Blessed by the Potato

Today I spent my evening at the Poacher’s Arms to meet some of the other Green Party supporters in London. It was a pretty quiet night, and most of the people there were those who had already become members of the party and/or were volunteering with the campaign. It was a fairly last-minute deal and I only heard about it last night myself. It made for a friendly, intimate atmosphere though. I thought it was going to be more like a rally, but instead I got to chat with a lot of supporters for the Green party, many of whom came from all over Canada (well, the GTA for the most part) to help out in this very special by-election.

Elizabeth May was unfortunately delayed because of a fundraising dinner (for non-political charities). Everyone was really dragging and tired after a long day of campaigning, so there was a huge upswing when she finally arrived, and then a quick exodus as everyone trudged off to bed. There were just a few of us left at the end of the night, and we shared a plate of nachos with Elizabeth and chatted. I can tell you that she’s a bright, caring person who’s absolutely full of energy, and I think she’d get my vote no matter her party affiliation. When she arrived the musician played “Paved Paradise (and put up a parking lot)”, the unofficial theme song of the Greens.

Turns out I’m not much of a conversationalist (who would have known?) so I mostly let the other people do the talking. We talked about life out East, what the door-to-door canvassing part of the campaign is like, politics in Ottawa (particularly Garth Turner), and getting out the student vote. There was very little talk about the campaign platform, I think largely because everyone who was there pretty much agreed on the generalities so there wasn’t any call for debate. I know I read through the platform and couldn’t think of any questions to ask even when I tried.

All-in-all a decent night of politicking, and I feel much more comfortable recommending Elizabeth May and the greens after meeting them.

Here’s a link to Garth Turner’s page where he has a video chat with Elizabeth May (this was back in October when he was still a Conservative MP). Look for the October 17th video, about halfway down the page.

Also, apologies for the site outage on Saturday: it was a combination failure with my domain host and the server box under my desk. This was a scheduled maintenance, but I didn’t get the email until it had already started (partly my fault for only checking that account every 2-3 days, and partly theirs for only giving like 20 hours notice of the outage).