Into the future with Kathleen Wynne

I think next week, things begin to calm down. I hope so, because this last while has been manic. Five minutes ago, I emailed the latest draft of the writing book to my publisher, and now I have to pack for a trip to Ottawa tomorrow morning - renting a car and embarking with Anna and Eli. We will be packing many many snacks and toys, and Anna is planning the trip like D Day - when to come over here so that she can wear him out so that we can leave just as he's about to fall asleep so that we have at least a few minutes of peace on a five hour drive with a very active two year old. Who at his annual paediatric checkup the other day was off the charts in height and weight. And counting to three.

Well no, looking at my daytimer for next week - teaching Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, a private coaching client, various health appointments, and work to get the book out. Not lying on the chaise with the grapes and the chocolates just yet. Luckily my friend John will be here over the weekend keeping the garden going, as it's bursting with life and so heavenly, I hate to leave. But it's important to see Auntie Do, who had her 94th birthday while I was in France, and it's my brother's 60th birthday too. Par Tay. 

Yesterday, at Carole's class at the Y, I talked to Elizabeth, a very bright woman and a lawyer. She told me she has always voted NDP or Liberal, but this time she's so enraged at Liberal incompetency and corruption - i.e. the gas plants - that she refuses to vote for them. "But that's exactly what's going to get Tim Hudak elected," I said, "the whole 'spanking the Liberals' vendetta." 

I missed the leadership debate on Tuesday night, thank the lord, I was teaching, though when I got to College Street to get the streetcar home, I ran right into Kathleen Wynne getting into a big SUV after a campaign stop. Waiting in the car for her was her partner, a lean, attractive woman. And I thought, how incredible, no matter what happens, that Wynne's sexuality is simply not an issue in this campaign. She was a married woman with children who fell in love with a woman and ended up living with both her new lesbian partner and her ex-husband and their kids - who can do that? And in how many countries in the world would that not come up in an election campaign? It's not just that Canada is exceptionally tolerant - though in many ways it is - but that she is an exceptional woman, so hardworking and honest that her worth cannot be doubted, even by bigots. I gather that the debate was not her finest hour, and she has been saddled with huge quantities of grief from her predecessor. But that's no reason to punish her party and thus elect Hudak, a Tea Party thug second only to Mike Harris and Stephen Harper for thuggish hideousness. 

By the end of my harangue, Elizabeth was beginning to waver. I'll work on her again next week.

My parents were 100% NDP, always. I was NDP through my youth, a card-carrying member of the party as a young mother. But now I'm voting Liberal, and in fact, it's been a while since I've voted NDP. Is this the hardening of the idealistic arteries as I get older? Is it just being realistic about what's possible and electable? This time, it's simply that NDP leader Horvath made a very bad call in rejecting a fine budget and forcing an election which might bring the monstrous Hudak into power. 

I beg you out there, my fellow Ontarians, to forget the past and focus on the future.