Home » Travel » Canadian Culture » Layton New Leader of New Democracy

Layton New Leader of New Democracy

© David Newman

WARNING: This may be very biased. It is my personal opinion and you are free to disagree with me. Or even ignore me completely. I'm pretty young and many people my age don't care much for the electoral process: some will totally ignore politics, and others will be political in the streets. I find this a terrifying thing. I'm into politics, I've been rooting for the New Democrats for years but its only in March 2002, at the age of 17 that I became a card-carrying Dipper.

Not much after, Ms. Alexa McDonough then leader, said she would step down. Among the leadership candidates for the leadership race was Jack Layton. Now I knew about Jack Layton since as a fellow Torontonian he represented a Ward in City Council and had initiated many programmes. He is also married to Olivia Chow who, also a City Councillor represented a Ward not far from my residence in Toronto.

So I became a Jack Layton supporter. Sometime in September I got a phone call from my sister's friend Willy Blomme (who ran in Westmount-Ville Marie in 2000) who called me up to help on the campaign. As a high school student I didn't have much time to volunteer. I spent over 24 hours that weekend to help at the Jack Layton head quarters, in various tasks such as posturing the Annex with Layton flyers for the Barenaked Ladies concert. I helped sign up a few people and eventually met with Olivia and with Jack himself. I knew I had made the right choice of candidate.

There is something about Jack Layton that makes you listen. Maybe I'm just young and impressionable but there was nothing appealing about Bill Blaikie or Lorne Nystrom. He had a air about him that made you trust him and he seemed to be able to understand exactly what we wanted out of our socio-democratic party. Plus the others lacked something. What that something was is hard to say. All I knew is that I couldn't have Bill Blaikie as leader of my party. I couldn't get past his unilingualism, as I believe that I would be left out, as a francophone and that Quebec, a province known for social-democracy wouldn't buy into it.

So when I got my ballot, I quickly filled the prefferencial ballot Layton-Ducasse-Comartin [...] and sent it off to the Federal NDP offices. Then I waited.

I woke up this morning and at about noon remembered the date. I turned on the TV in time to catch the end of Ed Broadbent's speech introducing Jack Layton. I switched between CBC and SRC (I hate the translation voice over) and was reminded why I voted Layton. He really has a way with words. He knows what we want. Independence from Washington, we want help for the homeless, we want prop-rep and we don't care if he doesn't have a seat in the Commons... yet.

The copyright of the article Layton New Leader of New Democracy in Canadian Culture is owned by . Permission to republish Layton New Leader of New Democracy in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.