Going Green: Wheels within Wheels

Politics is interesting to me if it's local. The nearer the better. I began this morning by sitting for 90 minutes in the little park across the street and counting up the number of cars that failed to stop at the stop signs and who drove the wrong way on one-way streets. It was part of a neighbourhood traffic-safety fact-finding mission; volunteers agreed to monitor a number of intersections in our Harbord Village area. I experienced stretches of boredom and moments of high drama (a speeding garbage truck dinged a parked car! Yelling ensued!). I drank tea from a flask, made tick marks on the page, and felt like an Involved Citizen.

Rights of way

Same during the recent Ontario provincial election. Husband and I could not vote, having yet to complete our citizenship applications, but we could campaign. Rather like the Russians, I thought: influencing an election in which we had no right to cast a ballot.

I aligned myself with the Green Party, because a) my friend Rita Bilerman ran as Green Party candidate for 'MPP' (member of provincial parliament) in the district or 'riding' just south of me, while a neighbour, Tim Grant, ran in my riding; and b) the Green Party platform pledges to abolish the system of separate, taxpayer-funded Catholic schools, a deal with the devil made some decades ago to placate Quebec and convince them to remain in Canada. (That's the gist, though I probably have some of it at least slightly wrong.) The unfairness makes my blood boil.

Going doormat to doormat

Husband and I happily canvassed door-to-door for Rita, and we displayed Tim's lawn sign in front of our house. The election took place last week. As predicted, neither of 'our' Green candidates won. The NDP (New Democratic Party) triumphed locally, but overall the province went resoundingly blue-- conservative--and elected Doug Ford, brother of the infamous former mayor Rob (RIP) as premier, or provincial leader.  The party formerly in power, the Liberals, got whupped and are barely hanging on to 'official party status' with only 7 seats. On the plus side, the leader of the Green Party in Ontario, Mike Schreiner (an American/ Canadian who lives in Guelph), did win, taking the first ever Green seat in the provincial parliament.

The Green Party after party at the Victory Cafe

I definitely did not have my finger on the pulse of the province, believing that everything was pretty much okay under the Liberal regime. Clearly not. I guess I don't live amongst and work with the disaffected majority. All that blue. Who are those people? I suppose I feel as foreign here in Ontario as I would in Brexit UK and Trump USA.

Soberingly, though, the real and best reason to have backed the Green Party is its commitment to the environment. Like husband and me, candidate Tim Grant goes around everywhere on his bike; his campaign signs depict him mounted on two wheels (and helmeted). The future of the city, the province, the world, depends on safeguarding the planet, in large part by reducing our use of petroleum. In Toronto, a flat city with a lot of people and a fairly compact downtown, a bike is best for moving from point A to point B. Right? Of course right. Not, however, according to a foolish city councillor who today said in a meeting of the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee that bikes should not be allowed on the roads at all. Yes, today, well into the 21st century, that's what he said. Out loud, on the record. Protest ensued but he did not back down.

In a tragic twist, by the end of today, two cyclists in the Greater Toronto Area had been struck by motor vehicles. Another cyclist who had been hit by a car several weeks ago, today succumbed to his injuries. One of today's fatalities was a 58-year-old woman, hit by a flatbed truck just outside my husband's office building. Ten minutes earlier,  I had ridden right past that spot. I can't stop thinking about her and her family tonight. Horrible. Chilling.

I'm almost ready to say that cars should not be allowed on the roads. And that is quite a thing for someone who grew up in Los Angeles to almost say.

Save our environment. Save our cyclists. Save my husband, and children, and friends. Save me.