It’s official. Whatever the calendar says, fall is here.
By my reckoning, fall is here when it’s too cold to go out with just my fleece vest over a sweater. That happened last Friday.
If a more prosaic reason is needed, a look at my current events calendar confirms what I already know: Fowl suppers, Ducks Unlimited dinners, the first hockey practices and pie socials indicate that the last blush of summer is past and we are into the countdown to winter.
One thing is sure, for a while there won’t be a lot of time for cracking open a good book or savoring the thrill of putting together the first few pieces of a new puzzle.
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Not with a federal election on.
In the news business, elections mean work, trying to get busy candidates to take time to talk and, when all else fails, speculating with people on the possible, or probable, outcome of the race.
From where I sit in west-central Saskatchewan, gun control is an issue along with taxation and health spending.
The Canadian Alliance candidates I’ve heard keep bringing up something called family values. I think I know what that is but I’m not sure and I want to get that clarified.
In our area, the Canadian Alliance party is the only one that has so far nominated a candidate.
I doubt we will have a Conservative one. I’m assuming we’ll have a Liberal candidate, but to date the Liberals seem a bit disorganized. Surprising, since the Liberals called the election.
It may, of course, be the influence of the provincial party rather than the national that will tell the tale.
The Liberals have certainly slipped in number of supporters with the Alliance taking quite a few largely, I think, because of that party’s pro-life stand and talk of family values.
The days when Roman Catholics could be expected to vote Liberal are long gone as, indeed, are the days when son, father and grandfather would all vote the same because that was just the way things were.
If we have a more enlightened, thinking electorate, we also have a more cynical one. We are seeing this not only in federal and provincial politics, but at the local government level too.
We can’t expect to elect our federal politicians by acclamation – and we wouldn’t want to – but there is a danger, with all the cynicism out there, that a low voter turnout would be akin to doing just that.
The old adage, “vote as you please, but please vote” is a good one to keep in mind.
