October 11, 2019
My list of Canadian election complaints reads like the slow, bewildering spread of a very bad virus. I can’t and won’t publish it here, since I have the strongest feeling that vitriol just plays into the hands of the bully boys in blue and their henchmen.
Instead, I will adult.
Never have I been more eager to vote in the advance polls. I’ll do so this coming Monday, but even now, the Friday before, I can hear the firm sound of my intention – pencil on paper: THIS is right for us, here in this place.
Like many, I’ve long ago lost faith in our Canadian electoral system, which no elected party seems to be able to find a way to reform. Funny, that. My vote should count on both national and local levels, but it doesn’t. Someone far more conniving than I has figured out the algorithm of it all, but in the end it means that what my vote counts most directly for is my local representative.
In my riding the candidate who I most respect is a journalist who, after decades of writing about politics and politicians with insight, clarity and … teeth, has decided to become a political representative of the place I love with all my heart.
The Lake, the land, the folk, the trees, the food that grows there, the music that flows, the wisdom, far older than any colonial settler that hums from the ground – I am the seventh generation of a Scots family who settled on these shores.
I know that Michael Den Tandt also has fierce love for this place, that he took the leap of courage to run as its representative primarily because we have been poorly represented for close to two decades, by a party who doesn’t believe in climate change.
I do not believe Michael is someone who will toe the party line if and when Bruce Grey Owen Sound needs an advocate in the federal government. I respect him; the man is no puppet.
My adult self will not get drawn in to partisan politics this time around, not locally. For me it is locally that my vote most counts.
On Monday at the advance polls I will vote for Michael Den Tandt, to represent my home riding in the national government of Canada.
If you live here, I hope you do too.