Last night at the amazing NDP victory party at the Rialto Halls in Thomas Mulcair's Outremont riding, I ran into two people who worked long and hard when the NDP was in the wilderness in Quebec. Mariette Penner, the widow of John Penner, and Jean-Paul Harney, former NDP Quebec leader from the 1980s, were as flabbergasted as everyone else, and Mariette Penner said she wished that John were there to see all his hard work come to fruition.
Of course, the victory is extremely bittersweet--a Conservative majority! I didn't expect it, and I had to leave the party after a few minutes because I couldn't keep up the semblance of good spirits, particularly when so many young people were absolutely delirious with joy: I certainly didn't want to rain on their parade.
But now there's a great deal of work to be done, just to make a strong delegation from the crew that got elected from Quebec. Unlike the Mulroney Conservatives in 1984, I'm sure we don't have any small time crooks, just a lot of eager people although many of them young and inexperienced. It will be a job to transform that energy and intellligence into something positive.
Anyway, it's been quite a ride..and just the start of another era of trying to keep up the progressive side in Canada.
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I thought you might be interested that the local NDP candidate won in my riding (Pierrefonds-Dollard.) Unfortunately, I don't know the name of this person.
Neither I nor most of my friends on Facebook are happy with the Conservative majority. Out of my 684 friends on Facebook, do you know how many were happy with the Conservative majority? Only one.
--Emily
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