Toronto Centre, this is your wake-up call

Good morning to the riding of Toronto Centre. It’s Monday, the forecast calls for sunny skies and temperatures around O°C, and you are voting in a by-election today. Did you forget? That’s okay. So did the folks up in Willowdale, the other Toronto riding which also goes to the polls today. The people of Vancouver Quadra in B.C. and Desnethé–Missinippi–Churchill River in Saskatchewan also let it slip. So did the rest of us. We really ought to call these the Daylight Savings By-Elections: something you’d have completely forgotten if your morning paper didn’t remind you.

Even the geeks who produce on-line election predictions are asleep at the switch. Greg Morrow at DemocraticSpace has let the by-elections slide completely as he prepares to re-launch his site on the occasion of a general election call later this year. Election Prediction Project has posted its guesses, though it hasn’t bothered to list the candidates. Even Pinnacle Sports, where in times past you could wager on the outcome of the Outremont by-election or the Liberal leadership, is taking a pass on today’s votes.

In each Toronto riding, the Liberal candidate is someone who lost to the current leader. Normally this would be considered a mark in their favour, as in, “They’re leadership material, don’cha know.” But these days most Canadians are scratching their heads over how anyone could lose to Stéphane Dion, so perhaps this is not their strongest talking point. Nevertheless, their impending victories will make Liberal war-of-succession rumours all the juicier. The most interesting trivia to be gleaned from any of today’s votes is that John Turner, the Rhinoceros Party candidate who last ran in 1988 in Vancouver Quadra against Liberal leader John Turner, is running again, this time under the NeoRhino banner. Their motto: From Party to Party till Victory. I’ll drink to that. Happy St. Patrick’s Day.