The Alberta election was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The fact of its demise was marked by the government, the opposition, the press, and the electorate. The election was as dead as a door-nail.
Stelmach knew that it was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Stelmach’s party was its sole contestant, its sole participant, and sole benefactor. And even though Stelmach was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of politics on the day of the vote, and solemnized the result with a reference to the military’s fight for democracy in Afghanistan.
The mention of democracy and elections in Afghanistan brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that the election was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing will ever change in Alberta, and nothing good will come of this sad story. The turnout was a dismal forty-one percent, a result surely embarrassing for a pocket borough, much less the richest province in the Dominion. Were we not perfectly convinced that Ralph Klein had left the stage before the election began, perhaps there would be nothing more remarkable in the outcome, in a mid-winter election, in the heart of small ‘c’ Alberta, in the midst of an oil boom, than there would be in any other election won by the old Premier’s appeals to Martha and Henry. However, the election was dead, Ralph’s departure notwithstanding.
Stelmach never painted out old Klein’s policies. There they stood, an election later, on top of the government ledger. The firm was known as the Conservative Party. External heat and cold and political pressure had little influence on the party. No opposition could provoke an honest debate, no political wind could blow harder than the blowhards of the party. Oh! But it was a tight-fisted hand at the electoral grind-stone, the Conservative Party! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old club! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire without first voting Tory; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.
