they just have a different concept of nation and state than he does.

The Lib Dem - as if this needs to be said – is right that a border or a flag will not fix the climate. But that is as true of Dover and the Union Jack as it is of Gretna Green and the Saltire. Mr Cole-Hamilton – who, for the avoidance of doubt, is not campaigning for happy-clappy, hippy-dippy flagless borderless world government - might well reasonably retort that creating a new state is a distraction. His opponents would no doubt point out an independent Scotland, unlike Brexit Britain, would aspire to join the frontier-minimising supranational EU.

Hey, we have all heard these two arguments before. We know they both stem from deep-rooted and sometimes visceral identities. It is just a bit weird after a decade of intense constitutional debate that we still have politicians who can’t acknowledge their own relatively harmless banal nationalism.

Liberal Democrats share some of the same localist values as the Greens. Liberals, of course, championed Home Rule before the SNP and the Greens even existed. This devolutionism has never transitioned in to support for full sovereignty.

Scotland’s Greens, of course, have had their own internal rumblings over independence. It is no secret the party’s first MSP, Robin Harper, is no fan of the stance. He is not alone.

Nationalisms, banal or otherwise, cut right across other orientations, whether socialism or conservatism, liberalism or environmentalism. We maybe should be a bit more honest about that. You can be a Green and support independence. You can be a Green and oppose it. This is true in Scotland. And also in Quebec.

In La Petite-Patrie, Mr Nadeau-Dubois was faced with a challenger from the Parti Vert du Québec - a small outfit whose placards declare it to be the “the real Greens” and “the federalist left”.

Its leader, Alex Tyrrell, from the English-speaking western end of Montreal, had tried and failed to take the Gouin in the past. This month he stood in another riding. He and his party was, well, gubbed. They got less than 1% of the vote. Some frankly preposterously Putinist talking points on Ukraine did little to help their campaign.

In cosmopolitan Montreal communities like La Petite-Patrie left-wing, green-leaning voters – perhaps half of whom, surveys suggest, do not share the QS stance on sovereignty – stuck with Mr Nadeau-Dubois and his team.

Why? Because their real political foe is a different kind of nationalist altogether. Premier François Legault and his Coalition Avenir Québec or CAQ this month took 90 out of 125 seats in the national assembly. The former PQ minister is determined to protect the French language and to cap immigration – to the point, say his critics, of chauvinism and xenophobia. But he is also opposed, at least for now, to independence.

Nationalism, to repeat the cliche, comes in different forms, some surprising. The CAQ variety is driving the left and the environmentally conscious to the equivalent of the Scottish Greens and has reduced the old PQ to just three members.

CAQ’s rise has also devastated the party that once did most to stand up for a federal Canada, the Liberals. In and around boho, hipsterish La Petite-Patrie it failed to make double digits. Nationalism, it is a funny old thing.