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What's this: Stephen Harper, media darling? It couldn’t be.
Okay, so maybe media darling is a little strong.
Don’t look now, but the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada is gaining media credibility as this listless election campaign finally clicks into second gear.
Harper is no longer being written off as Mike Harris with superior hair spray and a turtleneck.
Call it the benefit of no expectations.
Many voters and the small-L Liberal media based in Ontario had written Harper off after the 2004 campaign as a drowning man, being pulled below the waves by the anchor of Alliance and Reform policies that go against the grain in the country’s key racially diverse, multicultural swing province.
Half-way through this round, simply by not being bad, Harper is gaining momentum. Most of the mid-campaign media evaluations were positive, if not effusive, about his effort.
Give the Conservatives credit for making regular policy statements first, and putting the Grits on the defensive for most of this campaign.
They’re doing well despite their disastrous TV-ad campaign that features a young woman ventriloquist who makes Harper move his lips.
The leader looks like he’s reached the obvious conclusion that this is the last roundup and he’d better get on his horse and ride.
So, something is happening here but can we figure out what it is?
Is this actually a change of heart by Canadians willing to give the Tories the benefit of the doubt or is it just the usual mid-campaign opportunity that oh-so-fair-minded Canadians give to alternative viewpoints before they shrug their shoulders and decide that the Liberals are the least of all political evils?
Either way, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives now have the opportunity to win this election.

There are nerds, and then, there are math nerds, who are generally in a class by themselves.
Math nerds are bright people with a fascination for numbers that you just can't teach. You could spot them in high school via the pocket protectors for their calculators and their tendency to flap their arms in class when they know the answer.
Math nerds often get put down a lot by the rest of us who haven't the foggiest idea what all the excitement's about. Although we'd never admit it, there's a pure streak of envy among us artsy types who'd secretly like the chance to be math nerds: if we only had the brains, nerve and heart to be wizards of odds.
All of which brings me to the case of Sasha Ramani, a 17-year-old Grade 12 student at Gordon Graydon Secondary School who is a self-confessed math guy, and knows how to have fun with it.
His picture was in The News a couple of weeks ago accompanying a story on the chess club he helped form at Graydon.
His mother Chitra sent along a thank-you note for the story that casually mentioned that Sasha has also been recognized for another accomplishment at Graydon, reciting the first 251 digits of Pi.
If you go to www.joyofpi.com, you can revisit your nightmares about high school math or have yourself a ball going over the first 10 thousand digits that are published on the site, depending on your point of view. We are assured that the book of the same name contains a million digits. Whew!
Sasha was sitting in Roy Spencer's math class last year when the Graydon teacher mentioned that the math holiday for nerds, Pi Day, was coming up. It's March 14 to go with the first three digits of the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, which starts 3.14. That's as far as most of us ever got.
Spencer mentioned that one of his students once memorized the first 120 digits of the answer. That was waving the red flag in
front of Sasha who already knew the first 20. When he came back after last March break, he smashed the school record.
"A lot of people tend to dislike calculus," Sasha says. "But I really appreciate it."
Of course, when you get 98 in a course it tends to become one of your favourites.
Did you know there's a Pi hand symbol? Yeah, Sasha not only knows it, he has digital pictures of himself flashing it on the streets of Port Credit.
Last summer, his parents took their vacation to tour Ivy League schools to check out the various campuses. Right now, Sasha, who has a mid-90s average, says his first choice for post-secondary studies is math and business administration at the University of Waterloo.
If there's any justice in the world, before his high school career ends Sasha will have to go down to the office because he's forgotten the combination to his locker.

Municipal elections have generally been non-events in Mississauga for so long that people may not have noticed that the gun went off Jan. 2 and the candidates are already off and running for this year's Nov. 13 balloting.
The 2006 council election promises more excitement and genuinely interesting races than have been seen for for a long, long time.
That's simply a product of the fact there are two open seats this time around. One race likely will see Carolyn Parrish, Ron Starr and Ted Blackmore, a former MP and two former councillors, go head-to-head-to-head in Ward 6.
The other open ward, on the city's western edge, is Ward 10. Don't look now, but there are already three candidates registered: school trustee Sue McFadden, Jason Roti and Scott Wilson. This ward will likely have between a dozen and two dozen campaigners before it's all over and should be a wide-open affairs unless some other unknown heavyweights decide to wade in.
There's also a likelihood that the new chair of the Dufferin-Peel District Catholic School Board, Peter Ferreira, will run against Maja Prentice in Ward 3, where he did surprisingly well in a last-second run last time around.
Nando Iannicca, the incumbent Ward 7 councillor, was, as usual, the first to register Monday.
As someone who won his seat on council when there was no incumbent in the way, Iannicca said the possibility of two open seats should stimulate interest among Mississaugans who have wanted to be councillors but know how dismal the chances are of knocking off the full-time sitting members.
"I expect to see a lot of lot of people come forward who've had a long-time interest," said Iannicca.
Rumours persist that Steve Mahoney will run against incumbent George Carlson, who is running in the new Ward 11, which is the old half of the Ward 6 he now represents.
Mahoney and Starr could form a tag team against Parrish and alter-ego Carlson, who have worked on each other's campaigns for years and are inseparable political partners.
If it isn't Mahoney, you can bet that the Starr camp will throw up someone to keep Carlson at home. He is a brilliant campaign strategist. The worst thing that could happen to Starr is to have Carlson acclaimed so he can spend all his time working for Parrish in his old riding.
The other thing people are wondering about is whether this is the last scrimmage (there's never any real game) for Her Warship.
Every election year for as long as I remember, the Wishful Thinking Society decides that this will be the mayor's last election.
For some strange reason, people do not accept what the mayor continually says, which is that she will continue to serve until her health dictates otherwise.
The chances of the mayor retiring voluntarily are the same as the chances she will embrace regional government. Believe what you see. She's here, whether you like it or not, for the duration.
One of the pleasures of modern elections is that you don't have to watch the comings and goings at the Clerk's Department to figure out who's running.
You can watch the candidates, known and unknown, pop up online at the City's website, www.mississauga.ca.
Be careful though. I can tell you from experience that checking out the registrations is incredibly habit-forming.

Thank goodness Jane Bunnett and Larry Cramer decided to take their vacation in Cuba in 1982.
The Toronto jazz couple...she’s a superb player on flute and soprano sax and he’s a stellar trumpet player with a wide knowledge and passion for all things jazz...fell madly in love with the music of the island.
They drenched themselves in the sounds, became ambassadors for the music in North America, exposed Cuban musicians through their work in their group, the Spirits of Havana, and made a series of great CDs that really celebrate the free-wheeling spirit of the music that people call Latin or Afro-Cuban.
Of course, Ry Cooder, the engaging American musician who has explored numerous tributaries of non-mainstream music, championed the same music with the Buena Vista Social Club CD in the mid-’90s, spawning the award-winning documentary of the same name by director Wim Wenders.
That created another of the periodic waves of interest in Latin jazz that have helped the Spirits of Havana flourish.
Bunnett, who brings her fiery flute to the Royal Bank Theatre at the Living Arts Centre on Jan. 28, has been called Havana Jane, although she isn't particularly political at all.
Talking to her this week, however, you could feel a rising sense of concern that the laissez-faire atmosphere that has prevailed on her 50-odd visits to Cuba in the past, an attitude that allowed her band to mingle freely with the local musicians and even jam in the streets if they wanted to, is waning.
Her newest album, Radio Guantanamo, was another product of interaction with local bands, Grupo Changui Guantanamo and Grupo Changui de Santiago.
But, the action got a little too hot for the local constabulary, apparently.
Three times Bunnett and crew were hauled into the local police station and questioned about their activities. On one trip when they were trying to explain why they didn't have permission to play with local musicians (they had drawn an appreciative crowd which raised suspicions), Bunnett and company were saved by the video.
While they were in the midst of explaining who they were, shots of Bunnett and the Spirits of Havana who has just appeared in concert at the national theatre in the capital city, were being broadcast on the television station that was playing in the cop shop. The authorities could see that Bunnett was legit.
On one of the other occasions where they were detained, “Larry sent for the cultural people,” said Bunnett. Even that didn’t help.
“I guess it’s just a bad zone to be in,” said Bunnett in an interview from her home. The presence of the American air force base at Guantanamo Bay has everybody’s nerves on edge there most of the time.
What was more concerning to Bunnett was that her recording session in a tiny little studio was interrupted when the police showed up outside to inquire about what was going on. They didn’t want to sit in on congas.
“I was quite sad about that because I was in the middle of a take,” said Bunnett. The equipment was never broken down so fast before or since, she laughed.
The good news is that, since the recording session got interrupted, there will be a volume two of Guantanamo Bay.
The bad news is that Bunnett is now thinking that she might not be able to record in Cuba anymore. That would be a shame.
She knows that recording in a studio in Toronto will be a lot safer and easier but it doesn’t have the same atmosphere or authenticity.
“I’ve always preferred to work live off the floor,” said Bunnett.
The operative part of that sentence being “live.” She’s always taken risks in her music, but sometimes you have to recognize that there are limits.

It’s not the same as reading the newspaper.
Going online to various websites run by newspapers is a totally different, and considerably less satisfying, experience than picking up the real thing and reading it.
People will tell you periodically that printed newspapers will one day disappear to be replaced by scads of stories on newspaper websites that are accessible at the flick of a computer switch.
Ah, I don't think so.
The case of the over-diagnosed death of the book comes to mind.
It's possible, of course, that books and newspapers will go the way of the Dodo, but highly unlikely.
The computer has insinuated its way into our lives in ways we could not have imagined a few decades ago.
When I was in Grade 9, I did my classroom speech on The Teaching Machine, based on an article out of Scientific American magazine. The article outlined how one day students would sit in front of a machine that would help them learn just as much as the teacher did.
Of course, I’m thinking to myself that this is complete codswallop, but everyone will get a real kick out of the fantasy.
Twenty years later we were ditching our Underwood typewriters for just such “teaching machines.”
The subject of the newspaper-in-hand versus the newspaper online has come up in newsroom conversation and, to my surprise, some of my younger colleagues, (yes, that’s everyone) agree that actually holding a paper is a far superior experience to reading online.
For one thing, it’s very hard to find everything on the web.
Not all the content makes it online. When there’s a hot issue boiling, you can’t see the letters to the editor spread across a double-page that instantly smacks you in the face with the force of public opinion like you can in the paper.
The editorial cartoon, the photographs and the coloured comics just don't have the same impact.
Although the word “browse” is used to describe what you do on a website, it’s a misnomer. The dictionary says that browse means, “to glance at random through a book, magazine etc.” The key word is at random.
When you have a newspaper in your paws, you can randomly glance at different parts of an article, peruse all of the sub-heads to see if you're interested in an article or jump sections with ease to get to the end. If you see a story on a turn page that catches your attention, you can quickly double back.
The work of ranking and ordering the day's events has already been done for you and you can partake in the delicious art of second-guessing those decisions.
And those juicy little tidbits, like the one about the PETA guy changing his name to Kentucky Fried Cruelty, those jump right out at you.
My reticence to embrace the online newspaper experience may just be old-fashioned orneriness to change. But for me the sound of the Saturday paper landing with a resounding thud on the front porch conveys the awaiting pleasure of hours curled up on the couch watching another day of human drama drift by, one flowing page after another.

Notwithstanding that he’s losing this election, Prime Minister Paul Martin made a serious error in the recent leadership debate by announcing that the Liberals would take away the right to override the courts on Charter of Rights issues.
It may be a defensible position, but it smacks of a desperate man taking desperate measures in the heat of a battle that’s not going well.
It’s obvious what the Liberal leader was trying to do: paint Stephen Harper as a man who might be willing to abrogate court decisions over basic human rights (such as same sex marriage) by using the notwithstanding clause. Harper has said he won’t do that over the same sex issue but Martin wants to plant the seed of uncertainty.
The PM wants to stake out the territory on the high road to suggest the Liberals would never violate Charter Rights as confirmed by the courts. Knowing that Canadians are more than a tad nervous that the Conservatives may have a hidden agenda on key social issues, this makes a lot of sense as a campaign strategy.
But, wait a minute.
The notwithstanding clause didn’t land on our plates exactly by accident.
I’m no constitutional expert (excepting the wife’s mood swings) but I do remember this: the notwithstanding clause was the compromise that the provinces (outside of Quebec) accepted to allow the repatriation to take place in the first place.
It is a key safety valve that means that, should there ever be a court decision on the Charter of Rights that the majority of Canadians find unacceptable, there is a possible way that the people we elect can address it.
Needless to say there would be full-scale public debate coast-to-coast-to-coast should anyone try to use the notwithstanding clause.
The point is that Martin seemed to be making constitutional policy off the top of his head in the heat of a leadership debate. Did this new constitutional wrinkle just occur to him when he woke up Monday morning?
If he was trying to be statesman-like, Martin blew it. In fact, he just looked like a politician paralyzed by the thought that he might be losing power. Not exactly the image Canadians hope to see in their Prime Minister.

If she thought the 2004 federal Liberal election campaign looked like the Keystone Cops, what does Carolyn Parrish think of this year's model?
"I'm delighted I'm not running. This one is 10 times worse. I've never seen such ineptitude," said Parrish, who's winding down her spectacularly controversial 13-year career as an MP.
Parrish's unsympathetic description during the 2004 campaign of the deficiencies of Liberal strategy, which referenced the antics of the famous Hollywood creation of Canadian filmmaker Mack Sennett, the Keystone Cops, left some in her own party aghast.
It confirmed her image among her peers as the MP most likely to circle the wagons, and shoot inward.
And, eventually, coupled with a little Bush-league voodoo and a few too many verbal broadsides at the boss, it got the former school board chair kicked right out of the caucus.
The thing about Parrish in that case, and in a lot of others, is that, although her comments were brash and ill-timed, they also bore a striking resemblance to the truth.
As she sits poised on the exit ramp of federal politics, Parrish has a unique (some might say biased) view of this campaign.
She's neither the first nor the last to think that Paul Martin has so many advisors, he doesn't know what to do. Too many people have his ear, he can't make up his mind who to listen to and he's indecisive as a result, Parrish contends.
His advisors made the mistake of spending the first half of last year's campaign distancing themselves from Jean Chretien. It was the switch to pounding the Liberals' own solid fiscal record, and not the attack ads aimed at Stephen Harper, that turned that campaign, according to the first-ever Mississauga-Erindale MP.
"Harper has run a textbook campaign this time and he's kept the lunatic fringe under control," said the would-be Ward 6 candidate in this fall's municipal election. "Last time, he had a couple of really bad meltdowns."
People forget that there were still open wounds in the last Conservative campaign after the shotgun marriage of the Progressive Conservatives and the Alliance.
More Parrish the thoughts on the current campaign:
"A Tory minority would be a wonderful thing because it would allow the Liberal Party to renew itself. The Party has been waging an internal war for 11 years now. It's time to clean that up. It was supposed to get better when Martin won, but it got worse."
The real Stephen Harper would be a scary thing to see.
"I still believe he's a Reformer, not a Tory."
The Conservatives have a momentum that may be unstoppable.
"It's like a snowball going downhill that's getting larger and larger. I think this campaign's lost for the Liberals."
Despite a slow start to his campaign, she predicts Omar Alghabra will win.
"I can't imagine Omar blowing a 12,000-vote lead (her margin in '04.)
Paul Szabo will survive in Mississauga South but Wajid Khan is in trouble.
Finally, "if the Liberals only have five seats left in Canada, one of them will belong to Albina (Guarnieri)."
Parrish will be part of the post-electoral campaign analysis on a panel with Buzz Hargrove and Deb Grey the morning after the election on CBC's The Current.

There’s nothing like meeting a few of Mississauga’s oldest citizens to renew your faith in the indomitable human spirit.
This past week, I’ve talked to two local residents who turned 100 and a 92-year-old who still spends a couple of hours every morning on his ham radio helping sailors around the world communicate with each other and the mainland.
“Oh, the reporter’s back again. We can’t get rid of him, can we?,” Ruth Verth said to her daughter when I managed to wait out the well-wishers to talk to her for a second time at her 100th birthday party, Friday at Cawthra Gardens.
Of course, Verth was kidding. I think. But, then again, maybe not.
The Toronto-born Verth has been a straight arrow for a long time, according to her family, one with a sharp tongue and a low tolerance for things and people she doesn’t like.
Her family told me that she's complained about the long-term residence being full of old people, so the question is posed to her.
“Some people just aren’t right in their minds, you know. You don’t know whether to speak to them or not,” she said. No sugar-coating here.
As we talk she makes it clear that she’d still be living in her own house, which she did until she was 98, if she could still get her own meals.
Anna Yacuk may be 100 but she saw out-partied a lot of the family guests who came around to celebrate her special occasion at the Lorne Park house she shares with her son Steve Binkowksi and his family Saturday night.
“Baba hung in for 11 of the 12 hours. Quite the little party girl,” granddaughter Dawn reports.
Yacuk’s stamina is not surprising when you think about the extraordinary events of her life. She was just three when her father left Ukraine for Canada before the outbreak of World War I. Her brother walked home from France when the war ended, a journey that took a year. Shortly after he arrived home, their mother died.
A displaced Russian family in Poland allowed Anna and her sister to work for room and board before her father finally was able to send for her in 1927. The Depression lay in wait in Canada. Yacuk quickly married and she and her husband struggled to thrive, which eventually they did.
By about 7:15 a.m. every day in his bungalow nestled against the western bank of the Credit River, Dr. Ernie Meyer, 92, hobbles down the stairs (his knees are gone from his two decades of jogging after he retired) and settles into the big desk in front of his short-wave radio to monitor the Mississauga Maritime Net. It’s a network he and a half-dozen amateur radio buffs set up 21 years ago to help small craft on the high seas.
About 140,000 contacts later, Meyer can reel off endless stories of round-the-clock assistance by the volunteer ham operators during hurricanes; advice to mariners that probably saved them from high seas pirates; and, innumerable links with sailors that assisted them to safely circumnavigate the world.
It’s the only service of its kind in Canada and has proven invaluable to many sailors, who often express their gratitude with thank you cards and bouquets of flowers.
Meyer, who was a surgeon at St. Joseph’s and Toronto General Hospital for many years, casually mentions his war service and the broken back he suffered (“It was my fault”) while jumping a fence to rush to help downed flyers. “Don’t write about that,” he instructs futilely.
Guess we better not mention his work with the Canadian Red Cross, the regular contact with the KGB, which had the only short-wave radios in Russia for many years, or the invaluable advice he, as a doctor, has provided to innumerable sailors who were a long, long way from the nearest drop-in clinic.
Anna, Ruth and Ernie are three people who are united by a lot more than just their longevity.
What’s their secret?
One thing that helps is obvious: it’s a really good idea to maintain your passion for something, be it your family or your hobby. Staying engaged with the world may be one good way to see a lot more of it.

"As the forty-four left the safety of Gloucester Harbour, even the soft-spoken McIlvride had tension in his voice as he shouted to be heard over the canvas curtains cracking in the wind. He had been on search and rescue missions before, but never in seas like this, and he gripped the wheel until his knuckles were white. The windshield was covered with ice and snow, and McIlvride had to rely on his crew to help him search for buoys in the blackness. All four of the men were standing in the pilothouse, hanging on as best they could, taking turns watching the faltering radar and peering through blinding snow for buoys. The binnacle light on the compass went out and they had to shine flashlights on the needle to get a directional fix. Heading southwest toward Salem, they were in following seas, each wave catapulting the boat ahead."
That's an excerpt from an exceptional book called Ten Hours Until Dawn that chronicles an extraordinary chain of events over three days in February of 1978 when a combination of a hurricane and a blizzard immobilized the New England coastline.
Just as the storm was starting to build, a young Coast Guard crew, led by Bob McIlvride, who has been a resident of Mississauga for the past six years, took to the water to try to help an oil tanker that had gone aground.
It turned out that the tanker crew was not in danger at all but the Coast Guard crew soon was.
Author Michael Tougias hangs his harrowing story on the transcripts of tapes of the communication between the boats and shore, tapes which document the fortunate return to safety of McIlvride and his crew, and the tragedy that befalls five much more experienced seamen who took to the ocean that night to help the younger crew.
"I never knew that they were coming out after us," McIlvride says, as he discusses the book in his Meadowvale home.
In fact, much of the information that's contained in the book was a revelation to McIlvride, who found it strange, indeed, to re-live that fateful night when fate and luck cast him as a survivor and a hero while older, probably wiser men, paid with their lives.
It's an irony of which he is painfully aware. "I don't hold it up as a huge accomplishment," says McIlvride, who was praised for his calmness by his fellow crew members. His penchant for memorizing charts on the wall of the operations base, just in case they might become useful some day, probably saved his crew's lives. Because of his knowledge, he was able to manouevre between buoys in huge seas that knocked out the boat's radar and temporarily crippled its engines when they went aground.
After McIlvride's crew makes it to shore, Ten Hours Until Dawn turns to the long, slow demise of the Can Do, a pilot boat owned by an experienced and much-decorated Massachusetts seaman named Frank Quirk.
In the terse transmissions from the Can Do, "you can feel the despair creeping in at the corners of those guys. As I told Frank Quirk's son when I met him last September, it was just a matter of chance. It could easily have been us. They could have survived and we could have died just as easily," said the Mississaugan.
McIlvride returned to Gloucester last fall to meet the book's author, Quirk's son and some of the others who played key roles.
"I came to a better understanding of what happened," said McIlvride, the son of a minister and a member of the Baha'i faith. "I've come to a better understanding which I'm not going to talk about. But it probably stems from my faith in God. I know there's an afterlife."
When he was young, McIlvride, who learned to sail on the Gulf of Siam, was so crazy about the sport that he would see boats out on the water and "I would physically crave going out on the water. My heart wanted to be on that water."
The Coast Guard experience exorcised that yearning.
"It was only later that I realized that water represents a symbol of spirituality in many different cultures. It's a metaphor for communing for God.
In accepting Baha'i, I transferred my passion for sailing and water to a different thing. And I found what I was looking for."
Ten Hours Until Dawn, which is thrilling and harrowing in equak parts is available at www.michaeltougias.com. It will be out in paperback in Canada this July.

It's always bad form for a political candidate to duck an all-candidates' meeting.
It's even worse form when you're in what appears to be a close race and you refuse to face the music.
So, what was Bob Dechert thinking?
There's really no excuse for the Conservative candidate in Mississauga-Erindale to not show up last night at a debate at the University of Toronto at Mississauga.
Unfortunately, there's a rather long history of candidates, usually parachute-neophyte candidates, shirking their obligation to answer to the public.
Liberal John Sola, for one, managed to get himself elected MPP for Mississauga East in 1990 despite never attending a meeting where he faced the larger public.
Dechert knows better. He's an experienced political participant and a lawyer. What, is he worried that some freshman poli-sci student is going to stump him?
Politicians usually make their mark, in fact, when they are willing to wade into the lion's den and take the heat. I think of former Ontario Health Minister (and current Conservative candidate in cottage country) Tony Clement, whose campaigns Dechert worked on, stepping up at an all-candidates' meeting at Credit Valley Hospital in the last campaign and more than holding his own. The lobby groups were lined up at the microphone but Clement gave back as good as he received.
It's enlightening, it's entertaining and it's educational. An empty seat is the worst policy of all.
I always wonder why candidates make some lame excuse for ducking an all-candidates' encounter. Has it never occurred to them that, if they win, their new job includes a sedate little daily diversion called Question Period?

Former councillor Dr. Ted Blackmore, the first "name" candidate to express an interest in running for the Ward 6 seat on City council this fall, is reconsidering and he likely won't run anywhere.
He says the entry of a couple of high-profile candidates in former councillor Ron Starr and former school trustee and MP Carolyn Parrish has nothing to do with his decision.
"I think much of this comes from disillusionment with respect to the nature of politics," says the Streetsville chiropractor. "I just know that such a commitment from me and my family can only occur if I am 100 per cent heart-and-soul into this and I can honestly say that I am not."
Blackmore's still politician enough to say things could change.
His non-starting campaign clears the decks for the one-on-one matchup of the heavyweights that people probably want to see.
Parrish plans to register for the job in the days following the federal election Monday. Technically, she is still an MP until then.
Blackmore won't switch to the other seat with no incumbent, Ward 10, because he promised Ward 9 public school trustee Sue McFadden that he wouldn't run there.
That saves us at least one finger we'll need to count all the candidates. Nominations have been open for just 18 days and there were already five as of yesterday: Tony Ciufo, Adnan Hashmi, McFadden, Graziano Roti and Scott Wilson. That doesn't count Jason Roti, who registered in Ward 10, then switched to Ward 11, where he'll face incumbent George Carlson.

Phil Green, who is a gracious man and my co-nominee for best federal candidate never to get elected in Mississauga (along with former Peel District School Board Chair Bill Kent) was standing at the door of Paul Szabo’s campaign office, looking a little forlorn.
He wanted to concede to the Liberal incumbent last night after a hard-fought campaign that appeared to leave him a couple of thousand votes short of breaking the stranglehold the Grits and Szabo have had on Mississauga South since 1993.
One little problem. There was no Paul Szabo to congratulate.
Just as I’m beginning to interview Green about his impressions of the campaign, out of the gloom comes Szabo, holding hands with his wife Linda.
Thus ensues one of the strangest political conversations I’ve ever heard. Green tries to concede, but Szabo acts like he’s trying to jinx him by even suggesting he’s won already.
Szabo tells his opponent the story of how CTV’s Harvey Kirk declared him the winner in his first election in 1980 with one poll to go.
“Then the advance poll came in and I ended up losing by 400,” says Szabo.
In fact, as the two continue to talk, it’s hard to tell who's conceding to whom.
“You ran an excellent campaign,” Szabo tells Green. “We had one of the closest races in the whole GTA.”
As it turns out, the “tentative congratulations” that Green offers with a big smile and a handshake will actually hold when the results finally become known a couple of excruciatingly-long hours later.
Szabo and Green obviously respect and like each other, despite the strains of the campaign trail.
Szabo probably sees a little of himself in Green. After all, Szabo suffered two losses to the original Mississauga Mouth That Roared, Don Blenkarn, one of them in that incredibly tight 1980 race, before he broke through to victory.
Both are candidates with deep roots in the community who worked on lots of low-profile, grunt projects to earn their political spurs...not like so many Johnny-Come-Latelies who dominate the party slates these days by packing nomination meetings with their ethnic group or their special interest buddies.
Just like Blenkarn, who faced an insurrection and a nomination challenge from within his own party for his controversial style, Szabo had to beat back an assault by unhappy fellow Grits last year.
As Green runs towards his car, I flag him down for one more critical question: Will he run again when this minority government falls?
“That’s like asking your wife right after she’s delivered your second child if she wants another,” he laughs. “It’s sometimes good to give things some time.”
Just before he dips his head into the car, Green adds one more telling thought however: “I do have three kids.”
* * *
Carolyn Parrish talked about the “cities’ agenda” as part of CBC Radio’s expert political panel on the election yesterday on The Current, then she implemented a little city agenda of her own.
While appearing live downtown on the CBC show on the first day she hasn’t been an MP in 13 years, Parrish said Stephen Harper and his new Conservative government had better clue in fast on the urban divide. The Tories didn't elect a single member in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver.
“He’d better address the cities’ agenda or he’s going to be kicked so far out he won’t know where to land,” said Parrish.
Maybe she was practicing up for her new gig.
Parrish went from the CBC directly to City Hall, where she officially registered to run for Ward 6 councillor against Ron Starr.
When God slams shut the federal door, he apparently opens a little municipal window.

It was hard to tell who was the veteran politician Friday night, Archbishop Andy Hutchison or his old friend Mayor Hazel McCallion.
At a special fundraising evening to honour McCallion's recent elevation to the Order of Canada, a lot of people must have looked at the program and wondered, why was the head of the Anglican Church in Canada chosen to speak about McCallion's career?
Some 10 seconds after he began talking, all became clear.
Hutchison has known Hazel since she was the mayor of Streetsville and he was administering to his first flock in Meadowvale.
In his speech, Hutchison was funny and insightful and hit just the right tone. I guess practicing every Sunday has its advantages.
Her many acolytes tend to be way too reverential around Her Warship but, ironically, the minister didn't fall into that trap.
He explained that Sam McCallion sometimes used to take the pulpit at Streetsville Trinity Anglican, where the McCallions worshipped. When that happened, Hazel would go to hear Hutchison's sermons.
"You want a lot of things in a husband, but preaching is not one of them," advised the Anglican primate.
Everyone knows that Sam and Hazel met in the Anglican Young Peoples' Association, but, as Hutchison made clear, the church experience deeply affected McCallion's political beliefs, too.
The Archbishop mentioned some of the mayor's iron-clad political rules for success, including the fact that you never mention your political opponent by name.
That obviously revived some memories for the mayor. When she got her turn, she re-told the joke that launched a dynasty in Mississauga.
The mayor used it regularly during her 1978 campaign against the incumbent who must not be named: "Both my opponent and I died and started on our way to heaven. St. Peter met us at the gate. He asked us what we did for a living and we said we were politicians.
"St. Peter explained that heaven was surrounded with ladders. He said he was going to give us each a box of chalk and we were to write, on each rung, a promise that we didn't keep.
I got to the second rung and someone stepped on my hand.
It was my opponent coming down for another box of chalk."
* * *
The evening sponsored by the Community Foundation of Mississauga also featured a new commissioned drink called a Hazeltini, consisting of vodka, lemon juice and one of the mayor's favourite libations, Harvey's Bristol Creme Sherry.
I tried one. Pleasant enough, but didn't have enough kick to honour its inspiration.
To do McCallion right, the cocktail has to be a mule-kicker. And, of course, it must have bitters.
Someone who's been at a few closed-door meetings with the mayor at City Hall might suggest it be called the Hazel Wallbanger.

It was a few years ago.
A member of the public, upset with Ward 7 Dufferin-Peel District Separate School Trustee Bruno Iannicca over a school issue, asked him (with great derision) how much his salary was costing the taxpayers.
He looked stunned when Iannicca told him he earned a $5,000-a-year honorarium.
The man collected his thoughts for a moment.
"Then you're a bigger f...ing idiot than I thought," he said.
In his own rude and inappropriate way, he had a point. It does seem ridiculous that anyone would run for a political office that pays so little and requires so much.
School trustees have been largely emasculated since the provincial government took away their ability to raise local taxes.
You wonder why the Mike Harris, who seemed to have a vendetta against all things educational, didn't just do away with local boards totally, since he took away virtually all of their powers.
The explanation, of course, is that the government kept the trustees around so MPPs wouldn't have to answer all those parental complaints about school busing, and the government would have somebody to blame for all of deficiencies, real and perceived, of the school system.
It is, in fact, rather miraculous that so many trustees have stuck around through the Harris years and beyond. The continued dedication of veteran trustees such as Ruth Thompson, Janet McDougald, Esther O'Toole and Iannicca puts the lie to the suggestion they were in it for the money, which at one time reached $25,000 for trustees.
It's interesting to go to the City's website to check out the candidates running for the Nov. 13 election. You'll find 20 people registered to run for council and two for trustee. The two trustee candidates are both for the public board in Ward 9, where Sue McFadden is leaving to run for Ward 10 councillor.
Obviously, they want to tell people they're running as soon as possible.
Generally speaking, however, there is no motivation for trustee candidates to register early, because the main benefit to registering is to be able to collect donations for your campaign.
Who in their right mind is going to spend any more money than they have to win a job where you'll make five grand and listen to people complain about all the funding problems in a school system that you can't fix?
The car allowance for a City councillor is more than three times higher than the SALARY of a trustee.
In my business, you're not supposed to say this out loud, but the simple fact is that trustees deserve a big raise.
The Liberals promised they would look at the issue when they were elected in 2005 and Education Minister Gerard Kennedy is now finally getting around to it.
It's easy to see why he wasn't in a hurry. You can already imagine the headlines: "Province hands trustees 100 per cent raise."
"Trustee salaries leap by $10,000."
One last thought. Do we really want the board of directors of a corporation with a $1 billion budget being paid $5,000 a year?

"Parrish seeks council seat in Mississauga," trumpets the headline in today's Globe and Mail.
Wow. Municipal election coverage in The Globe in January. What's going on?
The celebrity factor is going on, of course.
In a story that stretches right across the top of A9, Carolyn Parrish's political federal history is regurgitated to the nth detail, with nary a mention of her years as a school trustee and local school board chair because, you know, that was before she hit the big time.
Neither the Globe story or a similar one in The Star last week mentioned former Ward 7 councillor Ron Starr, who registered to become the new Ward 6 councillor before Parrish did. He's just as well-known in this community as the former MP.
But then, Starr never did a two-step on a Bush doll on national TV, was never profiled in several pages of Toronto Life and never debated with Wolf Blitzer and Tucker Carlson (no relation to George) on CNN.
My guess is that, by now, Starr is starting to figure out just how stacked against him the media deck is going to be in this election.
Through the process of scoffing at George Bush and ruffling the feathers of the American right , Parrish has morphed into one of those figures who somehow's gotten bigger than the political process itself.
She's in Sheila Copps, Dougie Gilmour, Svend Robinson, Don Cherry, yes ... even Hazel McCallion territory now.
It's inherently unfair that Parrish can command all this attention from the outset and garner publicity that no other candidate in Mississauga can expect, although it's clearly not her fault either.
The Globe article implies that Parrish is lowering herself to seek a council seat.
"Carolyn Parrish wants a job that involves debating urban sewer systems and how to foil the gypsy moth," it sniffs, as if representing people's needs in the neighbourhoods where they live each and every day is somehow beneath a real politician.
Hard as it is to believe, Carolyn Parrish, or rather the cult of Carolyn Parrish, looks as if it's going to overshadow the rest of this election campaign.
If I'm Ms. Parrish, I'm actually a little worried about this phenomenon.
The cult of personality has a double edge.
Do you suppose some of those voters in Ward 6 will be suspicious of Parrish's motives for gracing their ward with her political baggage?
Do you suppose that some of them might actually relish the opportunity to vote against her and tell the rest of the world that they aren't automatically genuflecting at the feet of the idol?
There's something about an annointed superstar candidate (Michael Ignatieff, anyone?) that just gets under people's skins.

Two hours never went by so fast.
Last night's CBC documentary on the Canadian music scene in the 1960s, called Shakin' All Over, is the best thing I've seen on TV in a long time.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one of my generation with the irresistible urge to rush downstairs the minute it finished and rifle through albums that have been gathering dust for years and slap them on the turntable.
Probably start by playing Ian and Sylvia's Great Speckled Bird, with Amos Garrett on guitar, which the program rightly credited as a launching pad for the country-rock or alt-country movement that was already gaining momentum to the south, after Gram Parsons' short sojourn with The Byrds.
The show featured a little piece of the Speckled Bird singing "Smilin Wine," one of many snippets of artists old and new paying homage to the roots of so much of today's music.
Scripted by Nicholas Jennings and based on his book Before The Gold Rush: Flashbacks To The Canadian Sound (betcha that's going to sell some more copies now), Shakin' All Over touched down briefly across the country in the various cities that developed their own unique scenes in splendid isolation from each other. That's something no longer possible in today's environment where no group emerges fully-formed because they're "discovered" after their second rehearsal.
What I really liked about the show is that it didn't play favourites. It wasn't skewed to the ones who made it big, although Leonard Cohen, Burton Cummings, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and The Band got their due.
There was equal time for those whom fortune or fad denied mega-status for some reason: Luke Gibson (Luke and the Apostles), Robbie Lane who still plays in Mississauga all the time, Gene MacLellan, the superb songwriter David Wiffen (More Often Than Not, Drivin' Wheel) and the Paupers, who featured Mississauga's Skip Prokop who went on to a lot more fame with Lighthouse.
The Paupers' first album had a song on it called Southdown Road named for you-know-what. (There's your requisite local content).
What shone through all of the interviews with musicians was that sense of wonder and admiration they had for each other.
Colin Linden talked about trying to figure out how Robbie Robertson got that sound, honed in years of playing in Yonge St. bars, a sound no one else could duplicate.
Ron Sexsmith and Diana Krall didn't have to say anything. They just performed loving treatments of If You Could Read My Mind and A Case of You to pay ultimate tribute to their feelings for Lightfoot and Mitchell.
Sarah Slean talked about a transforming moment for her, and for lots of other people, when Joni Mitchell sings about drawing, "a map of Canada - oh Canada - with your face sketched on it twice" on her cocktail napkin.
It was a watershed moment for Slean because it was a realization that her personal experience and her own songs, could have universal appeal.
What an especial pleasure it was to see and hear the late guitarist Dominic Troiano (Rogues, Mandala, Bush, James Gang, Guess Who) talk about the music.
It brought back long-ago memories of smoky bars, Prakash John on bass and Troiano wearing a funny hat and playing a ferocious lead solo that you never wanted to end.
Let's hope there's going to be a sequel.