All Candidates Meeting

The crowd was huge. People were lined up before the doors opened. I have never  seen such  a crowd in  this Town Hall.  Not since nominations were held at  Wells Street School and the crowd spilled out and down the stairs. It was  cold and dark but they were there and stayed until every council candidate had been heard..

The crowd would thin out  for school board candidates. When it came to Hydro Commissioners  there would hardly be anybody left.The late  Don Glass and Don Hamilton, the two Dons,  were Hydro Commissioners for years.The Mayor was  also a  Commissioner.  I forgot to put that in my leaflet.There wasn't room for all the committees memberships anyway.
 
The crowd was  four deep outside the chamber. They squeezed together sitting  on the stairs inside.

I thought  of all the activities we visualised to happen in Aurora's first town hall when we planned it. Everything going on now at Church Street School,the  new Town Hall was planned to accommodate. The third floor, which is the ground floor at the back of the building, is the Skylight  Art Gallery especially designed.

We spent 2.3million dollars on Church Street school to provide the community with a  living history  museum. It's  not what's happening.The York Region Art Council is  there instead.Your Council didn't have a word to say about it. You can be sure the Mayor did.
 
It was an exuberant crowd yesterday. They were there for a reason.You could feel it. 

As well as being a candidate, my consuming interest  in this election. is to discover the impact of  Blog It was nowhere in sight in the last campaign. I didn't start it until eight months into  the term. If I was going to be denied a role on Council,  I decided I would make my own.

All the years I've been involved in  the town's political affairs, having to depend on an instrument owned or controlled  by someone  else  to convey an argument, has been a hitch in the practice of politics.  

By and large, people still expect  newspapers to keep them informed.  If they don't report, it's because there is  "nothing to report"  Or because it's a  "rag of a newspaper" . Or whatever is written  must be gospel  because it "was  in print"

I learned early, the editor always has the last word. The editor's interest  or perception was not necessarily or in many instances, likely  the same as mine.Nor was there reason why it should be.  Not having a direct conduit to the people was an occupational hazard.

Blog has  changed that. So far as people on line are concerned, nothing is the same as it was.

I've been trying not to guess  the impact. From where I sit it seems it must be huge. I keep having to remind myself. Everyone isn't on line. Those who are, don't necessarily want to read what I have to tell them.

Yet since the election started, I'm hearing from people who read this daily epistle.  I can't help it. I feel a tingle of excitement. I think it has charged the attention people pay to the town's affairs.

I think a quiet revolution has been underway and we are about to see the result.

The opportunity to join  the conversation  and participate in the process has made a difference.

There I go...letting myself get carried away again.

I know many people  are not on line. But I'm surprised to learn of the people who are and how much they are enjoying being a part of it. Politics has always been a passion of my own. But I thought I was some kind of a geek.

My daughter Heather, my campaign manager,  introduced  grandsons Keenan and Aaron,twenty-three and twenty years old  to Chris Watts at Temporary Sanity last week. They read for an hour and a half, whooping with laughter. Chris is not a humorist but for the  young and the  irreverent,  he certainly captures  their attention.

The Aurora Citizen provides a better opportunity and encouragement for numbers of people to engage and they certainly are.

It takes me back to  childhood when there were literally dozens of  daily newspapers being published, morning and evening. The Daily Express came into my grandparents' house . It  had a Labour slant. There were half a dozen Sunday Newspapers. The News of The World was the most salacious. Everybody read it. Best seller books were serialised in it.

I think we are at the beginning of a phenomena.

Yesterday the incumbent Mayor was maintaining blogs must be controlled. They can't be allowed to destroy people's reputations, she said.

Apparently, it's alright for the Mayor to use a scam of a code of conduct and  spend hundreds of thousands of  taxpayers' dollars, deploying lawyers to  destroy a person's reputation but it's not alright to keep people informed on a blog  about  knavish activities which would, were it not for Blog, never see the light of day.