The Candidate

by Noah Richler

  “Who?”

  “Bennett. Carolyn Bennett. She’s been your MP for eighteen years.”

  It was a ploy and a play, the conversation more about sport than knocking my rivals—more about letting it be known the passing of decades demanded at least a review of long-held habits. I was enjoying the exchanges—the chats in the stores, the back and forth with men and women, a good many of them unemployed, hanging about the street benches (the woman who took one of my corrugated laminated cardboard store window signs, not flyers, and rolled it up and put it in her purse, no mean feat of strength). We weren’t going to win, being there was the point, and by the time the Sankofa pub night came to pass, celebrating the campaign without the ignominy of the impending result was as much our raison d’être as anything. Denise Jones, a powerhouse producer of Caribbean entertainment and a firebrand I did not yet know, seized the microphone to deliver an impromptu, fiery tirade on the NDP’s behalf and stuck around to entertain. A preacher spoke, a rapping poet, too. Mike Garrick and the Posse played out their reggae hearts.

  —

  “You’re not running to be leader,” Sarah said on the long way home.

  “I’m not trying to.”

  “That’s not the way it looks.”

  She was delivering a variation on the familiar “that’s not your job” message she was used to delivering when I try to fix the plumbing, or shift the carry-on of airline passengers with nothing under the seat in front of them and using half an overhead locker to store their coats while others have no place to put their bags.

  “Stop trying to do someone else’s job,” said Sarah. “Stop trying to do Mulcair’s.”

  —

  Janet has told Phil, out of the office at the time, about the canning of the video and he calls the next morning. Phil’s from a Catholic working-class family out of St. Catharine’s, eight kids in the brood. He’d thought about joining the armed forces for a while, but events pushed him to politics and speechwriting. He likes the slight seclusion of the desk at the back and the shield it provides him from people when he needs it. Social media he cannot abide; he can handle email, though it’s not a bad idea to give him a heads-up if you send one. And though he doesn’t mind cellphones he’s not the world’s most communicative fella, so the call I get from him is affecting and a surprise.

  “I’ve worked in central between elections,” says Phil, “and part of your job when you’re dealing with people in communities and ridings and you’re confronted by questions like your video raises is to think it through, and what’s going to happen if it’s done—who will object, how will we benefit. Surely to Christ they knew the CBC was going to mouth off about it. They should have thought, ‘Okay, so when they do, what are we going to do?’—and they should have told them to go pound salt. I’m sorry I wasn’t there, Noah, I would have said, ‘You know what? We knew this could happen. We told you, if it goes pie-shaped, your problem not ours, good luck.’ ”

  “I talked about it with Janet,” I said. “They’re pretty stressed up there.”

  “Yeah, that’s true, but I heard what Pratt said to you about ridings that can win and it was rude and inappropriate. But, anyways, people under stress sometimes forget their manners, so I suppose we have to forgive them. He knows his day is coming anyway.”

  We lapse into asides about the upcoming schools appearances—at Upper Canada College and, this morning, the Bishop Strachan School for girls. I can hear the concern in Phil’s voice. It’s for me. It is as close as the strongman will get to being emotional, and I appreciate that.

  —

  Everything seems slightly plaintive now. I am losing the stomach to fight, and I wander over to the glassed-in shelves in the foyer of the Bishop Strachan School, with its various plaques and the blue helmet of a UN peacekeeper. I am losing the will even to resent privilege, though I’m not sure how much sense that ever made, anyway—especially here. Our audience is endowed, certainly, but they are children. Marnie MacDougall actually deigns to appear this time, which is not a great surprise as she and Bennett were schoolchildren at Havergal College, one of Toronto’s rival private schools for girls, and the turf is kindred.

  —

  “It’s what I call the ‘St. Paul’s model,’ ” the Liberal candidate on a roll says for the umpteenth time. Wait for it. The first time, at Holy Blossom Temple, it was “my job,” and you couldn’t believe that she’d said it and that you’d missed the moment to crush her. And now here she is, about to throw out the same party platitudes in a big jumble, and you’re beginning to wonder if she’s losing it, that maybe she made a deal to run one last time, but you’re mindful that interrupting may seem rude, so you don’t.

  Now the old head girl sounds like the Queen. Can’t help it. Bennett’s voice has jumped an octave as she declares, with a great big Royal O, that “Every four years, One has to apply for One’s job.” No, it’s the job, I want to say, but I let it go. The sea of girls’ faces is adoring, and the chapel of BSS with its oak benches and panelled walls says this is Carolyn and Marnie’s territory and not mine. Do they buy their wood polish wholesale? I wonder.

  —

  Politics, I am realizing late in the game, is a lot like writing. You toss ideas into the pond of our communal consciousness and they ripple outwards and have their own life. The winners brand those ideas for the good of themselves and the party. Losers take private comfort that the ideas were once theirs and watch as others take credit, because hanging on to them for advantage is selfish. If the public good is why you’re in the game, then that’s what you do, you toss your ideas in and see how they fare. The aim is to make things better for society, not you. If there is a moment during the waning campaign in which I am experiencing an epiphany, it is now.

  “The national chief of the Assembly of First Nations should be made a de facto member of cabinet,” I suggest, pointing out that technically a minister needs neither to be a sitting MP nor a senator to be appointed to that role, and that doing so would move the relationship of settler and Indigenous Canadians away from one of atonement and reconciliation, necessary as that is, towards more meaningful participation in a shared future.

  In effect, I have taken Kevin Farmer’s cue: it is my job to nominate ideas for others with the means to debate and implement, and a part of me, a growing part, has decided that saying this in front of Bennett is the best chance for the idea to be aired in cabinet, where it won’t be me who’s minister. I could sell the idea as a column, make three hundred dollars, but that would mean talking to the Toronto Star again. Fuck it.

  Afterwards, Bennett approaches me excitedly. “I’ve always thought that the governor general should be Native,” she says. “It’s a ceremonial post!”

  “But ceremony is what I’m trying to get beyond,” I say, too late. The schoolgirls have her attention now, and I head for the door but am cut off by a geeky duo.

  “What’s the NDP’s position on prostitution?” the taller girl asks.

  She thinks she’s being bold, and reminds me of Sandy Stranger, the savviest of Muriel Spark’s Brodie’s girls, before I put that iffy association to rest.

  “Well,” I say, “I can’t tell you what Tom’s is, but mine is that we should be doing everything we can to make the conditions of sex workers safe. Of course no one should be in the business against their will, but antiquated attitudes to sex work and pushing the trade into back alleys only does harm. And we must face up to the fact that some sex workers ply their trade out of choice.”

  “Thanks, that’s what I wanted to hear!” says the girl, and the pair scurries off. Bennett, meanwhile, is surrounded by a fawning BSS scrum and I am reminded of more writerly wisdom gleaned from all the literary readings I’ve done at which perhaps half a dozen approach me with books to be signed, the line of a hundred at the famous writer’s table impossible to ignore. The trick, I know by now, is not to sit down and look like a loser—idle, waiting, stuck—but to be free and standing and moving. If you see someone
with your book, then approach them rather than the other way around. And if no one has bought your book, or you’ve already chatted to the two or three that have, then get out of there.

  I head for the car park, a quick debrief, and the office.

  —

  We’re into the last stretch of the campaign and Doug pulls up a video of Trudeau making an announcement in Vancouver against a backdrop of supporters from an array of ethnic communities.

  “Do you notice how you never see older guys in his crowd?” I say. “Trudeau only appeals to women and young people.”

  —

  Janet has that look again.

  You need to think ahead when you’re managing a team. You put a face on for the exigencies of the day, for the folk who depend on you—and brace for what comes next: the debate, the panel, the scandal yet to come or, this week, the election night party and the job of sending folk home happy. The morning after. A coffee at the local is no longer consumed with thoughts about strategy. A beautiful woman passes and your mind wanders for a moment along with her. Your life is drifting back to normal.

  “So you’re thinking about after,” says Janet.

  She will look at me from this point on with the dreadful mixture of affection and sorrow I am subject to now. Less my boss, more like an anxious relative.

  “You’re okay?” she asks.

  “I’m fine.”

  —

  Things we did end up doing:

  Funky town halls

  A cartoon crew

  Fundraisers

  Meet and greets

  Videos

  The Bicycle Gang

  —

  So here we are.

  It had been a relief to discover how much I enjoyed canvassing. I’d been worried I would not, which would have made my turn as a political candidate hell. Even for a fella who knows Canada and the city of Toronto well, knocking on doors had been an unusual, thoughtful exercise—sometimes amusing, sometimes heartbreaking, but always illuminating. The memories accumulating were ones of diversity, of people wanting to talk, and of the complexity of lives conveyed in a matter of minutes.

  The wealth of the riding in which I chose to run continues to astonish me; I should have gathered as much from the surprise the NDP expressed at my decision and surmised that Toronto—St. Paul’s was going to be—what’s the word—a challenge.

  And here it is again, in the diagonal of the Kay Gardiner ravine beltline trail in the north central part of the riding. This is the route Liz has plotted for the Saturday canvass of our Bicycle Gang, fifteen of us in “Vote NDP Noah Richler” T-shirts and me at the head of the line with the megaphone that Nick has lent me. Along both sides of the ravine trail are immense, secret backyards. They are the size of small parks, and they are invisible, as is the nature of Toronto, to people travelling at street level. This clandestine part of the city will have no truck with the NDP, finding the party only obnoxious as, purposefully, we are being today.

  But it is Forest Hill that is bothering me most—the unassailability of so many of its Jews’ intractable positions on Israel and Palestine. How many, I wonder, have read the late, brilliant Barbadian-Canadian author Austin Clarke’s “Toronto Trilogy” of novels, in which his 1960s Caribbean immigrant maid plays downstairs to a Jewish Forest Hill family’s upstairs?

  I’d wanted, at the start of it all, to film a bunch of teens skateboarding in Joe Fresh orange polo shirts (on sale, eight bucks a piece and my campaign’s first purchase) and to post the video of my very own Orange Wave, but somebody, maybe it was Wendy, had worried what would happen if a kid took a fall, and it never happened.

  So, instead, even better, we’d assembled our Bicycle Gang for a canvass and a bit of mischievous fun. It took a few blocks and my own tumble (too hard on the front brake with my one free hand) and then there we were, broadcasting our messages right out of the forties rather than our social-network-driven age.

  “Hello, Forest Hill! This is Noah Richler, your NDP candidate. I’m here to tell you Stephen Harper is not your best friend!”

  “I already voted,” says an elderly woman angrily, “and not for you!”

  “There’s always a next time—”

  A mother is chatting to her children.

  “Only the NDP has a plan for a million child care spaces! Only the NDP is asking corporations to come to the table so that we can take care of the environment! This election, think about what’s good for the next generation and vote NDP!”

  And only the nannies are laughing.

  “Vote NDP for a fifteen-dollar minimum wage—we’ll set the example!”

  It starts to hail.

  “Avoid the long winter of our discontent! The Tories and the Liberals are the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of our political lives! There’s only one vote for change, and that’s for the NDP!”

  The gang is cheered. Nothing if not a good day out.

  —

  With a week to go, I bring in Laverne, the woman from St. Vincent who comes once a week to help take care of the house. Laverne is formidable. She is my Supergun, my Devil’s Brigade, my SCUD. At home, the television blaring, one hand on the iron, she bellows commands through her cellphone to an array of people who depend upon her advice: kids in her Caribbean-Canadian community not going to school. Single mothers. Wayward men. But also privileged whites needing to be told the obvious, needing to learn what to do with their insufferably spoiled child. “You tell him no,” she hollers down the phone. “That’s what you do.” New Orleans after the hurricane is a morass of sinners; RAID on the bed is the solution to lice on Sarah’s daughter’s head. I realize, in the company of Laverne, how little I know of the communities I’m appealing to, communities I’m putting myself forward to represent—this in a good, immensely moving way. Whatever underpins the bridge of my attempts to reach out to families in less fortunate straits, whatever attempts to span the ford of race relations—my reading, my writing, my travels, my sensibility, my own encounters—Laverne shows to be scant. I watch as men and women recognize the Laverne in their lives and respect her. They smile, they laugh. Women hug her; a couple arguing in the corridor of their floor of community housing explains their predicament to her, in tears. “You go home now,” Laverne says to the man. “You listen to her.”

  In the last week of the campaign, I’d been concentrating my canvassing efforts in the northwest and bringing Laverne with me. The Little Jamaicans hardly have a chance. On the narrow Oakwood sidewalk, a man tries to sidestep around Laverne, who has on the bright ruby cloth hat she wears for church. He almost gets past.

  “Hey,” she calls. “You!”

  “Me?” says the man, meekly.

  “Yes, you. You gonna vote?”

  The man shrugs.

  “Yes, you gonna vote! You gonna vote NDP.”

  The man shrugs again.

  “How you gonna have change if you don’t vote NDP? That’s what you gonna do. What time you wan’ me roun’ here tomorrow? You gonna vote NDP. I’m coming for you.”

  “Okay,” I say to Laverne, “we can go now.”

  But we don’t. Further along the street another black man does a big half-loop to try to avoid Laverne, but she’s blocking his path as a gunfighter might.

  “You goin’ to vote?” asks Laverne. It was more of a command than asking, really.

  “No, I don’ vote.”

  “Why? Why you don’ vote? Are you stupid man? What you gonna say if you don’ vote? You can’ be complainin’.”

  “If I vot’, I vot’ Liberal.”

  “Why you gonna do that? Trudeau, he’s too young, you can’ see that? You gotta vot’ NDP. You gotta vot’ NDP an’ den you see what they do.”

  “Because of hi’ father I be here now.”

  “Are you crazy?! Hi’ father dead. He not gonna help you now.”

  —

  October 18 it is, and we have been clutching at good news where we can find it. The Assembly of First Nations has given the NDP’s platform �
��full marks.” Canadian Art has called Harper’s record on the arts “abysmal” and the Liberals’ “even worse,” upholding NDP measures including the party’s fifteen-dollar-a-day child care plans in its support of Mulcair. This almost makes up for the lack of mainstream media endorsements, and columns by Toronto Star writers—Haroon Siddiqui, in particular—that feel like betrayals, the editor emeritus having praised the NDP leader for all he has done, notably his brave stance on the niqab, and then backing the Liberals, the party with no position on Bill C-51. It’s hard not to feel instructions from on high in the Toronto Star columnists’ relentless unanimity. The NDP’s botching of Mulcair’s interview with The Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson or (as reported by Jesse Brown on the website Canadaland) the latter’s patrician snub of an actual conversation with the party leader, is also a sore point, but at this stage it hardly matters. We are at the Westin Harbour Castle for the final, E-Day rally. It is also the day of the Toronto Marathon, and maybe we can blame the thinning attendance on that unfortunate bit of timing rather than the fanfare and wan chorus that smacks of hubris now. We’re all in this together, or at least we were in the beginning: in August, when we were leading in the polls and the city was mostly left to ourselves; or in the middle of it all, before the niqab sank us and we endured the ignominy of the Munk Debate. The gambit of Mulcair as statesman, the proven minister, has not worked. The “proven” is tired and not working and being rejected across the board, as evidenced by the weekend’s choice bit of news—a photograph of the prime minister with Rob Ford and family that, rumour has it, led the Australian Lynton Crosby to quit the Conservatives’ own disastrous campaign. Today, the force is not with us and the STOP HARPER signs the audience is holding for this last rally’s reiteration of an old routine seem beside the point and look limp in supporters’ hands. Now we are nearing the end, and across screens in the Westin Harbour Castle conference hall speaks a math of desperation and magical thinking. The NDP won 103 seats in 2011 and came second in over 200 ridings! We only need 67 seats to form a government where the Liberals need to quadruple their seats. The young Nova Scotian troubadour Joel Plaskett, a declared NDP supporter, plays “Hard Times Come Again No More,” the Sam Roberts tune blares, and now here he is…Canada’s next prime minister…Tom Mulcair!!