By Barry Wilson, Ottawa bureau
And they’re off.
Canada’s 41st election campaign began March 26 with the usual anticipation. Polls showing a substantial early lead for the Conservatives notwithstanding, everything seemed possible.
All sides and most candidates thought they could win if the stars align. Optimism is the fuel of political ambition. History will be made.
Of course it will. It always is.
Election 2011 marks the 13th campaign launch I have covered as a reporter, more than 30 percent of Canadian elections since Confederation.
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Many have been memorable: Pierre Trudeau’s comeback campaign in 1980; the 1984 Brian Mulroney juggernaut that threw the Liberals out and produced the largest majority in history; the 1988 free trade election when the majority of Canadians voted against the notion but the Conservatives won a majority and had their way; the 1993 destruction of the Progressive Conservative party, the party of Confederation; and the 2004 Paul Martin descent to a minority just months after conventional political wisdom had him winning a majority of historic proportions.
But for sheer political drama, it is difficult to top October 1972, my first federal election campaign as a reporter and one of the most dramatic in modern times.
As political editor at the Oshawa Times, a now defunct newspaper that served the suburban auto-making city east of Toronto, my job was to cover races in the four seats in and around the city.
The main focus was Oshawa, where the young academic Ed Broadbent was running for his second term. But there were surrounding ridings, including one to the west called Ontario, where Liberal Norman Cafik was running for re-election against Conservative Frank McGee, a great-great nephew of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, a father of Confederation and Canada’s first political assassination victim in 1868.
The campaign was Trudeau’s first attempt at re-election after the giddy Trudeaumania election of 1968. His slogan was “The Land is Strong” and while that may have been true, his grip on it was not.
He still had the charisma, a beautiful young wife and the uncharismatic PC leader Robert Stanfield as an opponent. Yet the Liberal campaign, meant to be a high-level “conversation with Canadians,” never really connected.
Trudeau’s intellect and panache that had seemed so appealing in 1968 now seemed aloof and arrogant. Canadians, when they could take their eyes off the Canada-Soviet hockey summit, were having second thoughts about the philosopher king.
Election day, Oct. 30, produced the expected Broadbent victory in Oshawa.
Nationally, it was as close as it could get at the end of election night: Liberals 107, Progressive Conservatives 107.
One riding, Ontario, was in the Conservative camp with an impossibly small margin.
I was covering the riding that would decide who would be prime minister.
Two recounts and a judicial review later, Liberal Cafik squeaked out a four-vote victory out of more than 40.000 votes cast.
Trudeau had his second chance.
And I was infected with the election-coverage bug that has never cleared up.
