3 hours Ago By Bruce Deachman
As the federal election campaign picks up speed, the Citizen’s Bruce Deachman has been asking Ottawa residents to share, in their own words, some experiences and thoughts on voting. Today: Laraine Pederson of Orléans on what she learned from her first experience voting: “I’d been overseas for seven years with my family, who were in the military. We came back to Canada in 1967, so I think the first time I would have been able to vote was for Pierre Trudeau, in 1968.
I was 22 and it was quite exciting because it was at the height of Trudeaumania. We were young and everybody thought he was just so great. That’s what got me into it.
“Before that, I remember an election I followed that goes back to John Diefenbaker, in 1957. I was still a kid, in Grade 7 or 8. We set up elections and had leaders and so on.
And I was leader for the Conservatives — Diefenbaker. The big thing we had to do was make a speech, and so that meant I needed to know what was going on with him so I could put it in my speech. The Avro Arrow had something to do with it, and the Bomarc missile.
Diefenbaker was anti-Avro Arrow, and I think he was for the Bombarc missile. “Voting makes you feel you’ve arrived, that you have a voice, that you have opinions and a way of expressing them. And I recognized that we were very lucky to have the privilege of voting, because that’s not true everywhere; people fight and die for that right.
“I know people who don’t vote, but I don’t say anything to them. Although for the last municipal election, I said to people who didn’t vote — usually my family members — ‘You need to vote. It’s important.
People have died so that we can have this privilege. Not everybody gets that.’ “Federally, I look at who’s going to be prime minister — the leaders, and how good I think they’ll be at getting the job done for Canadians.
I listen to their policies and to what they’re going to do — what they SAY they’re going to do. I know that don’t always do what they say they’re going to do, but it is a factor that will draw me towards someone. “Right now, I’m focused on the military, and it has everything to with Donald Trump and who can stand up to him.
We’ve never had to worry about our sovereignty before, at least not within my lifetime. And the Americans were always our friends and looked after us. They were our friends.
Not so much now.” [email protected] Our website is your destination for up-to-the-minute news, so make sure to bookmark our homepage and sign up for our newsletters so we can keep you informed.
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