The sodden ones

So, our Canada Day BBQ in my back yard was generally considered a success, despite the fact it rained torrentially. At one point there were about 30 people stuffed under a gazebo normally reserved for four, with scores more lined up under eaves of my house and others standing under the leafiest boughs of the red maples.

The rain steamed and hissed as it hit Charlie’s exotic-looking barbeque and Dorothy was smart to throw some garbage bags over my trolley full of audio electronics. People got soaked, but stayed. The potato chips were swimming, and the path between my sliding kitchen door and the hallway john was slick.

Finally things cleared a bit as darkness fell, so Doug and I climbed the ridge with our two big boxes of fireworks and let ‘em rip. Blowing things up, as was to be expected, was the highlight of our night. And as the last whirlygig roared 150 metres into the air, the skies opened again, and we were drenched by the time we made it back down to the deck.

But, it was okay. The Halton crew was there. People showed up from other ridings, just to meet the closest thing the GTA has to a Tory MP, while others came from the Big Smoke itself. I guess we’ll make a few thousand bucks – sorely needed funds once that next election is called (and hopefully not for a long, long time).

For those who are not involved in riding politics, I’m sure it’s hard to understand how difficult it is to make it work. This process is part social, part financial, part fanatic, part duty, part motivational. People who normally might have nothing to do with each other, or whose lives probably would never intersect, find themselves shoulder-to-shoulder for a cause. Each person has their own reason for becoming political. Some are disgusted with handing over half their paycheques. Some fear a rising tide of crime. Some want to turn the clock back on big government. Some just seek leadership in a confused time.

All these people, however, are unique. Since less than 1% of the Canadian population belong to a political party on a regular basis, the soggy people wandering around my backyard in the rain exert far more influence than they’d suspect. They have a direct hand in setting policy, choosing a candidate and influencing the way their neighbours vote.

It’s an imprecise system open to much abuse and defying the attempts of party organizers to corral it. Our Halton Conservative association is routinely told how much money and how many members it should have. There’s a whiz-bang interactive online party-run data base to track every last local voter. And there are pie charts purporting to tell me if I’ll still be the MP after the next election.

But we don’t put a lot of stock in any of it, since politics on the ground in a highly-volatile Toronto-area riding that was Liberal for 13 long years is anything but predictable. People here are quite influenced by the Big City media, and our well-educated, highly-mobile population is quick to soak up information and just as fast at forming opinions. The best you can do is constantly campaign, make sure your message is heard equally with all the others, take care to always do the right thing for the right reasons, and ignore the political organizers. They may be able to herd cats, but gathering votes in a place like this takes way more than a data base.

This is why tomorrow I’ll be finishing off my householder – an eight-page booklet I get to send to every home four times a year. I’ve decided it’s time to report to people on what they asked to do the most – look out for their household money. It’s a big deal in a part of the country were real estate costs a fortune and almost nobody’s got any money to save, no matter how much they make. So, I’ve written a “Guide to improved Family Finances,” reminding them of the recent tax cuts, and setting out some practical stuff on real estate and retirement savings

The theory is simple: In a world where 99% of people don’t belong to a political party, but where 100% of them worry about money, you talk about what matters.

After all, normal people care about normal things. They also know enough to come in out of the rain.