Spotlight on Cambridge
CAMBRIDGE — Shane Murphy, her hair tinged purple, toyed with voting New Democrat orange or Green party emerald as she snipped a client’s hair on a Thursday morning two weeks before the provincial election.
“Those are the two I’m playing with,” said the 59-year-old Murphy, who has owned Clippers hair salon for two decades in the Galt core.
Murphy said she usually votes NDP.
But her patrons in the middle of the reshaped Cambridge riding — Hespeler is chopped off and the upper bangs of Brant County are added to Galt, Preston and North Dumfries — are 90 per cent Conservative.
So there are many politically charged conversations between Murphy, raised by a Liberal family in Sudbury, and her Cambridge clientele.
“I refuse to vote for (Doug) Ford this election,” said Murphy, dismissing the Tory blue option. “If I complain so much about Donald Trump, I can’t vote for something the same, conscientiously.”
And what about returning the Liberals to provincial power on June 7?
“Honestly, you and I both know that (Premier) Kathleen Wynne gave away the bank trying to buy votes for this election and it hasn’t worked,” said Murphy, who chaired the Downtown Cambridge BIA for nine years.
“People are fed up with the Liberals, right?”
Cambridge’s provincial seat went Liberal red for the first time in 71 years in 2014 when Kathryn McGarry, a critical care nurse, won the riding. Since then, a long-sought $200-million expansion and upgrade of Cambridge Memorial Hospital has neared completion.
And McGarry, once the Min-
ister of Natural Resources and Forestry, now heads the Ministry of Transportation as Cambridge pursues a Toronto-bound GO Train connection with either Milton or Guelph.
Cambridge hasn’t had a transport minister since New Democrat Mike Farnan in 1995. He was followed by 19 years of Tory control of the seat by the late Gerry Martiniuk and his successor Rob Leone.
Toss out the Liberals and whatever political advantages go along with having a local transportation minister likely disappear too for a Cambridge riding with a 2016 population of 115,463, a median household income of $76, 258 and a poverty rate of 11.3 per cent.
“It’s too bad,” said Murphy, considering McGarry’s performance as Cambridge MPP. “Because, honestly, I think she’s done a good job for Cambridge. I really, truly believe she did. We can see it, right? The hospital, things like that. But I think it’s a one-shot deal for her. She’s with the wrong people.”
McGarry, who won the riding in her third election attempt to wrestle it from the Tories, is in for a tough political fight to keep the seat she won by 3,069 votes over Leone in June 2014.
Marjorie Knight, a family outreach worker at Kitchener’s House of Friendship, is the NDP candidate.
Belinda Karahalios, the wife of prominent Conservative activist Jim Karahalios, is running for the Progressive Conservatives. Michele Braniff, an artist, is the Green party candidate. Allan Dettweiler is running for the Libertarian Party.
Whichever candidate wins in Cambridge will be pestered by municipal politicians to provide funding for local projects.
The second phase of Waterloo Region’s light rail transit line, from Kitchener to Cambridge, could cost $1.36 billion. Regional politicians will surely ask the province to pay up to the full cost, as it pledged for LRT projects in Mississauga and Brampton.
The city’s 400-name waiting list for affordable housing needs addressing even as a safe injection site for the Galt area is sought to help deal with the opioid crisis, which saw 29 overdose deaths in Cambridge last year. The province could also help pay for wraparound services that go along with that site, to help addicts recover.
Even as the election campaign heated up last week, a dozen empty syringe caps and alcohol wipe wrappers were easily spotted just off a Grand River trail behind Galt Collegiate.
Meanwhile, just around the block from Clippers, right next to Knight’s campaign office, Doné Katsarov was conducting an election poll at his Ainslie Street barber shop, like “Danny the Barber” has often done over the past 40 years.
His clients are asked to name the provincial election victor.
They write their choice on a slip of paper, which is folded up and slid inside a silver canister. After three weeks, the container was crammed with slips. A day or two before the election, he’ll count them up.
Katsarov’s personal prediction is kept to his 83-year-old self.
“I don’t share,” said Katsarov, who saw Knight’s campaign office pop up next door. “I have my opinion, mind you. That’s another story.”
Back at Clippers, Murphy finished trimming the hair of Dave Thomas, a 51-year-old accountant. He was less concerned with which party wins in Cambridge riding and beyond.
“I’m just worried that we end up with a minority government, which is not good for our province, I don’t think,” Thomas said.
“And then we might end up in another election. I’d just prefer one strong government to lead us.”