Even before I left Guelph, I began helping Jean-Marc Lacoste, the nominated Liberal candidate for my home riding of Laurentides–Labelle, having met him on my last visit before moving in the spring of 2010. [ Continued from Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
Continue readingAuthor: David Graham
A View From the Back Bench: Going professional
2008 had been a busy year for me. I wrote dozens of essays and articles, ran data for a pair of election campaigns, started my first newspaper column, became a regular guest on a local radio show — Royal City Rag with Jan Hall on the University of Guelph campus
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: Learning to campaign, for real
In the year following Frank’s nomination, I expressed an interest in getting involved with his campaign and helping him win the eventual by-election. It took a lot of patience, taught me a lot, and left me addicted to the street-fight of election campaigns. [ Continued from Part 1 | 2
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: The politics of politics: my first nomination campaign
After the 2006 election, with the Liberals in opposition and Martin out as leader, Guelph MP Brenda Chamberlain let it be known that she would not run again, ultimately resigning before the next general election, effective April 7th, 2008. This opened the door for a nomination race through 2007 for
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: A Leader I Could Believe In
On April 7th, 2006, former environment minister Stéphane Dion announced his candidacy for Liberal leader, only two years after embarrassing Paul Martin into keeping him in cabinet to continue his work on what was then still more often called global warming. [ Continued from Part 1 | 2 | 3
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: Palestine Motion Amendment: Stately Compromise or Compromised State?
Monday, the House of Commons spent the day debating a lengthy NDP opposition day motion to call on the government to “officially recognize the State of Palestine”. Barely 20 minutes before the vote was scheduled, Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon proposed an amendment changing this controversial part of the bottom
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: Getting Disengaged From Politics
At the close of 2003, Paul Martin finally won the decade-long civil war he had waged inside the federal Liberal Party, sending Jean Chretien into retirement and taking the reins of the country himself. [ Continued from Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: Early experiences in media and performance
In the summer of 1997, between 10th and 11th grade, a movie production company approached my parents, well-known local realtors at the time, for help scouting locations around Sainte-Agathe for a Hollywood movie that would be filming. [ Continued from Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: Keeping Track
[ Continued from Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 ] The one common thread of my life has been my love of trains. I was obsessed with trains, ships, and planes as a child. As a grown-up, I took photos of trains,
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: Early lessons in Canada’s telecom industry
[ Continued from Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 ] In early 2001, my grandfather wanted to show my generation his birthplace while he was still healthy enough to do so, and so much of my extended family travelled together to Istanbul. When I
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: False equivalency
There is said to be an ancient curse: “may you live in interesting times.” With attention-grabbing existential wars taking place in the middle east and eastern Europe, and both the US and Canada marching toward right wing extremist leaders, we may be wondering quite who cast it upon us. Wikipedia
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: Career One: High Tech
[ Continued from Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 ] My first practical political experience came through my involvement in the world of free software. I stumbled into a career in the community when I was only 18, and spent many years organising, reforming, and leading
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: A Brief Attempt at University
[ Continued from Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ] In 1998, on the advice of my school guidance counsellor, my parents sent me on a 22-day Canadian Outward Bound Wilderness School course in northern Ontario. It consisted of an 8-day hike through Pukaskwa National Park along Lake
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: Why the Liberals and the NDP should not merge
Whenever the Liberals are down in the polls, pundits come out of the woodwork demanding the NDP and the Liberals merge to unite the left and save the country from a Conservative movement supported by a plurality, but not a majority. Had we listened to those calls ten years ago,
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: Studying in the US
[ Continued from Part 1 | 2 | 3 ] In 1995, I left Canada to study, giving me my first real sense of direction. I was already politically active by then. When I was 12 years old, my parents were helping Laurentides Liberal candidate Michelle Tisseyre in the 1993
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: Family time and early education
[ Continued from Part 1 | Part 2 ] We did not have much in the way of family time for most of the year, making up for it with an annual drive to Florida to visit my grandparents, who had retired young and become snowbirds in a condo development
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: Learning community engagement
[Continued from part 1: Origins] Aside from growing much of their own food, running a high workload business, and raising a family, my parents were constantly involved in the community throughout my growing up, and remain so to this day. As one of many examples, my mother successfully spearheaded the
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: Origins
As we go are in the holiday season, I want to take some time to reflect on my upbringing and how it guided me into public office in the first place. It is a question I am often asked in some form or other, and the answer is complex and
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: Housing: where we are headed, and why
As I take possession of my new home in the red hot Moncton, New Brunswick market, where values have more than doubled in five years, I am left to contemplate where housing prices are heading — and why. After the 2008 housing crash, the housing market across North America not
Continue readingA View From the Back Bench: Linguistic Nationalism Is Ethnic Nationalism
The issue of linguistic minority rights between Quebec and the rest of Canada is one that has not in any way been resolved. Defending English in Quebec is to defend French in the rest of Canada, a point often missed by both sides in the rather ridiculous debate over which
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