Web-extra (May 31, 2018) Why Should I Vote?;
A Canadian’s Question.
When I think about voting, “is it worth the time?” I ask.
“Compared to what? Doing the dishes?”
Dishes? OK I’ll do the vote thing instead. But what about missing out on something I want to do. Like vegging in front of a screen with something unhealthy in one hand and something electronic in the other. Or maybe I have to do homework I could not do elsewhere because… oh well somebody I won’t name procrastinated.
A recent election we all seem obsessed with does give pause to think about what you get when you don’t participate. We all hope things will turn out alright in the World just the same. Unfortunately we find ourselves not only reading about the novel goings-on, but like characters in a novel… we are unsure about how the plot will end.
First time I voted I had the unlikely chance to pigeon-hole the next Prime Minister with a question that well… He had not been briefed on. He did his honest best to answer, within the moment fate gave him, and then he was off to whatever was his next Bus stop. Nothing much changed, but I voted with the majority (if that is the right mathematical term for 39%), and waited to see how Canada’s future might change. Reflecting on that old question we still have a first-past-the-post system that was first designed for the British Landowners and the Infamous Rotten Boroughs ( which might make a great name for a band ). But the ‘Company Store is the only one in Town’ as they say, so I have voted for the best choice on the shelf even when the inventory seemed a little bare.
What was in store for a Franco-Ontarian in 1913 was their voice was not wanted in Schools, and for them life got a whole lot more costly. That generation sent their young sons to Poppy covered Fields of Flanders with Hope, Concern and Mis-information. Their boy’s badly made kit fell apart, the shovels were unable to move the liquid mud out of the trenches and their boy’s rifles were jamming ( not music to anyone’s ears ). But our Leaders made fake news and Women couldn’t vote so nothing much changed for years. Even when my great grandmother got to vote in 1917 others could not! And so it was for more than a decade because those ‘people’ were born to the ‘wrong sort’ of parents. Canada was their ‘Rotten Borough’ I guess.
But I got lucky… I guess. For me Canada has never been a ‘Rotten Borough’. I have voted for those who changed the “Canadian Question” and I have voted to ensure that a “Canadian Question” endured. The closest I ever came to lying in a trench was the election I slipped on some ice. Now that is a Canadian’s Question …When Should We Vote!
So on June 7th I will go out to vote… I wonder what the weather will be doing?
A Kitchissippi Procrastinator.
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