Grain of orange, sea of blue

To quote James:

so i voted.
and i lost.
and i'm glad.

After fifty-five days of discussion, complaining and brief bursts of frustration, I cast my ballot with the masses on January 23, 2006. While I had made my election decision (sort of) prior to the holidays, I really enjoyed the election process. I gave each candidtate a chance to woo my vote--distract me with their rhetoric. I loved watching the commercials (mostly online as the cable was dropped in November) and the debates. The daily coverage. The foodballs and snowballs. The photo ops. The brief moments of passion. The not so brief moments of policy debate.

Yup. Good times.

In the last federal election, I voted strategically--one of those cynical constituents who felt it was better to vote against someone rather than voting for them. For some reason, this time around I became more idealistic (with a touch of fatalistic) and decided I would vote for the party/candidate that appeared most similar compared to my own ideals and ideas for Canada.

It was odd, really. I felt very empowered by this new sense of participation in democracy. I was making my voice heard. I was making a difference. I was part of a great tradition where the populace met to speak out and create a better nation. So, during my lunch break, I walked with much purpose to my polling station, got myself a ballot and marked an X next to my favoured candidate.

And then I watched said candidate was trounced by 24,000 votes.

Natalie described counting the ballots at that polling station. It was like listening to a skipping CD, stick on the incumbent's last name. Even though the CD is solidly stuck, you keep on listening because you hope that it will get past the scratch and get to the rest of the song.

So, welcome to the new Canada. Not that much different from the old Canada, really. Just slightly more to the right. To be honest, I'm not heartbroken about the result. As Rex Murphy said during the post-election Cross Country Checkup, there's something here for everyone: a Conservative government; a punished, but not decimated Liberal party; a reduced Bloc; ten more NDP members; and a single independant from Montreal who was elected to the pleasure of his grass-roots supporters (and with the support of his media personality). It's a balanced minority government for a country that wasn't doing to bad to begin with.

The excitement of the election is over. I guess we can all go back to doing what we did before. Last night I watched DaVinci's City Hall at Tony's. Good times once more.