Willing to be hopeful, once

As things were careening mid-March toward a non-confidence vote in Parliament and I was railing on about Harper's anti-democracy, my mother casually said, "I thought you rather liked Stephen Harper."  Stunned that I had ever managed to give her this impression and, further, to not have disabused her of the notion long ago, I searched my mind for a time I had been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, feel hopeful about what he might bring to the country.

It was 2006 and he had just won his first minority.   In the voter's booth, my vote had been purely in support of my local candidate.  Like so many, I was sickened by the overlong departure of Chretien as leader and the stink of the sponsorship debacle.  If ever Liberals needed some humility, it was then.

At the same time, a couple of pieces of information had surfaced to make me question my political assumptions.  The first was finding out that Brian Mulroney had been named by the Sierra Club as Canada's greenest prime minister.  How on earth had this happened without us all realizing?  The second was reading that, in Toronto, Mike Harris was credited with encouraging the construction of several arts-related buildings, including the new home of the National Ballet of Canada, through the development of viable public-private partnerships.  He was a disaster for education and water treatment and First Nations relations, but arts and culture in Toronto owed him something.

From these two points I realized a lesson I should have internalized a long time ago, that the same end can often be reached by different means.  So, yes, I was willing to give Stephen Harper a chance after he won.  And there's a part of me that keeps looking to see something positive in what he's done.  But if it's there, it's nothing in comparison with what's been lost--and what's at risk.