New Blue Candidate Meet & Greet
February 23, 2025
Takeaways from last night’s New Blue candidate meet & greet event held at Rodman Hall:
1. Before turning the crowd loose on the spread of free food, Kristen Halfpenny got the group together and said grace. I sure knew I wasn’t at a Liberal meeting.
2. Before the speeches, I talked to a number of people including Niagara West candidate Aaron Albano, who was most impressive. I also spoke to Calvin, one of the New Blue organizers, who I last met at the event for Leslyn Lewis when she was running for the CPC leadership. Whereas he supported the PPC in the last two federal elections, he says he’s backing the CPC this time around because he feels Pierre Poilievre has done enough to reach out to the freedom people. I’m not sure I share his opinion and even though I’m impressed with what I’ve seen thus far out of Bas Sluijmers, I remain undecided as to whether to vote CPC or PPC. Calvin’s preferred CPC candidate would have been Greg Gillespie, who didn’t make it past the selection committee.
3. During the hour and a half before the speeches, someone was playing some tunes on a piano that sounded like funeral music.
4. By my count, around 60 were in attendance and it was much less of a “fringe” gathering than the group who came out to see Maxime Bernier in Welland.
5. After taking my seat in the big hall, I spoke at length to someone named Lawrence, who had been the president of the Niagara West riding association. During the conversation, I learned that he was also originally from Winnipeg and lived not far from where I did. He left Winnipeg in 1989 when I was still a season ticket holder of the real Jets and said I was “new here” despite having been in these parts for 10-plus years now. Today, he’s a fan of the former Atlanta Thrashers franchise that Manitoba taxpayers were forced to purchase for Mark Chipman, and it was left to me to inform him of that latter detail. He also told me that he had been fired from his job of 24 years at the Niagara Catholic school board for refusing to take injections of gene-altering poison and that the Ontario Party is like a “stone in our shoe.”
6. Video showing the speeches made by each of the area candidates. Some were impressive. Others, not so much. But I still give them credit for putting their names on the ballot.
7. A shot showing all the candidates . . .
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