Every spring the melting snow reveals all sorts of “treasures”, aka garbage.
This spring will be worse, with election signs spring-ing up already. While walking on Sunday, I saw this blue one — surely the candidate should have chosen a wider sign shape:
He kept his email simple, using his first name only:
While there is some show through from the other side of the sign, the ones further west showed too much show through, which is concealed a bit by one side of some signs having a solid red and the other side white with red:
I also saw one Paul Dewar sign, but it appeared to have been a “saved” sign from a previous election. I didn’t take its picture because it was in an upper bedroom window and it felt a bit too intrusive to take the snap.
I also came across two signs for a school board candidate, presumably left over from last year. Civic minded that candidate was! I may find my way back to take pic of those signs, just to embarass that loser noble participant in the public service.
But back to my main whingeing. The signs already look junky. What clutter!
I think it would be a bad Omen if Damian won,
and could the Lib not gotten a hair cut before he had his photo taken for the sign, or at least spent 2 seconds airbrushing out his own hair plugs?
It will be interesting to see if the arch buys enough votes for the Tories in Chinatown to make a difference this campaign.
Now why would that be a “bad omen”? Just looking at the bios of him and Scott Bradley, he is clearly less of a party hack than his Liberal counterpart while Dewar is in part trading on his mother’s legacy (poor David Chernushenko – had the misfortune to run against both Ed Broadbent and Paul Dewar).
Frankly, to me, signs of progress in terms of the country maturing politically would be for Tories to be able to be elected in urban ridings and for Dippers to be able to be elected in deep rural ridings. Would it be a “bad omen” if a Dipper got elected in Renfrew-Nippissing?
David – I take it you have never visited British Columbia? The NDP won in the deep rural ridings there (Nathan Cullen in Bulkley-Skeena and Alex Atamenko in the Kootenays)
Of course here in Ontario, the NDP won in Rainy River, Thunder Bay, Sudbury, Nickel Belt, Algoma, Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins-James Bay.
I would say the Conservatives sweep the NEAR rural (within a couple of hours of the cities). The real rural still has that labour component, so the NDP is strong.
I was thinking of rural Ontario, not the other provinces. The Prairies have a strain of populism that’s quite unlike anything we have in Ontario, and it swings back and forth between So-Cred/Reform Party populism and CCF/NDP populism.
By rural I mean as in agricultural, where people work the land they own. Northern Ontario is not rural in that sense since people are mostly live in mining towns and the like – there’s very little population between towns, unlike in farming areas where there’s a much greater human presence on the land. The same phenomenon applies to much of BC’s hinterland – population is sparse, but where it occurs it occurs in settlements rather than on farms. If there’s one place in BC that I would expect to be both rural and NDP, it’s in the Gulf Islands where Elizabeth May is running for the Greens – but it’s currently held by the Tories.
David, I apologize that my pop culture reference went completely over your head.
There was a movie in the 80s called The Omen. In it the son of the Devil is born on earth in modern times.
That child’s name was Damian.
Also Baird and Pollievre are tories in somewhat urban seats.
I think Dewar’s seat is fairly safe. I’m not sure how the rest of the election will play out though.
I have to say, if you ever see one of my signs, it’s because someone took it and then put it back out again. I ordered and deployed 100 signs and after I had collected them all the day after the election (Oct. 26), I only had 50 of them! In the weeks that followed, several more showed up unexpectedly, either where I had never put them in the first place or where I know I had been by earlier and they weren’t there. It’s weird but true. I think I have 55 in the garage so there are still 45 unaccounted for out there.
regardless , the signs are a total eyesore already, just on Saturday I saw 4 teens busting up some pierre poilievre/ john baird signs and others . near a bus stop….
Election signs can look junky and clutter things up. But they can also add visual interest to otherwise bland streetscapes.
Sometimes you see creative signs, like these ones in Bells Corners.
I spotted an illegal election sign yesterday at a neighbour’s place, so I better report him to the sign police.
Re photo 1: if you’re part of an election planning team, you discover quickly that there are standard sign sizes; anything custom is far more expensive. The PC sign looks normal and OK to me: I’m more impressed that the PC sign team managed to get it staked into the ground, given how frozen the earth still is.
In any election signs aren’t clutter. They’re an important part of our democratic process — and far less objectionable than those loathsome and misleading Tory TV attack ads.
Last Ontario election the Green candidate in Kingston vowed to not put up a single sign and spend the money on something green instead. I would have voted for him!
Last Montreal election the two biggest parties came to an agreement to not spend ANY money on signs (since they were neck and neck in terms of support/finances they would have cancelled each other out anyway). Brilliant!
So, while I like election signs (I have a cool little collection that includes treasures like Terry Kilrea and Gilles Duceppe), I wish political parties would smarten up. If you’re going to talk the green talk, you’ve got to walk the green walk.