Head Tale

When I was a kid, my single most disliked show on television was “Question Period“.

It was on CTV, late on Sunday afternoons, and after a weekend of cartoons, Disney specials, movies, pro wrestling and hockey (er, I probably watched too much TV as a kid!), I hated that weekends in my two-channel universe basically ended with a bunch of grey-haired people sitting around talking about stuff I didn’t understand or really care about.

As I got older, I gradually learned more about politics and the impact it had on our daily life.

I still remember a middle years teacher who would painstakingly cut out pictures of politicians from the newspaper and then photocopy these sheets where we would have to identify the various party leaders and other prominent figures (we didn’t worry about municipal politics too much because the odds were that the mayor was one of your classmates’ grandpas and the counselors were people you knew from around town, even if you didn’t know they were counselors or what they did.)

(And for all the concern that teachers indoctrinate school kids to be left-leaning socialists, I don’t remember any strong biases coming through from any teacher I had.  Maybe that’s part of being in a small town or maybe a different era but the only slightly loaded politician position I remember hearing in a classroom was a high school economics teacher telling us how good Free Trade with the US would be for Canada.)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my parents were politically aware (dad read the newspaper religiously, mom was involved with her union) and regular voters.  But as far as I know, neither ever had a party membership (at least until I started selling memberships to them!) or was active in any other capacity.

My only foray into student politics was running for social convenor in high school (basically the person who plays music at dances and buys the prizes) and I ended up losing to one of the cool guys who had a car with a stereo worth more than the vehicle and a way more extensive cassette tape library.  The other victor went on to become a radio DJ.  Pretty stiff competition, especially when the night before elections, my carefully crafted SNL-inspired skit with the Church Lady and a Dave Letterman “Top 10 List” walk-on got cancelled when my Church Lady got stage fright.  So with only a couple hours to throw something together, I did what 99% of other candidates did and put together an air band (except mine had no rehearsal or flow at all.) Not quite Hillary Clinton levels of blowing an election but close.

Anyhow, I got to University and this is usually where the real indoctrination begins but again, I didn’t get heavily involved in student politics though I did end up being the Luther College Students Association Academic Rep (mostly because no one else wanted to do it).  As it apparently obligatory for all students, I did go to some protests against rising tuition (and was mostly excited to see myself marching on the news that night – wouldn’t mom and dad be surprised!)

As well, there was a heated nomination contest at the time between Liberal lawyer, Tony Merchant and Liberal lawyer, Ralph Goodale (who is still serving to this day so you know who won.)  Merchant tried to bribe influence students to vote for him by offering free pizza but a bunch of people went and ended up eating pizza then voting for Goodale as a joke.  (Funny to think that college hijinxs could’ve helped lead to the election of one of Canada’s longest serving MPs!) 🙂

After convocating, my interest continued to grow as I understood more and more about how politics influenced my daily life in so many ways.  But beyond voting regularly, I was still not engaged in any more meaningful way.

That changed in 2001 when a young guy, who was roughly my age and working at a different non-profit arts organization came by where I was working and encouraged us to take out NDP memberships to vote for Joanne Crofford, a candidate who had very strong credentials in the arts community, as the Sask NDP looked to pick a leader to succeed Roy Romanow. (A race eventually won by Lorne Calvert who went on to become Premier.)

(I don’t know when I knew I was an NDP supporter – after a fairly small “c” conservative upbringing in rural Saskatchewan, there was definitely some influence from the classes I took in University – political science and otherwise – as well as deep discussions I had with classmates and friends.  But I suspect working in the non-profit arts sector probably did as much or more to solidify my emerging political views – about equality, fairness and the role of government in helping people and organizations – than any other experiences up to that point of my life.)

2001 happened to be when Shea and I moved to Calgary so other than voting in the Sask NDP leadership contest, I didn’t have the opportunity to do anything else in the campaign (and am not sure if I would’ve felt inspired enough to do so anyhow as, other than voting, politics still felt like something “distant” that people who weren’t me did.)

Living in Alberta, it was fascinating to experience a place that was so similar to Saskatchewan but so different as well.  This was the height of the Ralph Klein years and his influence loomed large in all aspects of public life.  I was working in the non-profit cultural sector again and money was tighter than it even was in Saskatchewan.  Groups worked overnight shifts in casinos for operational funding (!) which seemed wrong on so many levels.

The city and province definitely had a strong conservative tradition but I was a bit surprised to find an undercurrent of highly educated, strongly entrepreneurial and creative young people that challenged the stereotypes of the city and led to things like Calgary electing North America’s first Muslim mayor and a shocking victory of the NDP after 40+ years of conservative rule (both happened after I left but having lived there, I watched, and still watch, Alberta politics pretty closely.)

Anyhow, this is getting long and I’m sure I’ve covered this in other posts over the years but I finally jumped in with both feet during the 2009 Sask NDP leadership race to succeed Lorne Calvert.

I had watched the enthusiasm and energy of the Obama campaign south of the border in 2008 and wished we had something similar here to get excited about – youth, excitement, technology.

At first, I was disappointed that the NDP seemed to be offering what I thought of as stereotypical politicians – a current MLA, a former Deputy Premier, a former party president.  With that slate, I didn’t see myself buying a membership, let alone getting involved in any significant way.

But then Dr. Ryan Meili announced and though it wasn’t a perfect parallel, I saw similarities to Obama in a candidate who was highly accomplished but chose to work in needy communities, who was drawing a large number of young, tech-savvy, progressive-minded supporters to his campaign, who had written a great book to capture their ideas about the world.  And he was attracting people who didn’t normally get involved in politics which helped me feel welcome too.

Beyond that, since he was running as a long shot, outsider candidate without the same network or history as some of the other insiders, it allowed me to quickly move into more important roles in the campaign than I may have with other candidates.

Ryan ended up beating two more established candidates and only lost to the former Deputy Premier, 55%-45% on the final ballot.  Though I wasn’t a huge fan of the person the party had selected, I stayed involved, going on the Executive of my local constituency and working hard (but ultimately unsuccessfully) to get our local candidate elected with all the usual things you do as a political volunteer – door knocking, helping to plan fundraisers, making telephone calls, selling memberships, attending the annual convention, etc.  All was great learning, all helped me realise that the people who made politics weren’t that different after all – in fact, most were a lot like me.

Since then, my political involvement has ebbed and flowed as my personal life has changed (hi kids!) or based on who certain candidates and leaders were.  But I continue to be more involved than I ever thought I would be (but less involved than those hardy souls who “grew up in orange diapers” or feel an even stronger motivation to work hard for the party no matter what.)

I don’t know when it happened but somewhere along the way, I had the realization that there is nothing that impacts our society more continuously and substantially – for good and for bad – than politics.  Not corporations. Not armies. Not volunteer organizations.  Not going to protests.  Not posting angry missives on Twitter.

That is why I continue to not just vote in every election I can but but choose to be a lot more involved in trying to support a party that I feel best matches my values and aims to create the sort of world I would like to see!