00:04 - 29.11.05
Station
As you may have guessed, dear diary, I have been tied up with things - or people - electoral. Yesterday talking with two other past and present Returning Officers was perhaps the most informative. The past one is on her way to Palestine as we speak. Last night she said that her whole family had spent the day crying. I'm guessing that part of that has to do with news breaking yesterday about the kidnap of four humanitarian workers in Iraq - one Brit, one American and two Canadians. The other might be the bombings in relatively safe parts of the Middle East the past few weeks. Doesn't give one a very great sense of security even when it is UN sponsored. The present Returning Officer allowed that she had been asked back to help run the second round of voting for the Iraqi community here in Calgary mid-December. With the big vote in our Federal parliament imminent, it hardly seems a reasonable request. Maybe they know something we don't.
The push to force an election call now still continues to puzzle me. Technically a non-confidence vote is only pertinent to the defeat of a key government sponsored piece of legislation or bill. Most commonly it is a treasury bill that is the donnybrook of a minority government and there have been a number of those brought forward lately. Other major pieces of legislation have also been tabled in the House, but those are now sitting in the hallowed chambers of the Senate waiting for that sober second thought process. They will die on the order paper if the government is dissolved. What is it about having an election date past mid-February that has the opposition parties so spooked. Well criminal charges are pending against some of their members, but that is always a feature of the federal scene it seems. One more scandal really isn't something that will register all that much with weary voters. Not unless the hidden factor has such salacious and frightening details that even those who just want to do their Christmas shopping in peace would take notice. The bill from the opposition parties was passed late this evening and already the news media is setting the date of the event even though the Prime Minister has yet to visit our Governor General - her Majesty the Queen's representative in Canada - to discuss his options. Hmmmmmm. On the secure intranet we Returning Officers share with headquarters in Ottawa, a round of birthday greetings was making the rounds. Either there is an inside joke I've missed among the eastern Canadian Returning Officers, or there are an awful lot of first decan Sagittarian types running the show in their electoral districts. Could be that Jupiter - ruling planet of Sagittarius - as Justice thang, I guess.
Personally, I also spent a lot of time on the telephone and the internet trying to co-ordinate all the service people we need to help us get rolling yesterday and today. What is odd is that they are calling me before I am having to search for them. The building manager where my office is located expressed awe this morning, when I alerted him to who would be working in his building today. He especially wondered at how it was that the local telephone monopoly could be persuaded to attend with less than the four to six months notice all other customers get. Personally I'd like to know myself what the magic words are. My email that disappeared when all three of my computers crashed - work, elections and personal - still is unavailable to me even though I have a business service contract with them that guarantees that those will be kept on their server. Their response to my sons when they called in to troubleshoot, was that they wouldn't even look for the problem. Then the company wonders why it is losing so much business to all the new competition on the block. In many ways, their negligence is obstructing my ability to do my election work as well as my day job, since a lot of my contacts and a lot of the quotes/tenders I called for in the spring reside in that missing material. I guess I could take them to court, switch companies and stop paying their outrageous fees all at the same time, but all I really want is my email back. That is likely the one thing I won't get, if I try the other remedies available to me. Don't know how I'm going to work that one out. Just one more frustration to deal with. Add in that my water pipes started leaking last night and I'm ready to push Mr Mercury retrograde back in to direct orbit personally. Bleagh.
Went in to work today in the downtown office. Handed in my timesheet then went to work on th weekly report - more of what's missing from my email, the drafts. One of my supervisor's counterparts from Texas is in for the next three days, so there was a certain amount of tension in her voice when she came to see how I was holding up, given the sickness and all the election fooferah I need to juggle. We chatted a bit, then I met with the second in command. She has been in charge of the used office supplies and equipment that other staff have been cleaning out of severely overcrowded space. About a month ago, she shipped several boxes of empty files and binders to my home for use in the election and today she asked if she could send more my way. Sure thing - good corporate citizenship to reduce the cost of an election to the taxpayers. It's the reverse of the one supplier I'm trying to deal with. Lowest bid overall by a good amount, but she is always the one to try and double bill or to increase the cost of supplies she provides by several hundred dollars over the course of the event. The last two elections I refused to use her company, thinking she might have got the message by now, but apparently not. Sent an email to the next lowest bidder, hoping he can manage to fit my order in with his other clients, including some of the other Returning Officers in Calgary. We'll see.
The second in command asked if I'd mind changing gears and assessing a couple of major mulitbook length legal documents for the morning's work. She was hoping that they would be identical, so that one could be shredded. The answer was no - both would have to be retained because of a couple of pages out of thousands, having slight but significant differences. The best part about the page by page comparison, was that the sale was of what appeared to be a huge amount of property in Texas. As I was comparing some of the names, some of the history books I've read about the development of agriculture in Alberta started edging their way into my consciousness. Those names were the very ones of the old ranching families from Texas who sent the first herds of beef cattle on the long cattle drives to jump start the development of ranching here. It isn't only our oil and gas reserves that we have in common. The agriculture came first.
One book in particular - John Ware's Cow Country by Grant MacEwan - seemed almost to be playing out before my eyes, as I was reading through the documents. That and the old television show Rawhide, one of my favorites "move em up, head em out, ride em in - Rawhide". Alright, so maybe you had to be there. John Ware started his life as a slave from Georgia who somehow managed to gain his freedom and learned to ranch in Texas. When the families there sent up those first cattle drives, John was one of the cowboys who travelled with the herds, making certain they survived long enough to reach Medicine River in Alberta. He founded his own family dynasty here and died a respected member of the ranching community many years later. Thrown from his horse was how he met his earthly end, but his legend lives on in our yearly celebrations like the Calgary Stampede. What was really cool was that for our centennial, a number of cowboys from Texas rode that long trail up to Alberta to join in the celebration of our Province's 100th birthday. Family ties and all that I guess. Too bad my supervisor and her counterpart from Texas can't find some common ground to work from isn't it? Maybe then I'd have my contract renewed. But then again, maybe I'll be too busy running an election to have time for it anyway. Think I'd rather be in Palestine right now though with that one other Returning Officer. Someday.
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