The older I get, the more stressful it is to watch the election returns on the CBC news. Last night was a cliff-hanger and I kept leaving the room, returning, pouring a glass of wine, reading more of Alissa York’s gorgeous The Naturalist, listening for the magic number 44 and wondering if the NDP might actually get there. I confess I’m a social democrat from way back. The NDP isn’t perfect but the party is the one closest to my own hopes and aspirations for the place I’ve called home for most of my life. I’d like to think the Greens might improve on their social policy — it’s a little conservative at this point and their leader Andrew Weaver is a little elitist. A little too grumpy about unions. I hope he’ll evolve. But anyway, no clear winner last night, though the Liberals are in a minority government position right now. The advanced poll votes and absentee votes are still to be counted and I guess it will be a couple of weeks before we know whether to cheer or weep. I think it would be unconscionable for the Greens to form a coalition with the Liberals (who aren’t really Liberal at all) or to support them in any way whatsoever. But stranger things have happened and B.C. has a history of wild politics.
As I moved nervously back and forth in the house, I looked out to see these two grazing on the new spring grass.
And at bedtime, when we should have known how the future of the province would be unfolding but instead kept seeing those two numbers, 42 and 42, balanced in an unsettling way on the television screen, I felt like the mother of this pair. Don’t mess with me. Anything could happen.
...Theresa Kishkan 