by Noah Richler
“Really?”
Toronto—St. Paul’s was a fat wedge of a riding that might be thought of as the keystone of the city. Just north of downtown, it houses some of the city’s most prosperous neighbourhoods: Cedarvale, Forest Hill, Poplar Plains, Rathnelly and Wychwood, as well as parts of Leaside and Summerhill. It is also home to a plethora of “middle-class” streets, though its working-class districts were inevitably being gentrified. The riding was well connected by public transport soon to be augmented by the Eglinton Crosstown LRT line, a work-in-progress that will fundamentally alter the character of “Little Jamaica,” the poor neighbourhood in the northwest corner of the riding populated in large part by Caribbean Canadians who arrived in the sixties when Pierre Elliott Trudeau was prime minister. At least here, as well as between the diagonally travelling Vaughan Road and the western limits of the riding along north–south axes of Dufferin, Winona Drive and Ossington Avenue, was a fair amount of community housing and an NDP-inclined core.
But Toronto—St. Paul’s had never elected a federal NDP MP. The riding was reconfigured for the provincial election in 1999 and was marginally adjusted again for the 2015 federal election. A previous incarnation of a part of the electoral district—the provincial riding of St. Andrew—St. Patrick, did elect an NDP member in 1990 for one term but, then having incorporated more densely populated lower and middle-class portions of the Annex, Kensington Market and Spadina Avenue neighbourhoods, its demographics were so different as to bear little meaningful resemblance. The previous federal NDP candidate in Toronto—St. Paul’s, the twenty-three-year-old Ryerson University graduate William Molls, polled 22.6 percent of the vote, a historical high. But the seat had been Liberal since 1993, and Carolyn Bennett, the incumbent, had occupied it for eighteen years.
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A couple more weeks of no contact with HQ followed. The silence was discomfiting, even my friends within the party unable to explain it, but I attributed it to the Alberta NDP victory causing all sorts of pleasant upheavals and a party playing catch-up to the demands of its relative success. Then, on June 14, Craig emailed to ask “How go discussions re running for us?” I mentioned that Chow might be running, to which he replied:
I have been assuming that, as long as we keep the nomination open until end of summer, she could jump back in.
As for St. Paul’s, different folks had expressed interest, I understand, but a) you would be great for it though it would be a bully-pulpit race (and hard to beat Bennett even if Liberals tank further) and b) it would signal NDP seriousness of purpose.
Have you actually submitted papers that are being vetted in the green-light process?
I answered that I had, and decided to needle Pratt a little.
From: Noah Richler
Date: Monday, June 15, 2015 at 12:42 PM
To: James Pratt
Subject: Fred Checkers has been in touch…
Hi James
You may or may not have seen the op-ed of mine in the Toronto Star yesterday re Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the likely suicide of an aboriginal writer friend of mine. I’m aware that education is a provincial, not federal responsibility, but it’s a position.
By the way, I remembered that I ran a very successful shoplifting ring in my UK school when I was nine, complete with guides to which stores to rob of confectionery, and how Robin Hood notions ascertained which neighbourhood stores it was not cool to steal from because their owners were too poor.
I’m sure it’s out in the open somewhere, though likely not in the letter from Harry Jones, the principal, to my parents, touting how successful an entrepreneur I was on the path to being later in life.
Still, should come clean.
Best
Noah R.
“Fred Checkers,” I’d assumed correctly, was the avatar of an NDP scrutineer signalling the review of my social network posts was well underway, though really I wanted Pratt to see “The Hard, Important Truths about Indigenous Literature,” an op-ed piece I’d written for the Toronto Star that spoke of the death of the Gwich’in novelist Robert Arthur Alexie, who’d been a friend of mine and a survivor of the residential school system though not of the psychological tumult it brought on. I’d not written the piece for NDP bona fides, but Aboriginal issues were close to my heart and, I’d long argued, constituted the most serious (and unacknowledged) challenges the country faced. A little naively, I was imagining that somewhere in Ottawa the vetting of my writing was also taking place because the positive was being discussed—is Richler the best way forward, are his ideas up to scratch, are they consonant with our own?—and I wanted Pratt to know that in a possible contest against Bennett, the Liberal Party critic for Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development (as the ministry was called under the Harper government)—I had credentials.
But it was another ten days, and altogether a month since I’d submitted my material, before Pratt emailed, “I’ve got your vet back and things look pretty good.” Another week went by and then he called to say Chow was running, so Spadina—Fort York was definitely out.
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James, the Ottawa correspondent:
Sarah.
Noah, is he really going to do this?
Does he know what he’s getting into?
This is an election, not an argument—I know, I know, politics is all about ideas, so why shouldn’t he do it?
Well, because that’s bullshit. Politics is not about ideas. It’s about winning. Power. Kicking the other guy’s ass. And winning and winning and winning.
It’s not a debate, it’s pugilism—no, not pugilism. It’s street fighting.
It’s fucking tough out there. His strengths are ideas, right? Thoughts! Not the calculated algebra of poll-by-poll analyses.
But winning an election is not like writing a magazine article, or a book. It’s not about being understood, not at all, does he know that, Sarah? It’s about making voters THINK they’ve been understood and then converting that into votes.
Ideas are pure. Politics is grubby.
Politics is a transaction.
Politics is grunt work. Dirty, boring, disciplined grunt work.
There’s no room for thinking, no room for argument.
By the time Election Day rolls around, all the thoughts have been thought, all the ideas idealized. An election is not the time for big thoughts. Tell him to have those later, if he must—after he’s elected, in the caucus room with his colleagues. That’s where an MP can help make policy.
But St. Paul’s?
Ouch.
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A few days passed and Pratt emailed to say that Julian Heller, president of the Toronto—St. Paul’s riding association was “very interested in your potential candidacy.” I said that was good news and let him know I’d officially joined the party. “We’re in this together,” wrote Pratt. “Welcome to the family.” An hour later, I heard from Stéphanie Lévesque, the NDP’s candidate search director, and we discussed the possibility of my representing the riding.
“It’s very important to me not to feel parachuted in or less than welcome,” I said.
Heller, said Lévesque, had spent six months courting a lawyer to be the NDP’s candidate, but unsuccessfully. “When one door is closed,” said Lévesque, “maybe the second person is the one that’s meant to be.”
Lévesque explained that Toronto—St. Paul’s was one of those ridings “with a lot of richer New Democrats,” deftly hinting at the task of fundraising, to which I’d not yet paid much attention. It was also she said, a community with many artists who, despite the “legend” of Bennett, previously a doctor, having delivered half the babies in the riding, could help swing the riding the NDP’s way. It was not so much a safe seat as a bellwether one.
“One question, Stéphanie,” I said, thinking of the diversity of the NDP benches that I’d wished for so long the party had advertised. “I heard James rattle off his Toronto front line, and I’m worried about being just another white guy. Do you
have any black people fronting ridings in Toronto?”
“Yes, we do,” said Lévesque. “Not in downtown Toronto, but yes we do.”
The party, said Lévesque, had affirmative action goals, and the target, though they had not reached it, was fifty percent. We talked a little more about the vetting and arranged to meet with Heller the next day—July 1, Canada Day.
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Heller, a tall Montreal-born Jewish lawyer in his mid-fifties and a McGill graduate, had been an NDP member since 1980. He’d also been a candidate for the provincial party three times. The three of us sat in my backyard and Heller reminded me that Toronto—St. Paul’s was one of the wealthiest ridings in the country—a fact I’d hear a lot—and one of the best educated. It had, said Heller, a strong activist core but also the highest percentage of tenants in the province. No other prospective candidates had put themselves forward, so my acclamation was a near certainty, he said. But I was aware of the country’s history of tension between the grassroots and national parties operating from on high and was eager that my nomination be rolled out with minimal antagonizing. A recent but by no means singular lesson, Justin Trudeau had been embarrassed by his ill-thought-out welcome of the floor-crossing Conservative Eve Adams earlier in the year. Trudeau’s announcement of her conversion at a televised news conference had been a performance described by the National Post columnist Andrew Coyne as “crawlingly demeaning.” Adams had been dropped in as the candidate for the Eglinton—Lawrence riding despite the Liberal Party leader’s promises not to interfere with nomination processes. The local favourite, Marco Mendicino, would come to defeat Adams, no doubt given a boost by Trudeau’s maladroit interference. It was interesting to me, this tension. It reflected a greater national one of deep-seated wariness evident in the attitudes of smaller communities within the Canadian fabric towards the powerful centre that seemed an indication of just how far away from the seat of power most Canadians imagined themselves to be situated. The power in question has been held for almost all of Canada’s history by indifferent, distant authorities: London, Washington and now Ottawa—a town insignificant other than to the small coterie of bureaucrats, journalists, MPs and drive-through senators who have fashioned their own little Brasilia out of it. Now here was this resentment of the distant authority, such a quintessentially Canadian dynamic, being played out in numerous ridings in advance of the upcoming election, and not just in Eglinton—Lawrence. In March, twenty-two-year-old Zach Paikin had withdrawn from the contest to represent the Liberals in Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, protesting what he claimed to be obstruction from above, and, in Toronto—Spadina, Christine Innes had cited interference with open nomination processes when her candidacy was blocked. I was adamant that mine would not be another theatre mounting this familiar show.
The friction between ridings and the centre that is a commonplace of Canadian parliamentary politics reflects a similar dynamic between the provincial and national wings of parties. This, too, being played out across the country in different ways. In Alberta, it was fast becoming evident that Notley, while being respectful of Mulcair and the federal NDP, was nevertheless keeping an adroit distance at least until her surprising victory was entrenched somewhat. And, in Ontario, provincial leader Andrea Horwath’s loss of the 2014 election exacerbated an already fractious relationship because of what appeared to many party stalwarts to have been her abandonment of traditional NDP principles for a more rightist platform of budgetary restraint. Just a year had passed since the Ontario NDP’s defeat, and now, with sound prospects of a national win for the first time in the party’s history, the federal push was going to be managed in large part by veterans of the provincial scene. After decades of NDP candidates and their supporters having toiled in the trenches, many—perhaps Heller, too—were probably wondering why 2015 was not their time. This uneasy relationship was already being demonstrated to me in myriad small ways, such as the habit of one influential player in the first stages of my approach prefacing any useful bit of knowledge with the remark, “I don’t know what they do in Ottawa about [fill in the blank], but this is how we do things in the provincial party….” Eager to put the ogre to rest, I asked Heller right away why he was not running. He said that he’d had his turn and that was that; I would not hear mention of his having been a candidate again. The early lesson was that every campaign is its own invention—though of course there are constant features. The need to fundraise is the first of these, finding free labour the next. I’d need to raise fifty thousand dollars for a decent campaign, said Heller, and secure fifteen to twenty core staff and a couple of hundred volunteers. We discussed essential jobs to fill—none of the positions were familiar, everything was new—but I did know something about negotiating and that now was the time to be making demands of the party’s central office.
Heller said to ask for a campaign manager and a pre-election organizer. “If the federal party finances these positions,” said Heller, “that would solve a lot of ‘what ifs.’ ”
“Pratt said there’s a possibility of the party putting resources in,” said Lévesque. “Nothing’s in writing, but there’s a possibility.”
—
The next afternoon, the NDP Director of Search and Nominations Jordan Reid emailed. “We’ve completed the vetting process and you are officially approved to seek the NDP nomination in Toronto—St. Paul’s,” he wrote. “It’s great to have you on board!” Then Greta Levy, the party’s senior press secretary, contacted me to say she wanted to arrange an interview with the Toronto Star, the timing of which would coincide with the riding’s confirmation of my candidacy. I was due to meet Heller again—this time with Penny Marno, a veteran of several provincial campaigns—and was still unsure when my effort to become the candidate would receive the riding’s imprimatur. It may have been no more than formal process, but I was adamant that the riding not be allowed to feel that it had been circumvented in any way. The Toronto Star, Levy assured me, would respect an embargo at least until the riding executive committee meeting scheduled for July 8, the deadline for anyone else contesting the nomination and therefore the date determining whether or not I was to be the presumptive or a competing candidate, “because the party can’t be seen to be meddling in a nomination race.” There were still no signals anyone else was planning to run, wrote Levy. “We’re taking a bit of a risk but not a great one.”
The cogs had ratcheted up a gear and I was having a hard time respecting the embargo myself. I decided the time had come to share the not-quite-news and that my good friend Raymond Perkins, one of Toronto’s most entertaining fixers, would be the first to know. Well, no, the second. On my way, I visited my mother, who lived just a few blocks away. Her summer custom, we sat in the small, high-walled front garden of her Cabbagetown home, the statue of a Thai Buddha resting beneath a miniature arbour a serene presence by my side. The day was balmy and still and the only sound other than our talking was of water trickling into a tiny pond surrounded by impatiens and roses, all the blooms white.
“Why not the Liberals?” she asked.
I said that I found the Liberals hopelessly and chronically entitled, and that three times in recent months that party had demonstrated—in its compliance with Bill C-51 and in its acceptance of the Conservative MP Eve Adams and the former Toronto police chief Bill Blair as prospective candidates—the puruit of power trumped principle. By contrast, I thought the youth and diversity of the NDP terrifically exciting.
My mother, who is legally blind, turned her gaze to the ground and then skyward in the direction of a singing cardinal.
“Did you tell them what ministry you’d like?”
No, I said, impressed by my mother’s inordinate confidence in her children’s destiny. I never get excited about the place I’m headed, I said—never believe I’m there till I’m in it—and left it at that. Then I went to see Ray at Oxley’s, the pub my U.K.-born pal favoured near the Bloor Street flagship store of Roots Canada. He’d been working for the co
mpany for the better part of three decades—arranging, among other things, for film, sports and music celebrities to visit and be feted and bolster the brand. This, I suspected, would be handy. But, above all, I wanted to raise a glass—it was summer. Patio season.
Ray, originally a Londoner, was another with a political bent. Before Ray made Canada home, in 1968, he’d canvassed with his father for Shirley Williams in the 1964 U.K. general election that brought Harold Wilson to power. Williams won her seat and became one of the most redoubtable of British Labour Party members (and a baroness). In Canada, Ray had worked at age fifteen for the NDP and campaigned for his brother, who’d run as the Ontario NDP’s candidate in Orangeville. We belonged to the same generation, shared similar political memories and, much to my relief, Ray was ebullient. We toasted the prospect of a political adventure and, a few rounds the stronger, I decided to follow up with Pratt, my go-to man, whom I’d already emailed with a shopping list of sorts. I’d asked that Mulcair visit Toronto—St. Paul’s during the campaign, for the party to commit to paying for a campaign manager and pre-election organizer and—what the hell, I’d been on a roll—for Pratt to tell me “what is reasonable to expect vis-à-vis my future with the party in the scenario that (a) I lose (b) I win.”
“Your initial conversations have some Party heavyweights rattling the chains,” wrote Pratt. But then, unnervingly: “The message I usually give to candidates asking for party resources is that we invest in those who invest in themselves. If we can raise a little money off your nomination and you’ll continue to make that a priority, I’ll see about a manager/organizer for you. Better to discuss on the phone.”
“We invest in those who invest in themselves,” I knew, was Pratt’s dig at my still planning to take an albeit significantly truncated portion of the holiday I’d booked with my family for August. The put-down was a first glimpse of the hard truth of being one of the many—one of the 338, in fact. (There had been 308 federal electoral ridings in 2011. In 2015, thirty more were added.) I stepped out onto the sidewalk to make the call, a greenhorn due for another experience of the director of organization’s whip.
