The High Road (16 page)

The all-candidates meeting was given extensive coverage in the
Cumberland Crier
the next day. André’s piece was balanced, as usual, and there were no compromising photos of Angus. It did describe how Angus broke the arms of his chairs in thinly veiled rage over Fox’s comments. But it also painted a vivid picture of Emerson Fox’s obvious discomfort in handling the GOUT agent’s stiletto question. The photo accompanying the story was benign enough and just showed all four candidates standing together at the front of the stage.

There was a second shorter article on page two, also under André Fontaine’s byline. The headline was “McLintock’s 40-year-old arrests earn respect.” Nice, André. The story quoted heavily from Angus’s remarks, particularly his closing comment that conveyed how proud he remained of his involvement in the pro-choice demonstrations. André found and quoted a couple of members of the audience who’d been moved by Angus’s explanation and respected him more for it. One woman declared the Fox campaign radio ads that referred to Angus as “a criminal” to be despicable. These very supportive comments were offset by a quotation from Ramsay Rumplun, who said that he could not support a candidate “who does not respect the laws of the land.” On balance, I gave the round to Angus. This was reinforced by the last line in the story that revealed that both Cumberland radio stations had pulled the offending ad off the air.

Perhaps most interesting of all was the short editorial that
appeared. The headline was “The political gets personal.” The editorial decried Fox’s decision to “go negative.” It commended Angus for his restraint and forbearance and called on Emerson Fox to end the personal attacks and focus on the issues. Nice.

Everyone at the McLintock campaign headquarters was in a buoyant mood. What had seemed last night to have been a draw or at most a marginal victory looked this morning in the
Crier
like a slam-dunk win. But we had no time for laurel-resting. There was canvassing to do. The Liberal Red Book had arrived at long last. I flipped quickly through the party’s platform document for any surprises. With the last election just a few months behind us, I hadn’t anticipated many changes, although the economy had dipped into freefall since the last campaign. I was right. Most of it was warmed over from the October battle, including promises of tax cuts, albeit more modest than those proposed by the Tories. I cringed, knowing that Angus would have difficulty supporting tax cuts, particularly during an economic tailspin. There was a vague commitment to infrastructure renewal, which pleased Angus, but it wasn’t exactly a fully formed program. The only concession to the emerging global financial crisis was the following sentence at the end of the book:

I thought this was a sensible, reasonable, and responsible declaration. But I feared the Tories would bludgeon us with it in the campaign.

We pulled into the designated canvassing neighbourhood and parked. The two Petes looked almost like average citizens, except
for Pete1’s fiery red nail polish and Pete2’s matching fiery red ear, nose, and tongue studs.

“Did you guys call one another this morning to coordinate your accessories?” I asked, genuinely interested.

“Well, yeah,” replied Pete1 as if the answer was self-evident. “You don’t want us clashing when the candidate is with us. It could put some people off.”

As usual, Pete2 nodded in agreement, content to let Pete1 do the talking.

“Very thoughtful lads,” Angus said as we piled out of the car into a typical January arctic blast. My eyes watered and my face hurt, yet we hadn’t even hit our first house. Angus didn’t seem to notice the cold.

The two Petes donned red ribbons, took a couple of stacks of our somewhat lame pamphlet, and headed up the street like the veteran canvassers that they were. They would take one side of the street and Angus and I would tackle the other.

I stepped up to the first house and reached for the doorbell. Angus took my arm and eased me behind him.

“You might just as well let me try this myself,” Angus suggested as he rang the bell. He seemed in good spirits.

I stood aside with a be-my-guest arm sweep as I consulted the voters list in my hand.

“George and Yvonne Leonard” was all I could get out before the door opened to an unshaven man in ripped sweat pants, one sock, and a lovely stained undershirt straining to contain a belly of near planetary proportions.

“Ah, Mr. Leonard I presume,” opened Angus, smiling and rocking on his feet.

“Yeah, well who are you, the amazing Kreskin?”

“Ah no. We have a voters list so that’s how I knew your name. Speaking of names, mine is Angus McLintock and I’m your Member of Parliament seeking your support in the imminent election.”

“Don’t care about politics, goodbye,” he said before turning back into his home.

Angus set his foot on the step to prevent the door from closing.

“Can I ask why you don’t care about politics? You surely pay enough in taxes. D’ye not want to make sure your money is well spent?”

Mr. Leonard spun to face Angus with a look that suggested violence, not conversation.

“What I think or do makes no goddamned difference. You’re all crooks anyway, so I’m sure not going to help you by voting. Now step away from my house,” he hissed, his stubby index finger tapping Angus’s sternum in time with the rhythm of his last sentence. That wasn’t a good idea.

Angus’s eyes narrowed to slits. That’s not good. When Angus does his slitty-eyes thing, you want to get out of the way. He leaned in.

“Well then, you deserve the government you get, you half-baked buffoon!” Angus roared. “D’ye not understand how a democracy works? You’ve a duty to vote!”

Against all my very well-developed self-preservation instincts, I leapt in between them. I silently gave thanks for Mr. Leonard’s monstrous abdomen as it kept his flailing arms and volcanic face farther away from us.

“Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Leonard. We’ll leave you now. Right now, Angus. Call us if you need any more information,” I croaked, shuffling Angus off the front porch like a linesman separating brawling hockey players.

“He called me a crook,” Angus raged as we walked back to the road. “I admit I’m many things, but a crook is not one of them.”

“Angus, calm yourself. Remember, most of the voters in this riding are Conservatives. And calling them half-baked buffoons is not exactly a winning conversion strategy,” I said. “We’re at the voter’s door to engage, not enrage.”

The very beginnings of a smile snuck onto his face.

“You’re very quick with the clever quip, aren’t you, Professor Addison?” he replied as he cooled down. “All right, once more
into the breach.” Angus climbed the front stairs of the next home and rapped on the door.

“Jonathan and Meredith Waxman,” I said, scanning the voters list again.

“Good morning, I’m Angus McLintock, your Member of Parliam–”

“Honest Angus of hovercraft fame. I’m pleased to meet you. I’m Jon Waxman.”

“Happy to make your acquaintance. This is my colleague Daniel–”

“Addison. I know, I read the story in the
Crier
.”

Handshakes all around.

Angus still seemed a little rattled from our first encounter. He looked slightly lost for a moment and eventually turned to me.

“Now what happens?”

Jon turned to me with a quizzical look.

“Um, Angus is still getting the hang of canvassing. You don’t mind, do you?” I asked.

“Not at all. I’ve been a teacher for thirty-five years and I can see that this is a teaching moment. Carry on,” said Jon.

I turned back to Angus.

“Okay, since we have a willing subject here, we want to get a sense of what’s on Jon’s mind and whether he might consider putting an X next to your name on the ballot.”

“Aye, I can see why that would be helpful,” Angus replied. “So how about something like this?” Angus paused and then turned to face Jon. “So Jon, are you pleased with how you’ve been served in the House of Commons these last few months?”

“Well, Angus, since you’ve asked, I have been impressed with what you’ve accomplished, particularly since you didn’t really want to be in the House in the first place.”

“Aye, you’ve got that right. But the adventure seemed to grow on me and I think we had a few small wins in our brief time. So, do I divine by your at least polite response that we might be able to count on your support on election day?”

“Well, from our conversation you might reasonably expect that I’d support you, but I’m afraid not,” Jon said with a smile. “I like you and what you’ve done, but I’m an ideological Conservative. I don’t agree with your party’s policies and likely never will. But I do like you.” Angus just stared at him and nodded. We turned and left.

The morning wasn’t a complete loss. Eventually, the extreme cold brought our canvassing to an end. A red blotchy face, windassisted crazy hair, frostbitten nose, and snot-icicled beard weren’t really helping Angus make that all-important initial connection with voters on the front porch. In fact, it was more likely to lead to slammed doors and 911 calls. Still, we’d managed to hit thirty-seven houses. Twenty-eight of them were Tories. Two, I was shocked to discover, were NDP. And yes, we uncovered seven Liberal voters we didn’t know existed. All of them had voted for Eric Cameron in previous elections but were drawn to Angus through his recent well-chronicled exploits on Parliament Hill. Still, the odds were twenty-eight to seven against us. Just another typical C-P poll, in other words. It was tough.

Oh yes, and Angus was propositioned by one middle-aged woman who seemed to me to be a few ministers short of a full Cabinet. She had a fixation for penguins. Hundreds of them crowded every square inch of display space in her living room. There were ceramic penguin figurines, stuffed penguins, penguin paintings, a penguin coffee table book, fittingly resting on a coffee table made from three carved wooden penguins supporting a circular plate of glass, even penguin candles. Her bookshelves were overloaded with orange-spined paperbacks from the only appropriate publishing house. The pièce de résistance was a cartoonish penguin wallpaper border encircling the room up near the ceiling. Had we known, we’d have worn tuxedos.

Getting the hang of canvassing, Angus simply said, “I’ve always enjoyed penguins. I hope we can count on your support on January 27.”

Then we bolted after politely declining tea in, yes it’s true, penguin mugs. As we fled down her front walk, she opened the door and shouted a heated invitation to Angus to come back later to join her for a screening of her special-edition director’s cut of, yep,
March of the Penguins
. I gave a little shiver but Angus waved without really committing.

The two Petes had fared quite well, stroking their red highlighter through eleven more names on the voter list. We were also able to add three more Liberals to the tally for houses where no one was even home. The red streamers tied to front railings, or trees, or garage door handles, were evidence enough for us. Angus’s red ribbon campaign seemed to be catching on.

My cellphone rang early Sunday morning while Lindsay and I were still struggling to get going. In other words, we were both still comatose. I sat up on the edge of the bed to cut through the cerebral cobwebs.

“Daniel Addison,” I rasped, sounding like I’d just had throat surgery.

“Daniel? Michael Zaleski. Did I wake you?”

“Not at all, Michael. Just a bit of a sore throat. I’ve been awake for, um, quite a while. What’s up?”

Michael Zaleski was once again running the Liberal polling operation for the campaign. Even though the Leader’s office seemed to have a love-hate relationship with Angus and me, tending more often towards hate, Michael seemed to be a closet McLintock fan and had done me a few favours last time around.

“I’m not sure you knew, but on top of our national polling, we’ve over-sampled in some key ridings, and C-P is one of them,” he opened.

“I hadn’t heard that, but it makes sense. I was actually going to call the centre and ask.”

“Well, we polled last night and found enough people at home in your riding to get some reasonably accurate numbers, including
a solid number of voters who actually attended the all-candidates meeting Friday night.”

“Nice, Michael. That’s great,” I replied. “I’m sitting down. Is it good news?”

“Well, it’s better than I ever thought it would be deep in the heart of Tory country. Going in, you were a 100–1 shot. Against. Now, it’s still a steep uphill climb, but you’re headed in the right direction. The margins of error are a little high, given the sample size, but let’s meet early in the week and I’ll give you the full treatment.”

“I’m there, Michael. I can wait till then for the whole story but can you at least give me the headline now?”

“Sure. Here are the voter reaction bullets so far. Three out of four voters are Conservative. But Emerson Fox is an asshole. Alden Stonehouse is pulling much better than we thought he would. And everybody loves Angus.”

“So it looks like there actually is potential for Stonehouse to split the right-wing votes?” I asked.

“There’s a long way to go, but if Flamethrower is still an asshole in two weeks, and preacher-boy doesn’t fall off the ‘calm, thoughtful, and reasonable’ wagon, there could be two viable options for C-P Conservatives to choose between.”

I silently rearranged his sentence so that it didn’t end with a preposition.

“That’s just great news, Michael. Thanks for passing it on,” I said. “I’ll drop in tomorrow and you can take me through the cross-tabs. Thanks again.”

I hit the hang-up button on my BlackBerry and stood up to head for the shower.

“What’s the great news?” Lindsay sighed with her eyes still closed.