what purple means to me

I'm a bit late to following up on my previous election post, but now that I am in Toronto, which also just had it's own election (albeit with a somewhat different result), I'll just say a few things.

In the weeks leading up to election night, everytime I wore purple, people asked me if I was part of "the purple revolution." The truth is that I just like the colour purple and it is a staple of my wardrobe. I didn't ultimately make up my mind on who to vote for until a week or two before election day. I've met Naheed Nenshi a few times over the past few years as part of my day job, and have always found him to be bright, articulate and thought provoking. When he entered the race, I really thought he was just doing so to further the conversation. I even said to a few friends that I thought he should drop out and throw his support behind more legitimate contenders (i.e. Wayne Stewart or Kent Hehr). Ultimately of course, the reverse happened. And then as he gained momentum, I decided I would vote for him, but I figured he still wouldn't win. I knew all of my FB friends had planned to vote for him, but whether or not they would actually go out on the day and fill out a ballot was unknown. Turns out they did. Good for them. And good for him for capturing their imagination and inspiring them to care about municipal politics.

In my mind, the best candidate won. And I do think he will get shit done. Not just the things my young left-wing friends care about (i.e. the arts, poverty reduction, libraries, bike lanes, walkable cities, etc) but other things like budget reduction, the airport tunnel, snow removal, and investment attraction. The issue of course is that he is receiving so many accolades that he cannot possibly meet (and really, I don't think I'm being a huge pessimist here), I just hope that people are not too disappointed. He is human. He is mayor of a major city with a $60 million budget shortfall, civic employees with incredibly low morale, a growing population and the lowest property taxes in Canada. Good luck.

To me the real story is about participation. Today while visiting with my friend Victoria we ran into her neighbour who was coming home from cleaning out her office ... as of Tuesday she was out of a job because she was on Smitherman's campaign team. You would think she'd be super pissed about Ford and his big win. And while I wouldn't exactly call her happy, she wasn't ranting about how ridiculous it was that a "buffoon" had won. Nor was she cynical about the whole thing. She had great perspective. She had met some great people, worked on something that mattered and in the end, over 50% of the electorate turned up to make their choice and even though it wasn't hers, she was okay with it. Toronto may have picked a polarizing leader, but at least people made the effort to pick him (or not, as the case may be).

The same thing happened in Calgary. Calgary has led the nation in population growth over the past ten years, and as the city has grown it has been said that the people who move here aren’t really committed to sticking around. The common knock against Calgary is that they come to work and make their money, but build their life elsewhere, leaving us with a lifeless community. 54% of the electorate showing up to vote proves that this is not the case. Such a large turnout demonstrates that people voted because they are committed to this city. They are here for the long term and they want to be engaged in the community. And it wasn’t just on Election Day. Throughout the campaign, there was a strong indication that this election would be different. People were talking about the issues and the candidates everywhere you went. No aldermanic candidates ran unopposed. For the first time there was an aldermanic forum in every ward, and people actually showed up. In more than one case, organizers had to scramble for more chairs. There were over 35 mayoral forums, attended by the majority of the candidates, and a large number of citizens. The largest, organized by Civic Camp and the University of Calgary’s Student Union, had over 800 attendees. When was the last time 800 people showed up for anything related to municipal politics? In my mind, all the discussion about what it means that Canada's most conservative city elected a Muslim mayor is totally beyond the point (nor was it really discussed until after he won - seriously no one cared). The real highlight for me is the fact that wherever you went, people were talking about the city, what type of person is needed to make it a better place, and how excited they were to be able to make that choice. As geeky political type, I found this to be super cool. As a result, I'm hopeful that the conversations that were had leading up to the election will continue on into Nenshi's 3 years (and possible more) as mayor, and that people will commit to being engaged to the Calgary community for the long term.

Ok, will stand down from my soap box now. I promise my next post will be much more vacuous in nature.