Post 3329 - Saturday

Yeah, still in the city.

We plan to go to the cottage Sunday. Today, we got lazy. Tonight, the power went off. So, tomorrow morning we will start to pack and head out probably by supper time. Be nice to wake up down there on Monday morning.

Internet service will be spotty at best. I will go to the library every couple or three days. When I do, I will produce a couple blog posts to hold you guys over to the next time I make it back. It is a vacation, after all. I need my rest.

The power went out earlier this evening. I actually had to read a paper-based book for a while, and it is a good one. Shame on me for not reading "Bag Man" until 22 years after it came out, and 7 years after its author had died. It's about the many shameful practices that took place in Nova Scotia politics over many decades.

I can add one, myself.

I remember my mother telling me that when she was very young, a candidate came by on election day and was giving bottles of rum to the men who had voted for him, and 10 dollar bills to the women. She gratefully accepted the ten spot. She didn't recall the name of the candidate but said it was a member of the Liberal party. This was what was done back then.

I am only at the point in the book where Don Ripley, the writer, has quit the Liberal party because of how he had been treated and lied to by the then Premier, Gerald Regan. I am learning about the Conservative leader, John Buchanan, and how Ripley came to know him and admire him and work for him. So I don't know if Ripley tells this story:

For many years in Nova Scotia, candidates of at least the two major parties were literally buying votes. They would somehow get their hands on voting ballots and would put the X next to their name. They would get voters to take those ballots to the election booth, drop the ballots in the box and return with the blank ballot that had been supplied to them when they went in to vote. Upon receiving the blank vote, the voter would get that bottle of rum or small cash prize.

According to Ripley's book, vote buying of some kind went on as recently as the 1988 election. With all the checks and balances today, I find it hard to believe it could still be happening, but maybe it does, in more subtle ways.

It's taken me 30 minutes to write this blog post. I have been corresponding with someone Facebook.

I think I will turn in for the evening. Should be a busy day tomorrow.

See you then.

Bevboy