The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

|| WATERLOO CHRONICLE 886â€"2830 Fax: 886â€"9383 editorial@waterloochronicle.ca sales@waterloochronicle.ca composing@water|oochronicle.ca The Waterloo Chronicle is published every Wednesday by the Fairway Group, owned by CityMedia Group Inc., a subsidiary of Torstar Corp The views of our columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent those of the newspaper â€" Rob Leuschner . Dwayne Weidendorf Group Publisher Group Sales Director/ Associate Publisher Andrea Bealey Bb Vibaniae Reporter, Ext. 227. Sports Editor, Ext, 229 75 King St. South, Suite 201 Waterloo, Ontario N2J 1P2 Manager, Ext. 230 Sales, Ext. 23 40050478 International Standard Serial Number letters to the bditor They should be signed with name. address and phone number and will be verified for accuracy. No unsigned letters will be published Submissions may be edited for length. so please be hrief (Copyright in letters and other materials submitted to the Publisher and accepted for publication remains with the author but the publisher and its beensees may freety reproduce them in print electronx or other forms. (ur mailing address is 75 King & S Sinte 201 Waterion N2TTP? Special Projects Manager Blair Matthews Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreemeni Number The Watenl Letters Policy ISSN 0832â€"3410 Special Projects Sales. 621 AAI 7 lanne Dean Even with the polls closed minutes before, the local media outnumbered her loyal supporters by two to one. It was quite different from the recepâ€" tion Witmer enjoyed four years earlier in the same room as her jubilant supporters celebrated a secâ€" ond Conservative majority with a full room and a raucous party. It seemed like more of a commemoration than a coronation for the local MPP this time after first being elected to Queen‘s Park in 1990, before helpâ€" ing to form the government in 1995 and 1999, Her campaign signs sat stacked like recycling at the front door, with neither the willing hands nor the ready hearts of the true believers to hoist them to rafters for the rest of the evening. The few supâ€" porters around were instead wringing their hands as they waited grimly for the results on two glowing boxes set up to display the results. had a sense this was going to be a different Iprovincial election night from the minute I walked into the Regent Room of the Waterloo Inn to cover the campaign wrapâ€"up party of local incumbent Elizabeth Witmer. As they cast furtive glances around the room, they talked about the dire consequences that a change in government would bring to the province. The wind was blowing cold outside that night, and it was getting colder by the minute inside for the media when the initial results started coming in. What have we all lost in this election? The room draped in Th Jnt Tory blue curtains offered no consolation for those BOB looking for comfort from VRBANAC the gathering storm. And the finger of blame was already being pointed That all changed when the first local polls came out showing Witmer in the lead. Sure, they thought, we can lose the rest of the province as long as we hold on locally. And what started out as a trickle became a flood of people swamping the room. Even a concession speech by ousted Premier Ernie Eves couldn‘t dampen the renewed sense of optimism for the local candidate After all, look at what Witmer had done for the local community said her dyedâ€"inâ€"theâ€"wool supâ€" porters. No politician has done more for the comâ€" munity, added a string of wellâ€"known local faces now come to show their support. And while the local Tory supporters sfhrits were buayed by the results, the opposite was true at the local Liberal headquarters, where the TV images were becoming more subdued When the race was finally declared in Witmer‘s favour. her discarded signs were picked up again as she rode in on a sea of blue. A few nuggets about respecting the will of the voters and most of the media were off to check in with the runnerâ€"ups By the time we got over to the Plumber‘s Hall in north Waterioo, the party was over at the other camp. even though the Liberals had won a land slide. And while the night ended up being about the winners and the losers, at least they hothered to show up That‘s something that only 56 per cent of their fellow voters managed to do And maybe that‘s the bigger story after more than 44 per cent of eligible voters didn‘t exercise their democratic right and responsibility And we heard the usual excuses the next day about why they choose not to participate For me, too many people out there are companâ€" son shoppers. simply picking and choosing when they join in. But elections are an exercise in shaow ing up or shutting up You do one or the other. Too many people chose to do the later and that make it a pretty hollow vic tory for all those who still believe in the process TEWPOIN _ Never too old for Ein Prosit las, here‘s some more on the election: A|\Vnh all the polls prociaiming nearâ€"dead neats, it‘s ammazing how many candidates were running scared. If you checked on any riding headquarters, you found it nervous, but nervous. The candiâ€" dates had all been scared by those ohâ€"soâ€"close polls, and every riding HQ was a hotbed of cold feet. The Mixed Bag: .iz Witmer was blunt about the impact of the polls. It wasn‘t until some showed her trailing that her campaign got more volunteers and cranked up in earnest. Sean Strickland again gave it a gallant effort, but 1iz had too much going for her in terms of the huge changes that have been made to our hospitals. Say 1 suppose you can‘t really call them changes. They‘re more significant than that. Of course, there are still some wacky things even the great hospitals do. For example, they put you in a private room and give you a public What Next? So where do Dalton McGuinty and his Liberals go next? First of | all, they are going to have to plead wl (ll[ ‘l(l\(p(l(\('(“l'(\[\ on some ll' \‘ ( )4\( A their promises w The tab for it all would be just too large for him to undertake The same would probably have been true for krmie Eves if the Tones had tnumphed. It‘s time both parties took it easy on the promises laxpaw-rs have to pay their bills, too, and they know you can t pay them with a surfert of promises Say, how long will Eves stay as OA Gnit leader? The expectation is it BA won t be long. It‘s hard to envision him as Opposition leader on a long:term basis His personality wouldn‘t abide it. Although, one has io admit, his days on the campaign trail seem to have hurnanized him a bit The role of Howard Hammptan has also been a matter of speculation. Still, the NDP isn‘t as performanceâ€"onented as other parties, so there isn‘t likety be a huge fuss about it. Who‘d be a successor to Eves? OÂ¥ course, Liz Witmer merits a mention, but whether she d want to give it a go is something else The person mast often mentioned as a lead â€" ership candidate is Jim Flaherty, an advocate of hard â€"night poltices. 1 can do without him at any time Gosh, we still have two elections to go. The Waterioo municipal ballot follies are nigh and But that leadership race will come in due course. Not soon. No! No! No! THE REAL CURE Lo 2# A.S ‘A& *‘ }:@\‘Q & @‘ 4 "%z :)\\\ j I \y s \{ 3, e ‘ . thke 41. : .”\ "> + , )"\3 > ‘.1’ M fl;\ " | °_ [ e . HRONICLE |f rinma _ AND THAT CONQULDES OLR OVERANALYSIS OF LAST WEEKS PROVINCAL EECTION_ AND NoW LET‘Ss TAKE A LooK AT Tue Excimus 7 â€"â€"â€", _ UPCOMIG MMICPALEIECTION! Say, we‘ve had some elections that were really lopsided. We had a dandy so oneâ€"sided that CTV predicted that the CBC wouldn‘t cover it. the federal election in within sight, The Jinx Hurt: A final word on the election: You‘d have to say that Eves and the Tories had almost as much bad luck as they had misjudgâ€" ments. They had the SARS outbreak, the madâ€"cow infection, the big hydro blackout, the week when hydro nearly went kaput, the budget speech from a machine shop and so on. Those were the days when the PCs were car oming from one crisis to the next. And cam paign acoustics added to the noise of the dia logues about them. _ _ Ah yes, it‘s useless to hold folks to someâ€" thing they say while they‘re madly in love, drunk or running for office. s Staying Green: We‘ve had a touch of snow, but, oddly, the leaves are as green as you could hope to get in October And we should remember that we‘ll be toilâ€" ing over the same leaves a short T omebence Say. as a matter of fact. that troupe has been disbanded on account of age. A few days ago 1 DY asked a onceâ€"great Oktoberfester D if he was all set for the event. "I‘m going to participate as much as I did last year. Which is not at all." he chuckled You are left wondering how many others have graduated to the ranks of the better behaved. Of course. you have to wonder how many have entered at the end® 1 suspect that Oktaberfest gets a slew of recruits each year. Take the number of universi ty and college students in the community each There‘s enough of them to make the festiâ€" val‘s attendance figures bloom each year. And the festival is notoriousty wellâ€"behaved which speaks well for the students. The Thanksgiving Day parade is, for many, the festival‘s high point. Cross your fingers, and hope for good weather. And if you haven‘t gone to the halls, don‘t feel dislayal. You may have been there at another time. Or maybe you have pensioned yourself off as overâ€"age Or as the old rhyme puts its: The family which rakes together set italics aches together. â€" The Fest Is Cometh: So Oktoberfest is nigh, but there seems to scarcely any fuss about it. Or maybe it‘s just because I don‘t hang with the hin Prosit troupe any more