It’s been a while since I’ve made regular posts here on Visual Laurel because I’ve been swept up in the 2018 Ontario Election as campaign manager for my husband, the Green Party Candidate for Kitchener—Conestoga. Over the last few years the five Waterloo Region Greens ridings have been working together, setting roots in our communities, establishing an online presence, and working hard raising our Green profile.  

As disappointing as the overall winner-take-all result was (giving a party with only 40% of the vote 100% of the power), I am really very pleased that all five of our WRGreens candidates— 

• David Weber (Kitchener South—Hespeler), • Stacey Danckert (Kitchener Centre), • Bob Jonkman (Kitchener—Conestoga), • Michele Braniff (Cambridge), and • Zdravko Gunjevic (Waterloo)  — finished in the top 20% of the Green Party of Ontario.  Bravo!

And we are all extraordinarily pleased that in this election, the GPO did indeed achieve our primary election goal: the Ontario Green Party made history!  The citizens of Guelph saw the wisdom in electing GPO Leader Mike Schreiner to represent them, so now, for the very first time in history, a Green Party MPP will sit in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.  This is the beginning of doing politics differently.    Congratulations Mike!

Elizabeth May is a leader like no other.  She advocates consensus and participatory democracy, actively discouraging attack ads and polarization.  

It was an incredible morale booster for the Greens of the five Waterloo Region ridings (Cambridge, Kitchener-Centre, Kitchener-Conestoga, Kitchener-South Hespeler and Waterloo) when Elizabeth managed to squeeze a visit to the WRGreens office out of her incredibly busy election schedule.  

(An event the mainstream media couldn’t be bothered to cover.) 

Thanksgiving weekend is also the 4 days of advance polls.