They were angry. They were upset. They had been manipulated by their party leaders and they wanted their pound of flesh.
Many of the members of the Mississauga South Provincial Progressive Conservative Party got what they came for too.
Tim Peterson sat in the front row, saying nothing, nervously fingering a bottle of water and watching his alleged nomination meeting turn into a donnybrook of the first order. The party and Peterson got roasted by the membership, and there really wasn’t anything funny about it.
Friday night saw one of the most unusual political nominations in the history of local politics, as many of the long-standing members who had built the provincial Tory dynasty in the South gave their party leaders a little lesson in keeping in touch with the grassroots.
It wasn’t a pretty sight.
The formulaic ‘let’s-all-hold-hands-and-be-friends after a tough fight’ nomination scenario turned into ‘let’s-all-just-show-the-world-how-deeply-divided-we-really-are’ scenario.
There was long-time Tory Roy Willis calling for immediate adjournment of the meeting because of the questionable way in which it was called. Most of the audience at Clarkson Secondary School chanted “Call the Vote, Call the Vote” in response.
One of leader John Tory’s top advisors spent most of the evening verbally taunting Willis whenever he spoke.
Chair Blair McCreadie, president of the party, responded to the audience’s unruliness by fanning the flames of fury with the comment, “You’ve been saving up for a week and that’s the best you can do?”
Eventually, McCreadie declared Peterson nominated from the chair, something which had already officially happened a few days before, apparently in anticipation of just the unruly eventuality that prevailed. McCreadie’s inevitable announcement brought another couple of minutes of unison chanting of that old party favourite, “Shame, Shame.”
It’s a long-time tradition to trot out old political warhorses to be recognized for their stalwart service at such nominations. The crowd called out, “Margaret, Margaret” in anticipation of a few words from former MPP Margaret Marland, who lost her job in 2003 to Peterson by 234 votes.
But the former trustee and councillor didn’t deliver the usual bromides about past glories. She commented on, “the despicable way this has been handled” instead.
One of the few times the place went completely quiet was when former Mayor Ron Searle, Tory candidate in the 1965 federal election, rose to his feet. He said the process has been, “a violation of the democratic principles the Conservative Party has stood for over the years.”
At one point in the proceedings, someone called out, “this reminds me how things worked in Nazi Germany.”
John Tory must be thinking to himself, ‘of all the ridings in all of Ontario, why did a Liberal have to cross the floor in this one?’
They don’t salute on command for the party in Mississauga South. You have to earn your stripes to be a candidate. And you have to follow due process along the way or you end up in the ugly scene that unfolded Friday.
Things are so bad that even NDP candidate Ken Cole is openly inviting the Tory disaffected to publicly convert at a membership meeting he’s holding Wednesday night at Port Credit library.
Before the meeting Friday, Ryerson journalism student and Mississauga News freelancer Owen Jarus, asked Peterson what would happen if politicians such as him were not granted free passes to their new party’s nominations. “People wouldn’t cross the floor,” he said.
After his experience, people might not cross even with a guaranteed acclamation. And that would be a good thing.
If members of local riding associations follow the example in Mississauga South and continue to stand by their principles and don’t just blindly accept the Flavour-of-the-Month Turncoat expediency of their leaders, maybe “grassroots democracy” won’t be a term that is automatically accompanied by a sarcastic snicker.