Calgary humiliates Toronto with its election results
With all the hubbub around Toronto’s municipal election—and it has received attention far beyond our little hamlet—we’d forgotten that other cities hold elections, too. Even places outside of Ontario! Calgary, for example, held its municipal elections yesterday, and the results were pretty stunning: Naheed Nenshi, a Harvard-educated Ismaili Muslim, came from behind to take 40 per cent of the vote, despite polling in the single digits as recently as August. According to the Calgary Herald, it was quite a night:
Nenshi, 38, originally considered a long shot, defeated longtime alderman Ric McIver and former TV anchor Barb Higgins in a race that attracted voters in droves.
By midnight, Nenshi had opened a lead of more than 21,000 votes over second-place McIver, capturing about 39 per cent of the popular vote, compared with McIver at 32 per cent and Higgins at 26 per cent.
A son of immigrants who graduated from the prestigious American university of Harvard, Nenshi is Calgary’s first visible minority mayor. He has also become the first leader of Muslim faith to head a major Canadian city.
Meanwhile, in Toronto, we’ve been given our choice of white men since Sarah Thomson dropped out—though, of course, George Smitherman is gay, and thus a minority. He’s also a former deputy premier whose experience of the past 10 years has perhaps been slightly different from that of a Muslim, even one from Harvard.
Hues and creeds aside, Toronto’s election is going to make for an interesting final week: polls are tightening, endorsements keep rolling out, and turnout looks like it will be high. But at this point—unlike Calgary—it’s pretty clear that the mayor-elect will be one of the two candidates who’ve been leading for months.
• Calgary chooses Naheed Nenshi for mayor [Calgary Herald]
• Kevin Libin: Calgary’s new mayor, that other guy [National Post]
• Calgarian becomes Canada’s first Muslim mayor [CTV News]
• Don Martin: Nenshi victory puts Calgary’s Cowtown image to rest [National Post]
On the contrary – the conclusion is wrong.
Nenshi came from behind to win that race over two heavily favoured candidates. The parallel with Toronto is that Nenshi is Calgary’s Joe Pantalone!!!
What it proves is that you should vote for what you want and a week might just be enough to get the results changed!
This kind of sounds like reverse-racism to me. So what if Nenshi is muslim or dark-skinned. We voted for the best guy. Maybe the Toronto guys are the best guys even if they happen to be white.
“Being given our choice of white men” is just as racist as someone in Calgary saying “how come the mayor isn’t a white man”.
It’s very distateful remark on Naheed’s religion. If Barb or McIver won would you have written, “the white Christian Barb swept the municipal votes”. I voted for Naheed because of his progressive platform & ideas, not because of his colour, race or faith. I’m Catholic but I didn’t want to vote for a so-called ‘experienced’ candidate who’s been sleeping at the switchboard. Other candidates had no vision for the city, in my opinion. Calgary is far behind in infrastructure development compared with influx of people on its economic boom. Naheed has a lot of work to do fast, not sleeping as previous folks did.
I agree with T Boy – that’s exactly what I was thinking as I started reading. Everyone keeps telling me that I’m “throwing away” my vote because I’m intending to vote for Pantalone. I’m still voting for him and I hope others are too! I can’t stand Ford, but Smitherman is no replacement. Pantalone is the best candidate in my humble opinion and I hope he swoops in from last place and surprises everyone!
How are Calgary’s municipal election results, in anyway, humiliating to Toronto?
We currently have a Harvard grad in office and whilst I’m not particularly thrilled with the front runners in the current mayoral race, they cannot change their ethnic backgrounds anymore than Mr. Neshi could. So they happen to be white? Who cares?!
Quite frankly, I find your dismissal of Smitherman’s 10yrs of experience in office quite offensive. I’m sure Mr. Neshi’s experience in the last 38 years of his life have been quite different from those of Smitherman’s as an openly gay man. My point is that the race, gender, sexuality, and religion of a candidate really don’t matter so long as they are a good candidate. Why point out these differences?
First of all and last of all Nenshi is not a minority, white people world wide are now of days thanks vary much. You would think everyone knows that by now. Brown is not a minority whit is simple as that. Sad but true.
Jerry: Sad?
Every Muslim in Toronto will be singing the old Gordon Lightfoot song ‘Alberta Bound’. Toronto’s loss will be Calgary’s gain…oh.
Draft Russell Peters for Mayor of Toronto.
Cannot be worse than Rob Ford.
The media drives me nuts! I think, and as some of you have said in this forum, that religion, race & color do not matter. Like Perara says, what would the media comments have been if Higgins or McIver won? Certainly nothing to do with religion or color, as Higgins and McIver just “blend into the crowd” in that respect. They’d probably comment on Higgins being a woman. Calgary voters picked Nenshi because they thought he was the most suited PERSON, period.
His race and religion had absolutely nothing to do with his being elected — nothing! Get that through your thick, smug, self-righteous so-full-of yourself Toronto skulls. He and McIver were toss ups for me right up to the night before the election because of their policies and track records. Higgins was never on my radar because of her policies — nothing to do with her gender, skin color, sexual orientation, type of clothes she wears, marital-status, religion, or whatever — policies (or lack thereof). Contrary to all the lib-left rubbish poured into your heads by the CBC, it’s the west that’s post racial. You eliminate racism by eliminating racism. If the person in front of you is the best qualified, put them in the job — regardless of their race. If they’re a completely hopeless screw-up regardless of wether or not they’re a member of a politically correct victim group, then don’t give them the time of day. Let the NDP hire them; it’s what they do.
This article says that white people should lead major Canadian cities, also what a lame election if we knew who was going to win?
The fact that Ford and Smitherman are white has nothing to do with anything. The fact that they are as good as it gets out of a city as large as Toronto is the worrying issue. My parents are both white and live in Calgary and both voted for Nenshi due to his progressive and visionary ideas for Calgary, the fact that he was muslim had nothing to do with it. The right wing leaning Calgary Sun even endorsed him. Despite the continued BS campaign, the large majority of “whites” are not racist, nobody talks about racism within the non white communities and it exists in spades, the fact is, that Toronto likes to navel gaze and dump on Calgary and say how multi-cultural we are but Calgary voted based on quality of candidate, not his race or religion which shows their multi- culturalism and community integration has matured beyond Toronto.
i see a lot of criticism and dumping on toronto as thinking themselves superior, but nobody ever said that except the people from calgary. i’m a transplant from toronto to calgary…and though i love calgary, i must admit that calgarians are the ones with an inferiority complex, not torontonians with a superiority complex as most calgarians seem to believe. the comments on this article prove that. no torontonian said a bad thing about calgary, and nobody claimed toronto was morally or racially superior; the only people who suggested that toronto might be superior are the calgarian posters. i love this city, but i wish that people would take the chip off their shoulder, realise their status in this country and world, grow up, shut up and step up to the plate. we’re brothers, not enemies, toronto can’t help that it’s the bigger brother.
all that said, i don’t really like the article nor see the point. calgary had great candidates, toronto didn’t, i don’t see how it boils down to a competition of moral superiority.
What condescending rubbish. You make it quite clear what is most prominent in your mind. Quite frankly as I see the case here, it is those who seem to scream the loudest about predjudices are the ones that understand them the least. Please find another vocation, your university education is showing and quite frankly it is repulsive as your story.
What absolute rubbish. So Toronto should “hang its head” in shame because it happened to choose a white straight male? To spare Toronto ant humiliation, would it be better if such undeireables did not even run for office? It is the headline that is humiliating, shameful, and frightening. It’s also OK to be quietly “proudly” something other than what John Michael McGrath seems to suggest.
Not only are the article’s remarks racist enough to be offensive about the candidates AND the people of Toronto, but they are surprisingly ignorant. Just like Calgarians, Torontonians do not vote, and never have voted primarily as ethnic/colour blocks, but do so for more fundamental political reasons.
The equivalent candidate to Nenshi for the Toronto election was Rocco Rossi, an equally gifted, and informed first time candidate. He did present a comprehensive “vision”. However, unlike Nenshi’s campaign in Calgary, that of Rossi couldn’t get enough traction in Toronto to take off. Its a bigger challenge in a bigger city for a maiden politician.
To a much greater degree than that of Calgary’s, the Toronto media develops major ‘fixations’ trying to engineer political outcomes rather than ‘report’. These fixations are the engineered through the ‘ranting’ columns and video clips that effectively overwhelm what little ‘news’ and ‘analytically informed insight’ is given. Against that, new candidates like Rocco Rossi, and even good ones like Sarah Thomson don’t stand much of a chance.
The Toronto media coverage, utterly uninterested in reporting on the public’s wishes, while simultaneously insulting the public’s intelligence, worked so very hard to condition the public against Rob Ford that it smothered the Rossi campaign, and largely ignored that of Sarah Thompson.
Actually, the public got it right (again!). For those who remember the 1990’s, knowing about,the immense provincial and federal deficits, and the clouds on our economic future, a prudent, taxpayer-respecting course for Toronto does make some sense, doesn’t it? The Toronto media just didn’t get it?, or what?
Hey fulminators: please quote the part in the article where JMMcG makes the claim that most people vote on the basis of colour or ethnicity. Thanks!
I am constantly shaking my head in disgust with people’s ignorance and i agree with the respondent who indicated that the pple who mention racism are the ones who understand it the least! I am a minority as well as an ethnic person/an immigrant/a Torontonian and i can tell u that too much is made of the race card and that Caucasians everywhere truly need to understand that racism is a human problem and is not limited to ANY race!!!!!!! All of the racists i encounter in Toronto are ETHNIC pple!! There was even a story about this problem published in the Toronto STAR detailing some of the incidents of racism where a person of one ethnic group was forced to pay thousands of dollars as a result of the racist remarks which were made at their place of business. Open up your eyes pple and educate yourselves!! In order for me as a minority to vote for another minority ever I must be convinced that they care about all Torontonians regardless of the skin colours and that they give a damn about this city!!
Worst Article ever written. Toronto Life?? What the hell do any of you know about Toronto Life?? Canadian Life? PLease leave my country….thank you
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