Squeaker

From a gallery at the Carnegie Museum. There should be one for women politicians.

I rarely leave the house after dinner, but, when I got an invitation (before the results were in) to Dianne Saxe's "victory party," I thought I'd better go.

The polls in Ward 11 closed at 8:00 p.m. By then I was seated at a table full of strangers in the Victory Cafe on Bloor West. The one thing we had in common was we'd all volunteered for Dianne's campaign. Well, that, and the fact that we wanted her to win.

By 8:30, the local news station had declared Dianne's chief rival, Norm Di Pasquale, the victor by a narrow margin.

So I went home. Bruce had caught a cold in Pittsburgh and wasn't feeling well. And there didn't seem to be much of a reason to hang around.

By the time I got home shortly after 9:00 p.m., the narrow margin of victory had changed. Dianne was in the lead by about 130 votes. So I decided to stay up and watch the numbers ... which did not move, at all, for the next two hours. 70 out of 77 polls had reported in, but I couldn't keep my eyes open. I went to bed.

Back at the Victory Cafe, before the results were made official, Dianne thanked her supporters for her apparent victory and went home. Her campaign team called her after midnight to tell her she'd officially won.

She finished with 8,614 votes, Di Pasquale with 8,491.

Phew.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

That's a hard climb: looking up from the lower
station of the Duquesne Incline.