Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette bye-election
Inky the former MP was a long-time maverick in the CP, but a much-loved and very clever politician in the riding. He had joined the ginger group of Reformers who quit the party and joined the CPCs in protest of Stockwell Day's policies.
The ginger group rejoined the party after the reform alliance was formed. Among other things he supported the Wheat Board during Harper's vicious attacks on it's right to exist. Following that Inky was delegated to the back benches. Harper runs a tight ship. One could call it dictatorial. I believe Harper, as he had with many other MPs, put pressure on Inky to quit. The alternative being the possibility of one of the bagfull of nasty King Steven's dirty tricks.
Inky resigned, figuring he could return to his Dauphin base as Mayor. He considered it a safe haven as he had been a very popular mayor. On leaving he gave a subtle dig at the party. See parts of his National Post interview here http://www.uglychinesecanadian.com/?p=489 and here http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ex-tory-mp-calls-nomination... ( the comments are also interesting).
The riding nominations were called for in the summer of this year. There was not the usual process of mailing out a nomination kit which one would imagine would give a closing date for nominations. Inky's preferred candidate Wayne Matheson stated that early on he was told by the national office to hold off putting himself forward until the bye-election was called. One would imagine that other potential candidates were also told this.
The riding nomination committee was not formed until the day before nominations closed in late summer, the busiest time of year for farmers. The potential candidates were supposedly informed by an automated telephone service. There was only one acclaimed candidate, Robert Sopuck, altho others had expressed interest in running.
Inky protested to many former PC MPs about the the nomination process, without getting any support. The fix was on and and none of them dared oppose Harper and the national council. The President of the riding Brian Chita launched an appeal of the process on behalf of the local Conservative board.and sent a long letter to riding members stating “a process that failed to follow our party's candidate nomination rules, thereby limiting your opportunity to take part in the process.” It was of course rejected by the national council. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ex-tory-mp-calls-nomination...
It's interesting to note that Brian Chita, who admittedly ran for mayor of Dauphin in the previous election, ran as a mayoralty candidate against Inky. One would imagine that the riding president of Inkys long-time held riding would have deferred to him in the mayorality contest. One must wonder whether the Harper SS exerted pressure on him to run. Inky lost by 40 votes.
Robert Supock is/was a paid staffer of the Frontier Center for Public policy, a harder-right subsiduary of the Frazer Institute which is funded by many of the large corporations, especially the oil-patch industry.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frontier_Centre_for_Public_Po....
"http://www.desmogblog.com/calgary-foundation-friends-friends-science#comment-form. They also support Tim Ball a noted antienvironmentalist and friend of big oil. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tim_Ball.
FCPP is an active player in the climate change debunker movement, and likely linked to the "Calgary School" of Harper and many of his advisors, folllowers of the Plutocrat Leo Straus. Strauss was the ideological underpinning for most of the neocons and upper elite of the GW Bush administration. http://evatt.labor.net.au/publications/papers/112.html
http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2005/11/29/HarperBush/ http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/05/12/030512fa_fact
Sopuck will certainly not step out of line with Harper's devious policies, nor support The Wheat Board's continuance which impedes Harpers plans to turn the nations agriculture over to big business. Indeed he will urge for policies even more right-wing, such as weakening our Medicare, cutting welfare expenditures, and of course even weaker environmental laws.
I don't buy the common conception that Swan River-Marquette is a PC shoo-in even with the gerrymandering some years back which brought in to the riding the prosperous regions of Neepawa-Minnidosa. We are still, if I remember correctly, the 4th poorest federal riding in Canada and one of the largest. Inky was the glue which held it together for the conservatives. There were Liberal MPs before Inky and even an NDP MP. The riding is also surrounded by provincial NDP ridings and of course the Swan River riding is held by Rosanne Wowchuck the present Treasurer.
There must be many dissaffected Conservatives especially if the electorate is informed on Sopucks affiliations and his real positions. He even has the audacity of presenting himself as an enviromentalist when his main interest there is his hunting background. This guy must be defeated because if he gets elected this gives him credence which will carry over to the next election.
Inky, understandably, is pissed off and is now mobilizing behind the Green Party candidate Kate Storey. This could seriously split the CP support in the south of voters who would never vote NDP. The Liberals are no threat but do reduce CP support.
Denise Harder, the NDP candidate is very credible and competent, a Cupe staffer and chairman of the midmanitoba health authority. She was born in Ste Rose du Lac, but now lives in Portage La Prairie, just outside the riding (which of course the CPers are making much of). Jack and Olivia were supposed to be at a rally in Dauphin today, but the roads out here are virtually impassable because of a blizzard the last few days. This seat is winnable with more support from the NDP National Council. Keep a close eye on this riding. Harper and the CP might be in for a big surprise.
Does anybody know why the man born Mài Dǐnghóng decided to call himself "Inky Mark" when he moved to Canada? You'd think there'd be some sort of joke attached to that decision.
Your insightful and astute political analysis overwhelms me. I am in awe. Perhaps it was because he was forced to cut off his que so he couldn't go back and be buried in China. Can you imagine someone running for office with his chinese name on a ballot ? In rural Canada years ago ? Could he even get a job ?
True, but then why be "Inky Mark" which is still kind of an odd name. If you want to anglicize your name and be more employable and electable in rural Canada - why not go all the way and be "Tyler Wolverhampton"?
You are assuming a racist intent in my question that is was totally absent, and your line about cutting off the "que" was more bigoted than anything I would ever even have allowed myself to think(btw, when Mr. Mark left China, he was only six, and it was four years AFTER Mao's revolution, so he wouldn't even have had a cue to cut off).
Anglicizing the name I could see. Making it "Inky Mark" was a bit more out there.
Besides, Mr. Mark entered federal politics in 1997, which wasn't THAT many "years ago". It's not like he got his start when the Canadian version of the Chinese Exclusion policy was still in effect.
And what the heck did I do to deserve THAT much hostility in your response?
There's a very elegant explanation of how Inky Mark got "Mark" from "Mai" - he didn't. The various Chinese dialects all use the same script, but pronounce the characters in differing ways, based on the sound changes in their respective phonological histories. The different pronunciations could be due to consonants, or vowels, or tones, or any combination of those three.
The thing to note here is that Mai Dinghong, which is the transcription of Mark's Chinese name given on his Wikipedia article (which is what I'm assuming Ken's question arises from), is the pinyin transcription of the characters that compose his name. Pinyin is used for Mandarin Chinese. But Mark's family comes from Taishan, and the Taishanese dialect of Chinese is more immediately a dialect of Yue Chinese (another such dialect is Cantonese).
And as it happens, the character in Mark's Chinese name which is written mai in pinyin, is written something like mak in jyutping (a system for transcribing Cantonese). Since Taishanese is closer to Cantonese than it is to Mandarin, chances are his family pronounced their family name somewhat more similarly to mak than to mai.
(Yes, I'm aware this is almost certainly not what Ken was asking about, but I'd finished pretty much the whole post before that fact dawned on me.)
Well, that's actually a plausible explanation.
And just to show off, "mai" means horse in Chinese! lol
and "mak" is also horse in Cantonese
I find that Google Translate says the Chinese Characters for Inky Mark's name are transcribed "Mak Ting Hong." If the above needed verifying, there you are.
Dinky ("Dǐnghóng") Mark would have been worse, surely. At age 6 he accompanied his mother when she left China to join her husband and his father in Gilbert Plains, the first town (and rail stop) west of Dauphin. (The train to Churchill still stops at Gilbert Plains twice a week, as it swings west through Canora and eight other stops in Saskatchewan's Yorkton--Melville riding before swinging back to The Pas.)
The boy needed an anglicized first name rather quickly when he started at Gilbert Plains Elementary School, and with all the Ukrainians there, nobody was too picky. The fashion today is to make up an entirely new first name that sounds good in English. (I have a friend whose very pretty first name is ZiLin, but she uses Adele.) I expect this was not the case in 1953.
I realize this is major thread drift - but I wanted to mention that I've met a number of Chinese-Canadians and Chinese living in Hong Kong who have "anglo" first names (in addition to a Chinese first name) that seem a bit "odd" to Canadian ears - for example I once met someone named Johann Sebastian Wong! and there seem to be a lot of people who are given names of historical figures - so you get a lot of Winstons in hong Kong. But, what takes the cake was when i met a woman from Hong Kong named Cinderella! - seems her mother liked the fairy tale and thought it would make a good "English name" for her daughter.
I've met more "disaffected Conservatives" who doggedly vote Conservative every chance, than any other permutation of voter sentiment and party.
By the way, Layton did make it to Dauphin on Friday. There is a great set of photos on Denise Harder's Facebook page.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=34401&id=164057203625315
Lttle Mddy, do I take it that you live in Dauphin--Swan River--Marquette riding? If so, whereabouts? What's the latest from up that way?
I'd love to see this week's issues of the local papers. Does Denise Harder have as big an ad blitz as Sopuck?
That's the Dauphin Herald, Swan Valley Star and Times, Russell Banner, Roblin Review, Neepawa Press, Neepawa Banner, Minnedosa Tribune, The Exponent (Grandview and Gilbert Plains), and Crossroads This Week (Shoal Lake, Birtle, Hamiota, and Rossburn). Unfortunately, they are almost all subscriber-only.
The Neepawa Banner says:
But I still can't see their ads.
If anyone cares, this riding is 73% rural, by Stats Can's definition (they say any settlement with urban density and more than 1,000 people is an urban area, which is why they say 80% of Canadians live in urban areas). The urban 27% areas are:
Dauphin 7,906
Swan River 3,859
Neepawa 2,980
Minnedosa 2,474
Roblin 1,672
Russell 1,428
Denise Harder's Facebook page says she was interviewed 10 days ago "by two nice young men from CTV Yorkton." I suppose that station is watched more than Winnipeg in this riding, since it's much closer. I hadn't quite realized all the connections between eastern Saskatchewan and western Manitoba.
Yes I do live in the riding. I have 2 large NDP signs on my 109-year-old corner-block house just 1 block from the main shopping area, kitty-corner from the post office and town bulletin board, 1 block away from the library and Municipal offices, and just around the block from the Election center. Location, location !
Some of us just helped turf out a particularly bad town council who attempted to change the town's taxation from an assessment-based property-tax to a poll tax basis. That shattered usual voting patterns based on family connections and we swept the council. That could also spill over, in this community at least, into altering some of the federal right-wing voting habits.
I retired out here to this beautiful village, about 75mi from where I was born in Grandview, when I reached 65. I had left in 1947. I lived for about 5 decades and had a particularly radical past, in Montreal and Toronto. I knew Dan Heaps, Jack and Olivia from when I was around Kensington Market. One of my heros was the old socialist Bert Herridge, the NDP MP from the Kootenays. I met him when he and the equally great Quebec judge Robert Cliche addressed a left caucus at an NDP national convention many years ago. When asked the secret of his political longetivity , he said "I wave the Red flag in the south (Trail BC. the site of some hard miner strikes) and the Union Jack in the north" ( a particularly Brit area who had many casualties in the war against fascism, WWII). My mantra here is for fairness and democracy. The same as always but not as confrontational.
Inky knows very well that the Greens can't win the riding, and CPers would never vote NDP, but if enough of the conservative vote is pissed off at his treatment by the Harperites, they could post their vote with the greens. Some might also move to the liberals who are not electable at this time and that could allow Denise Harder, who is of aboriginal descent to breeze thru in an area of high aboriginal demographics, if they will vote. The provincial NDP is very aware of the changing demographics as more and more of the rural non-aboriginals are forced out by the big agricultural corporations and move to the cities, while the population %age becomes more aboriginal fueled by a higher birthrate and a greater attachment to some extent, to their communities.
It's hard for me to guage at this point, especially because the NDP was late out of the starting gate, but I think Harper and the hard-right Frontier Society, of which the federally-parachuted CP candidate Robert Sopuch was a staffer, are in for a long night when the polls are counted. The CP is the only party not vowing support for the Wheat Board which local farmers, many of whom who have in the last while voted conservative, strongly support.
I am sorry I wasn't able to reacquaint myself with Jack and Olivia but driving on treacherously snow-covered icy roads at 74 years old could end my attempts to become one of the first radical centennarians. We're usually killed or bought out. Perhaps that means I've failed. I'll have to try harder.
Hi again Lttle Mudddy,
So was it the Grandview Council where you staged your upset, then? What happened with the Dauphin municipal elections? I'm just wondering why Inky Mark didn't win.
Also, if traditional Conservative voters are strong supporters of the Single Desk at the CWB, would they switch over to vote NDP to save the Single Desk, or would knowing the Conservative candidate wanted to end the monopoly at least keep them home?
We're very interested in hearing more about this riding, as the eastern and Winnipeg media has decided it's not worth covering as the Conservative will be a "shoo-in".
Thanks in advance for any additional background you can give us, as we're all hungry for news.
He said he was 75 miles from Grandview. Sounds more like Neepawa. Fascinating story. I hope our west Manitoba correspondent will give us more reports.
Just for a point of reference, in 1984 the NDP had less than 20% in St. Johns East and the Yukon to the PCs. It went on to win both seats in the by-elections held in 1987.
No it was actually in Winipegosis.(I hope the identity thieves, or worse, the CPs SS don't get ahold of this) :^{
I thought I had laid it out pretty obviously in my original post.
In the Dauphin mayoralty election Inky lost by 40 votes. He had been an extremely popular mayor which won him a seat as a Reform Party candidate and gave him 3 federal MP terms with landslide votes even tho he had quit and rejected the Reform Party under Stockwell(Doris) Day. He and the Ginger groupof PCers rejoined the non-progressive Conservatives under the leadership of Der Fuerher Harper, an enthusiast of the Calgary School's ideological idol Leo Strauss. A Plutocrat who couldn't abide democracy.
Inky was a maverick with full confidence in the support of his riding and also a clever politician. He headed several parlimentary committees, but knowing the views of his constituency couldn't support Harper's attempts to get rid of the Wheat Board which farmers during the 30s fought so hard for to break the power of the Grain Barons, and are smart enough not to give in to the blandishments of Harper and the big US corporations. It has the support of virtually all the farmers, except for a few wealthy big busines shills
So Inky was delegated to the back benches, and undoubtably felt he had no future in parliament and resigned figuring he could easily go back to a refuge as mayor of Dauphin. On his way out he got off a shot at the lack of independence of MPs and most figured as well as Inky himself I imagine, he was a shoo-in. He mounted a very strong campaign with 1/4 page ads in the Herald( which also appeared in the Parkland shopper, a free local advertising-sheet by the Herald, read by most including myself. He didn't count on the nasty vindictiveness of Godfather Harper. Inky hadn't gone quietly after experiencing Harper's wrath because he responded to his constituents
Here's the election results from CTV
Eric Irwin was voted in as mayor in Dauphin, beating out three other candidates in the city, accodring to unofficial results on Wednesday night.
Irwin, a lawyer, won 1289 votes, narrowly beating former Conservative MP Inky Mark who won 1253 votes, former deputy mayor Brian Chita who won 702 votes and incumbent mayor Alex Paul who won 237 votes.
Brian Chita, the president of Inky's long-time former Conservative riding takes 702 votes, most of which would have likely gone to Inky. Chita had also complained about the fraudulent nominations earlier. One would think he'd be at least deferrent to his former riding MP and bow out of running for mayor.
Your terminology of "Single Desk at the CWB" shows how pervasive the right-wing propoganda is. It's opposite is "Free Trade"which most people in the Americas have learned, ain't so free. The right-wing agricorps in the US has been screaming about the Can WB for years. Why ?
Coffee workers in SA have banded together in a "Fair Trade" organization to get a fair shake for their labor. Is this so different if the WB deprives the big corporations of controlling the price AND sales price of grain ? Which they certainly did in the time of the robber grain barons. DeBoors has no financial crirics for it's "monopoly".
It isn't conservative voters who support the Wheat Board it's Farmers who do, and only one party, the CP, opposes it because they want to turn Agribusiness even more over to the large corporations. The PCs aren't opposed to monopolies as long as Big Money controls it. Which is why you don't hear them yelping about "single desk" selling in all the agribusiness, like milk, eggs, or chickens. Because big corporations have contol of those products.
Hide-bound conservatives will never vote for the NDP, but some might vote for the Greens, with Inky mobilizing behind Kate Storey as well as the many Inky Loyalists who had voted Conservative and others pissed off at how Inky was jobbed.
Then of course there is the personage of Robert Sopuck himself. A would-be "little corporal"
Thank you very much. I didn't realize that use of the term "Single Desk" itself was already conceding some ideological terrain, or perhaps I haven't understood well enough. Certainly the ads I saw for the CWB directors elections talked about being in favour of the Single Desk.
So, your interpretation of the Dauphin mayoralty race was that someone was deliberately run against Mark to split his vote? Wow, that's cold. It certainly explains his campaigning for the Greens now.
I hope you will take a second to keep us informed of any other developments in the riding over the next week. There has been virtually no coverage of it in the outside world, and it seems there may be reason to believe something's brewing there after all!
Thanks again!
Silly of me to miss that. "Winnipegosis is derived from a Cree word meaning "Little Muddy Water," so your handle was a pretty good clue.
Lovely village. I especially like the job they've done on the old railway station (now the Museum). (I checked it out on Google Earth.) Easterners would never guess the rails went as far north as that as early as 1897. Restoring 1897 railway stations is something I associate with towns like Port Hope.
Wilf Day never ceases to amaze me.
I really want to believe this, but aside from us lefties talking about this on an obscure discussion board, are there other indications you can point to that might support this contention? I'm not picking on you or questioning your judgement, and I agree that the NDP should invest a great deal, I just know historically how strong the Conservative brand is in that seat.
ETA: Evidently, they've changed the front page since I posted it last week, eh! (no longer Jack Layton and Denise Harder, but the Conservative victor Bob Sopuck with a youngster in his arms.)
Just picked up that issue of the Herald. The rest of the much longer article focuses on the Harperites attempt to kill the Wheat Board and turn it over to the tender mercies of the likes of the huge US grain conglomerate Cargill.
The Wheat Board issue is becoming a major issue in the riding. There was reasoning in the politically clever Inky Mark's non-support of Harpers moves against it, which delegated him to the back benches and his eventual resignation.
There was no editorial comment in this issue due, as the Herald says, because of the space taken by the letters to the editor.
One was headed "Democracy has been eroded" in which the author who was present at the CP riding non-nomination meeting writes "The forced choice for this riding is an insult to the Conservatives of Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette and a deliberate purloining of our voice. This illegality of the Conservative party has prompted our resignation from this political group." There was much else in the same vein in his letter. Another letter was a comment on an earlier letter regarding the Wheat Board, and denied that the head of the Canola Board was against the Wheat Board's single desk. The Canola board's head was cited in this interesting article.
http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/departments/philosophy/ethics/med...
A new wrinkle has been added to elections out here. A conference call Town Hall Forum. The first, which I missed, was done by the NDP last week. The Liberals also got me on their list and I listened to the Forum last night. It included the local candidate, Iggy, and a Lib policy hack. There was input for questions, and the most commented on was on the wheat board (all supportive).
If anyone is interested in learning more about western farmer's issues, you might check out this site where most of Paul Beingessner's articles are archived. He is, to me, perhaps the greatest prairie jounalist of modern times and was syndicated in many rural papers, including the Grandview Exponent, where I first discovered him. He died to all our loss, last year of a farm accident. http://parkland_man.blogspot.com/
Is the Wheat Board enough of an issue, or will all the Wheat Board votes end up split among the challengers and the Conservatives come up the middle?
I think if Sopuck doesn't win, or wins but struggles to beat Harder, it'll be embarrassing to those parts of the media (pretty much all of them) who decided that a Tory was going to win here, because, hey, they're just rednecks out there. Maybe the result will force some re-examination of the stereotype.
Who am I kidding? Calgary's new mayor didn't change a damn thing. The Torontonian press gods know all! All!
Two different questions there.
One is the question of how splits will fall if the CWB is a deciding factor against previous Conservative voters repeating.
Cant speak to the riding. But generally thats going to depend mostly on the two big factors: comparative pre-existing on the ground visibility of the challenging parties, and comparative strength and attractiveness of the candidates and their campaigns.
[Plus how many of the switchers from the Cons will only vote for one other party- which is going to be a regional trend more than riding specific.]
So if one of the other candidates is with the party perceived to have always been the main challenger; and in this campaign is perceived to have a strong candidate, signs all over, and visible supprt from a strong national leader.... he or she is going to get the bulk of the votes leaving the Conservatives.
[And ditto for those who will desert the Conservatives because of the nomination process, and dont just stay home.]
A recent commercial or video for Denise Harder mentions that she is from Long Plain First Nation, a community of about 800 southwest of Portage La Prairie, in Portage--Lisgar riding. I don't think this has been mentioned in print.
"Take the $100,000, put it in the bank, earn a bit of interest and send it back," said Ritz.
Link (doesn't show up in your original posting, for some reason).