The Ontario legislature is back Monday. Critics say Ford is keener on electioneering

CLARENVILLE, N.L. – At 2 p.m. on Thursday, the scene at the Lions Club in Clarenville, N.L., rivalled any rowdy St. John’s bar that thumps with music late on a weekend night.

The windows were steaming up, the dance floor was packed and the sold-out crowd of about 150 seniors were swinging around in pairs, asking the lead guitarist of the headlining band for one more song before he took a break.

Dan Gambin didn’t need much convincing. He put down his guitar, picked up his accordion and launched into a traditional Newfoundland jig.

“He’s a legend,” said Tess Culleton, who plays guitar and sings alongside Gambin in the Best Kind Band.

Gambin is 83 and he was diagnosed with dementia about two years ago. Though he’s beginning to have trouble with his memory, he’s still playing four instruments in two bands, and his decades-long music career shows no signs of slowing down.

“I love the music, I always did, b’y,” Gambin said in an interview earlier in the week, strumming a guitar as he spoke at his daughter’s house in St. John’s.

“The communication between the band and the people, that’s what it’s all about.”

Gambin has been driven to play music for most of his life. He grew up in Clattice Harbour, a tiny community in the folds of Placentia Bay that at the time was home to about 120 people. Clattice Harbour’s residents fished during the day and got together at night to visit, sing and play music, Gambin said.

He figures he was about 10 years old when he bought his first accordion with money he saved from selling squid that he caught, cleaned and dried.

A guitar was prohibitively expensive, even for an industrious 10-year-old squid jigger, so he made his own by steaming and shaping planks from old apple crates. He sent away for the strings, keys and fret board, he said.

He began performing in Clattice Harbour’s one-room school, where the community would hold occasional dances for adults. Still a schoolboy, he’d sit and play his accordion in the centre of the room, amid the chaos of the swirling couples. He got knocked over a few times, he recalls, but it was the only way to be heard with no sound system.

“They’d just laugh at me, and I’m there on my back, still playing away,” he said.

In Placentia, N.L., about 50 kilometres across the bay from his hometown, he joined the popular local band the Hilltoppers and became quite well known in the area, said his daughter, Sheila Taylor. His wife and four children would follow him to some gigs, making a family vacation out of the trip, she added.

The Best Kind Band formed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are typically eight members, ranging in age from 59 to 88, and they help Gambin remember when he’s got a practice or a gig, said singer Cindy Fulford.

She sits beside Gambin when they play so she can give him a nudge to cue him in or tell him he’s on the last bar of his solo, she said.

“The whole group, no doubt about it, we depend on each other,” Gambin said.

“We do,” Fulford agreed. “We’ve become family.”

The band is booked and busy. They play at churches and seniors homes and community dances, like the bash in Clarenville, N.L., on Thursday afternoon. The Oktoberfest event was hosted by the community’s 50-plus club and the local Lions Club, and MC Glenn Ploughman said it sold out last month.

“This is our music,” he said, grinning and raising his voice so he could be heard over the band and the racket on the dance floor.

“Best kind” is a Newfoundland expression that, for Fulford, means not perfect, but still pretty great. “We’re the Best Kind!” she called out to the crowd at one point Thursday, laughing after the band had to take a second shot at the first few notes of a song.

The audience was indifferent to the flub. They filled the dance floor seconds after each song began, hooting, clapping and belting out the lyrics to Johnny Cash’s “In Them Old Cottonfields Back Home” and Eddie Coffey’s “Grey Foggy Day” along with Fulford and the band. A man draped in ribbons of blue raffle tickets spun his way through the crowd raising money for local charities.

After seven decades of performing, Gambin said he has a simple test to determine if he’s playing well and still giving audiences what they’re after: “Watch the floor.” And on Thursday, the floor was best kind.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 20, 2024.

VANCOUVER – There was no clear winner in Saturday’s British Columbia election, but the leader of the B.C. Conservatives says the province’s political landscape has “changed forever,” after his party pushed the incumbent New Democrats to the brink.

Neither party won enough seats to claim a majority, and vote counting was set to continue Sunday, with Premier David Eby’s NDP in striking range of a minority government if he gets the co-operation of the Greens, who won two seats.

Potential recounts mean it could be next week before the winner is decided.

But the night belonged to triumphant Conservative Leader John Rustad, who told supporters in Vancouver that even if the NDP retained power he would “look at every single opportunity from day one” to bring them down and trigger a new election.

“This is what happens when you stand on values,” said a beaming Rustad, whose party received less than two per cent of the vote four years ago.

Regardless of the final outcome, the days in the political wilderness are over for the Conservatives.

After an election day drenched by torrential rain across much of the province, the count ended around 1 a.m. Sunday with the Conservatives elected or leading in 45 seats, and the NDP in 46, both short of the 47-seat majority mark.

Elections BC said ballots cast by voters outside their district were still being tallied, while “election official availability and weather-related disruptions” were also delaying some preliminary results.

Nine out of 93 ridings were undecided, and in two of them, the Conservative and NDP candidates were separated by fewer than 100 votes.

Elections BC said recounts would take place in districts where the margin was 100 votes or fewer after the initial count. Recounts would take place on Oct. 26 to 28.

Rustad said his party had “not given up this fight” to form government.

“I am optimistic that people in this province are hungry for that change.”

Eby said in a muted speech to supporters in Vancouver that he “absolutely” acknowledged Rustad “spoke to the frustrations of a lot of British Columbians” and vowed to “do better” if his party forms the next government.

He said that although the outcome was unclear, there had been a “clear majority” of votes for progressive values. “But we’ve got to do better,” Eby said.

He said he was committed to working with Green Leader Sonia Furstenau, whose party could hold the balance of power.

Furstenau said her party was poised to play a “pivotal role” in the legislature.

The Green victories went to Rob Botterell in Saanich North and the Islands and Jeremy Valeriote in West Vancouver-Sea to Sky.

Furstenau lost to the NDP’s Grace Lore after switching ridings to Victoria-Beacon Hill, but said she was “so excited” for her two colleagues, calling their wins “incredible.”

“This is a passing of the torch and I am going to be there to mentor and guide and lead in any way that I can,” she told her supporters in Victoria.

Botterell, a retired lawyer, said it was an “exciting day” for him and he was “honoured” for the opportunity to serve his constituents.

“Tonight’s a night for celebration,” he said. “There will be lots of discussion over the upcoming weeks, but I am totally supportive of Sonia and I’m going do everything I can to support her and the path forward that she chooses to take because that’s her decision.”

Royal Roads professor David Black said the Greens retaining official party status after winning two seats could give them “some real bargaining power” in what is shaping up to be a very tight legislature.

“The Greens are going to be the kingmakers here whatever happens, if the race is as close as it is right now between two larger parties,” he said in an interview on election night.

B.C. Conservatives president Aisha Estey called her party’s showing “the ultimate underdog story” and relished what she called a “historic campaign.”

“Whether it’s government tonight or official opposition, we’re not going anywhere. There’s a Conservative Party in B.C. now finally,” she said. “We’re back.”

Rustad’s unlikely rise came after he was thrown out of the Opposition, then known as the BC Liberals, joined the Conservatives as leader, and steered them to a level of popularity that led to the collapse of his old party, now called BC United — all in just two years.

Outgoing NDP MLA George Heyman, who did not run for re-election, said it was always “going to be a tight election.”

“It’s reminiscent of 2017,” Heyman said, referring to the last B.C. election where no party reached majority. “The message is clear, people have been struggling. They’re having a hard time.”

The B.C. Conservatives set to enter the legislature include Brent Chapman in Surrey South, who had been heavily criticized during the campaign for an old social media post that called Palestinian children “inbred” and “time bombs.”

A group of former BC United MLAs running as Independents were all defeated, with Karin Kirkpatrick, Dan Davies, Coralee Oakes and Tom Shypitka losing to Conservatives.

Most results came in quickly on Saturday night, as promised by Elections BC, with electronic vote tabulation being used provincewide for the first time. But the closeness of the race defied expectations of a quick call.

There had already been a big turnout before election day on Saturday, with more than a million advance votes cast, representing more than 28 per cent of valid voters and smashing the previous record for early polling.

It was a rain-soaked election day for many voters, who braved high winds and torrential downpours brought by an atmospheric river weather system.

Two voting sites in Cariboo-Chilcotin in the B.C. Interior and one in Maple Ridge in the Lower Mainland were closed due to power cuts, Elections BC said, while several sites in Kamloops, Langley and Port Moody, as well as on Hornby, Denman and Mayne islands, were temporarily shut but reopened by mid-afternoon.

— With files from Brenna Owen, Dirk Meissner, Brieanna Charlebois, Ashley Joannou and Darryl Greer

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 19, 2024.

The outcome of British Columbia’s election was unclear after a close race between the NDP and the B.C. Conservatives, with the Greens poised to play a role in a potential minority government.

Here’s what the party leaders said on Saturday’s election night.

“We don’t know what the final count is going to be in the province, but what we do know is that there was a clear majority for the progressive values. And I take a lot of comfort from that … There is also another message in this narrowest of margins, that we’ve got to do better, and that was our commitment to British Columbians. We’ve got to do better, and we will do better.”

— NDP Leader David Eby

“People are counting on the hope, on the opportunity, on the vision of what can be (a) prosperous British Columbia, not one, quite frankly, that is in a welfare state that it is today … And I can tell you something else, if we’re in that situation of the NDP forming a minority government, we will look at every single opportunity from day one to bring them down at the very first opportunity and get back to the polls.”

— B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad

“It does appear that the Greens are still going to play a pretty pivotal role in the B.C. legislature. It’s a strange time in politics when, during an atmospheric river, people came out and voted for a party that’s denying the reality of climate change. But hey, this is where we’re at. But I am so excited for (Green winners) Jeremy Valeriote and Rob Botterell. This is incredible. This is a passing of the torch and I am going to be there to mentor and guide and lead in any way that I can.”

— BC Green Leader Sonia Furstenau

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 20, 2024

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