Hammer Votes

While this is way delayed, did you vote? I wanted to be a more informed voter this time around and to this end, I attended a Q&A session with the candidates in my riding. Perfectly blending with state, it was held in a church a few blocks away.

David Christopherson (NDP), Anne Tennier (Liberal) and Michael Baldasaro (Party O’ Pot & Beards) were in attendance. The Conservative candidate declined to attend – at this announcement, there was a lot of chuckling and booing. I was pretty sure I knew who I was going to vote for before this session, but it was extremely informative and I felt like I was an active participant in the voting process. Halfway through, while someone else was speaking Baldasaro changed into this hat:

The unfortunate part was that I had to sit through the evening in East Hamilton, among a cross-section of my neighbours. I think I’ve said before that I believe Hamilton to be a pocket city, where one block is beautiful and upstanding and the next is filled with rest homes and derelicts. What are rest homes anyway? I don’t think they’re like halfway houses – are they for people who can’t function on their own? I don’t know, but all I see as I walk past them is dozens of people sitting on the front porch chain-smoking into an empty coffee can ashtray.

Some of the people that attended this Q&A spent most of the evening burping, heckling, yelling out “Stop bombing Libya!” and smelling badly. It was embarrassing. Also embarrassing was Baldasaro and his supporters. Free speech and equal rights aside, it seemed to be a colossal waste of everyone’s time. Sample answer when asked something about the economy: “Well, hemp clothes. Clothes made of hemp. There’s lots of jobs in that.” Sample response from this supporters: laughter.

The interesting thing was that while listening to Tennier and Christopherson I was reminded of all that Hamilton actually has to offer. It IS or CAN BE a great city. It’s like we have all the elements to be a thriving metropolis and yet it’s just not working out yet. Hamilton is the ‘good on paper’ guy we’ve all met. It was nice to be reminded of all the things we have going for us which are so easily forgotten living among burping, shirtless layabouts. I imagine a Q&A session in Ancaster would have been much different.

They did have desserts there though. However, it didn't help that someone coughed on them. Wicked.