Candidate visits Trent class to discuss reconciliation

Peterborough-Kawartha Liberal incumbent Maryam Monsef plans to visit Trent University on Tuesday morning to discuss reconciliation and representation with students in the Indigenous studies program.

The conversation is to take place in the Morton Reading Room at Champlain College, Room 303.

NDP candidate Candace Shaw spoke to the class on Sept. 17, while Conservative candidate Michael Skinner was there on Sept. 24. Green candidate Andrew MacGregor is scheduled for Oct. 8.

Candidates were invited to speak for about 30 minutes on Indigenous issues locally and nationally before taking questions and comments from students.

The students taking part are enrolled in a course called Reconciliation and Representation: Indigenous Issues in Canadian Media, one of the courses Trent offers via its Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies.

Candidates face the questions

Peterborough-Kawartha candidates will spend four nights together over the next week — provided they all show up for every event.

There are four scheduled all-candidates meetings in the days ahead.

• Wednesday at 7 p.m.: televised debate on Your TV.

• Thursday: at 7 p.m., all-candidates debate on environmental issues at Trent University.

• Oct. 7 at 11:30 a.m., all-candidates meeting hosted by the Rotary Club, Holiday Inn.

• Oct. 9, all-candidates debate on arts and culture, Market Hall.

Some candidates occasionally skip these meetings, usually citing other commitments.

You can’t actually Vote Rhino

“VOTE RHINO” signs have been spotted around town over the past week.

The handwritten red signs have been seen on utility poles along busy streets in the Peterborough-Kawartha riding.

The Rhino party was founded as a satirical parody of political parties, and has popped up during election campaigns since 1963. Among its campaign platforms over the years: Putting the national debt on a Visa card, abolishing all laws to end crime, turning Manitoba into a parking lot, making the Trans-Canada Highway one-way and banning winter.

In its best performance, in 1980, the party nominated 120 candidates and won 110,286, or 2.43 per cent of the vote.

The current version, formally known as The Second Rhinoceros Party, is a descendent of the original Rhinoceros Party of Canada, which dissolved in 1993.

Recognized by Elections Canada, it ran candidates in 27 ridings in 2015, pledging to ban guns and butter, tear down the Rocky Mountains (to give Albertans a better view) and move the nation’s capital to Kapuskasing.

This time out, the party is running 113 candidates, including a man named Maxime Bernier running against the People’s Party of Canada leader of the same name in the same riding, and Real BatRhino, who campaigns in a Batman costume, in Drummond, Que.

There is no candidate in Peterborough-Kawartha.