Election Rap Up

The election process is now winding down - only about 72 hours left. I wanted to say something about the evolution of becoming a political person.

As a child growing up in Windsor Ontario I recall politics was the incessant nightly news featuring nothing else, it seemed, but Viet Nam. Sitting with my father and actually enjoying the company – not having the concept of boredom - I asked him when it was going to end? His response seemed sincerely disappointed, almost sad – that he didn’t know.

Other times I would sit on my father’s lap while he was reading his newspaper and I practicing my reading skills – stopping to ask dad for help when I got stuck.

On one such occasion I asked him what that word in the headline said.
“It says Trudeau”, said dad.
“Oh that rhymes with Pluto”, rationalizing with my 5 year old mind.
My father responded with a hearty laugh “Yeah he’s way out there like Pluto!”

I recall what seemed to me a big event, so organized, serious. That event was going to help my dad make silk screen orange and black signs for the NDP candidate in our neighbour’s garage. I recall thinking the colour was horrid but the excitement of elections was planted.

As a teenager, it was normal to become bored of politics and the nightly news was an exasperation, the only time my father had the monopoly of the one coloured television.

But politics could not and would not be totally wiped out of the consciousness of distracted teenagers.

If it wasn’t a frog someone had scooped from biology class to throw across a crowded cafeteria that came from behind my friend landing on her sandwich thus instigating a food fight – it was us talking about Quebec separating or nuclear annihilation.

We were scared of those two things.

And it was quite normal for us teenagers to dislike Americans. Especially growing up in Windsor since we had to “put up with” so many of them coming over from Michigan and not knowing a thing about Canada.

(I’m sure we Windsorites came up with “Talking to Americans” before Rick Mercer did. I can think of so much BS we used to feed them – that they would ask – how come we didn’t hear it on the news? Our response was “are you kidding? Would you hear anything a Canadian did on the American news?” Of course if we really swam across the Detroit river as many times as we said we did we would have been picked up by a Detroit cop – like my uncle did back in the ‘40’s)

So when polls are done today on the attitudes of Canadian teens regarding Americans I don’t put much concern into it because it seems pretty normal for a Canadian teenager to feel minor irritation at the Yanks. Like acne, they grow out of it.

Before I turned 18 my father would always encourage all of us kids to vote. Of course it was expected we would vote for the NDP. I always fancied my mother wasn’t an NDP’er and I confirmed it discreetly. In her typical subtle French Canadian humour my mother whispered to me that she would vote for Trudeau.

When I did turn 18 it was a right of passage to vote and I haven’t missed an opportunity to vote since.

For some, there is always some reason for being involved in politics. For others, it’s a traumatic event that that ignites the passion.

My awareness of politics started in 1995 with the Harris regime’s win and giving up custody of my son when I couldn’t petition for divorce or support because “there was no money in the Legal Aid coffers”.

It started burning stronger in 1997 when I went to court without a lawyer against my will, which started my interest to know more about the laws that govern us and are supposed to protect us.

Then finally in 2002 – after having my own fight with depression – I learned about the cruel and unusual treatment of Kimberly Rogers at the hands of cruel and unusual government policy – that provoked her into committing suicide while she was 8 months pregnant. Her illness – manic-depression - was ignored in a fraud sentencing that put her psychology in a precarious balancing act.

Since then – having taught myself about our provincial and federal statutes by reading, reading and reading the books in our law libraries – I have realized how much we are taken advantage of legally by the people who are supposed to use those laws to protect us.

Politics is what makes or breaks our laws. It is also what enforces them.

I can’t emphasize how important it is to understand the laws that are written with the intent to make our democracy work – so the rules of fundamental justice isn’t replaced with anarchy by administrative saboteurs.

I have followed this election since the Gomery Commission commenced. This is the first time in my life that I have followed something so thoroughly and have found an outlet to so much anger that one feels when they are victims of crime – that is – public corruption.

What is underscored to me throughout this whole process is how much fun it’s been.

What I found important were the bloggers who've had a comforting sense of humour that has dissipated the worst aspect of our personalities – that in any other non-democratic country – would have caused riots and chaos.

If the polls are correct and the Conservative Party wins the election – we will witness (I hope) historical change in the way our politics function.

And it would have been done with bloggers being the “voice of the people” when those voices have been previously absorbed into the abyss of a country that is just too big to run itself effectively.

Being involved in this process has reinforced my Canadian identity. The blogosphere became the conduit to shrink the vast expanses of Canada that has helped me to learn about my fellow Canadians in real time.

What an event it has been!