How veil issue plays in rural Ontario. Walkom,
GORRIE, ONT.— Myrna Gibson is in a quandary.
The retired food-processing worker is sick of Stephen Harper.
“We need a change,” she says as we talk in this small village northwest of Kitchener. “Prime Minister Harper has his good points. But I think there should be a new leader.”
Yet at the same time, she supports Harper’s hard line against Syrian refugees.
“I don’t agree with the idea of bringing all those foreigners over here,” she says.
Her friend Fran Templeman agrees. “I hear the Liberals want to fly a plane over and bring in 20,000 — with no security check,” she says.
In fact, the Liberals say they would bring in 20,000 more Syrian refugees only after they have undergone security checks.
But nuances don’t always matter. The Muslim issue has come to Huron-Bruce, a sprawling rural Ontario riding on the Lake Huron shoreline that is home to relatively few Muslims.
A former Liberal fiefdom, HuronBruce has been held by the Conservatives since 2008. In the 2011 election, the New Democrats surged into second place. In this contest, all three parties — plus the Greens — are battling hard.
During two days of travelling across this riding of farms, small towns and villages, I find a wide range of opinion on just about everything.
Jessie Martyn of Wingham says she has voted Liberal all of her life. But this time, she says, she’s going Conservative.
“We’ve been talking a lot in the family about the election,” she says. “They say: If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”
Just down the street, Valdeane Gedcke says the Conservative ad campaign targeting Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has made her wary of Harper. “It turns me right off.”
She admits she rather liked New Democratic Party candidate and former journalist Gerard Creces when he dropped by to canvass.
Yet she might again cast her ballot for the Conservatives. After all, Conservative incumbent Ben Lobb did help her to renew her passport.
“He’s such a good guy,” Gedcke says. “It’s hard not to vote for him.”
In Southampton, semi-retired funeral home worker Wendy Reid says of Harper: “His time has gone.”
Who then would she vote for? Definitely not the NDP, she says. As for Trudeau, “they (the Conserva- tives) hit the nail on the head when they said Justin just isn’t ready.”
In Wingham, Ward and Patti Robertson invite me into their home. “It’s very confusing,” Ward, a spa manager, says. “All I know is that I don’t want another term of Stephen Harper.”
“With Harper, there’s fear,” says Patti, an interior decorator. “There’s little hope. They want us to be afraid. That’s not how we live our lives.”
In Goderich, shoe-store worker Judith Cumming echoes that sentiment. “A new leader. That’s what everyone wants,” she says. “I think Mr. Trudeau will be our guy . . . We were fans of Pierre (Justin Trudeau’s father and a former prime minister). We want to give Justin a try.”
Truck driver Bob Husnik of Bluevale makes a similar point. “I’d like to see a Trudeau come back,” he says. “We need someone who will speak up to the middleman. If he’s got any of his dad’s blood, he’ll be tough.”
In Port Elgin, retired nuclearpower worker Larry Foucault says he is most worried about the low Canadian dollar driving up the price of food. He plans to vote for the NDP. “Unions have done more for me than the government ever did,” he says.
A few streets away, Victoria Serda — a former Green candidate who quit the party because she found leader Elizabeth May too dictatorial — is leaning to the Liberals. She says that’s because Liberal candidate Allan Thompson, a former Toronto Star reporter, is “a very good person . . . I’ve seen him around a lot.”
Fellow Port Elgin resident Shannon Hall also plans to vote Liberal. “I have four kids and no time for politics so I just vote according to what my grandfather tells me to do,” she explains. “He’s 98 and he says vote Liberal.”
And then there’s the lurking Muslim issue.
Southampton resident John Peirson and his wife Trudy say they are disgusted by Harper’s reluctance to admit Syrian refugees, as well as his hard line against Muslim women who veil their faces.
“Ridiculous,” says Trudy. “They’re wasting too much time on this.”
But others think Harper is on precisely the right track.
In Wingham, Kim Hogarth lets loose a string of profanities when Harper’s name comes up. “He’s selling out the country,” she says.
“But he’s sticky about letting Muslims into this country and that’s a bonus. It’s the only positive thing about Harper.” Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.