Babel has proved itself a wonderful place to write about over the years. As a newbie to Babel (six years and counting), there is no point in pretending any expertise on the why’s and wherefore’s of this unusual place. Mind you, that does not preclude the need to wax eloquently on the foibles, failures and faults of Babel and its citizens and its leaders and to stand in awe of their unusual customs and mating rituals.
Politically, Babel is also most unusual. The more one learns about the politicians here and how the voters react to them, one seriously wonders first if the drinking water has been properly tested for hallucinogens. You would wonder but the tap water tastes so badly of minerals (and maybe something else) that one of the larger business opportunities in town is purveying filtered water.
Babel has had many political firsts. While, at one time, the political electoral district covered a very large portion of Simcoe County, today, it is restricted to Babel itself. With a population that now surpasses that of Prince Edward Island with its four Members of Parliament, Babel is only allowed to contribute one (rather useless) Member to that body. Instead of quantity, Babel contributes oddity.
Babel was in the first electoral district east of the Manitoba border to ever elect a Reform candidate to the House of Commons. The town goes with the flow. In 1990, it elected its first NDP candidate to provincial office to join the Bob Rae provincial government. In 1995, it elected a provincial Tory to join Premier Mike Harris’ ideology bound revolution.
Being contrariwise, Babel citizens make sure that if they choose a representative of one party to represent them at one level of government and then they choose a different party to represent them at the other. This creates a form of musical chairs at the provincial and federal levels.
Since Babelites accept the fiction that federal and provincial political parties have nothing to do with municipal politics, the voters have been throwing mayors out of office after just one term to give another non-partisan a chance to embarrass the city. The routine has been that budding politicians first get elected as councillor in a ward and then wait their chance to move up to a higher level. If you are rejected at that level or eventually lose your federal or provincial office, you can always come back to the municipal arena.
What was alluded to in a daily comment recently is the strange situation in one of Babel’s municipal wards where the local Member of Parliament is trying to show his muscle (or something) to get a comely young ice skater elected to council. It has been reported that the lady does not even live in the city but that does not seem to have deterred the intrepid Mr. Brown. What we cannot figure out is why Mr. Brown’s executive assistant is running in the same ward for the same position.
And maybe, in the fullness of time, as they say, these things will be made clear to us.
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