Tag: london

Thank you!

To everyone that made the Rally for Canada rallies a success, I want to say a sincere thank you. In Ottawa, we braved -10C weather and managed to turn out between 2000-4000 (RCMP said 3000, Ottawa Citizen reports 3500!!). In Toronto, about 1500 turned out to the rally there. Calgary had reports of up to 5000 people in the city core rallying. We rallied people in cities from Halifax to Victoria and places like London, Kitchener, Saskatoon, and Kelowna in BC. In total, over 20 cities held rallies today. Looks like we have a real grassroots movement on our hands here. We’re having the debate that they didn’t want us to have. Thank you to everyone who helped make this possible.

It’s been a busy day, and I expect a busy couple of days wrapping up this event. Please pass on your stories from the day and I’ll post them here!

UPDATE: Winnipeg had 600 people in about -25C weather (with windchill). The rally was bigger than the coalition rally which was held in a warm hotel ballroom.

BoJo takes London

Great news today from our Conservative friends across the pond. Former Tory MP Boris Johnson has won the London mayoral election according to The Times. The charismatic Johnson known for his sharp wit has penned correspondence for first the Telegraph and then the Spectator for time spanning over a decade.

Johnson’s writing became known to me a number of years ago via his blog. He was an early adopter of the political niche of the self-publishing medium and it served as a useful tool for the distribution of his politically-inspired musings and hey, constituency outreach too!

Today’s news means that Ken Livingston – a charismatic man in his own right, yet a brutally ardent socialist with connections to Hugo Chavez – will leave the mayor’s office after holding it for the last eight years. During this period, of course, London and the UK as a whole churned internally as the western worldview became reconfigured since the events of September 11th, 2001 and then the Iraq war. Livingston, dubbed loathingly by his detractors as “Red Ken” famously referred to U.S. President George W. Bush as “the greatest threat to life on this planet” and shirked his diplomatic responsibility and organized a counter-demonstration to the President when the USA’s greatest ally in the Iraq war made a state visit in 2004.

Johnson’s election guarantees that the drama of London politics will continue for at least another term. Most importantly, now we’ve got our favourite member of London’s dramatis personae centre-stage.

Congratulations Boris!