I’ve always been a keen follower of politics and the raw, uninhibited blood sport it has become. I find myself fascinated by the people who seek power; fascinated and distrustful. This year with the 2024 US Presidential election, it is like winning fifty yard line tickets to the Superbowl of Political Combat. I can’t get enough of it.

My politics as those of you familiar with my blog will know are liberal, very liberal. In the US MAGAsphere I would be called a communist. If to live in a safe, lawful country with birth to death health care and a social service network built to catch everyone of us should the need arise, well then ‘yes’ I guess I’m a communist. If living in a country with a national police force and a taxpayer funded prison system, a fully funded national highway system in good repair, subsidized higher education, billions of taxpayer dollars annually committed to the building of hospitals, universities and trade schools, billions more invested each year in the education of our doctors and nurses, researchers and academics, billions more on the arts, the environment and scientific research and development, if all that is communist, well ‘yes’ I guess I’m a communist.

The for-profit business model has no place in healthcare in my country, it is our birthright. Healthcare is not transactional, it is not a profit centre for a transnational corporation. It is part of an unbreakable social contract, one which binds my entire country: We will use our nations wealth, wealth created by tens of millions of us who work hard, dream big and raise our families to take care of one another. Of course it costs a lot, and our taxes are high but look at the bargain we have struck. Family, community and country over self. It is that upon which we have built this great country, a country in which individuals thrive and a whole country prospers. And would you look at that we are one of the world’s healthiest and most prosperous countries. We are the envy of many who seek to emigrate, a country I am so fortunate to call my own. So if it helps people to call that communist, well so be it.

I call it being Canadian.

I’m not quite sure why I went off like that. When I sat down to write it was not my intention. I can only ask your forbearance and indulge my fantasy that people actually give a damn what I think about politics. It is the essential conceit of anyone who writes a blog. I have to say though that watching the unfolding campaigns of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris has triggered memories of a time when I tried politics. It was 1967 and I ran for Student Council at the University of Victoria.

‘TONY PEYTON 1st Year Arts’

Throughout my adult life I have been asked to run for various political positions and my answer has always been ‘no’. Like a hard NO! I suppose many who know me might be surprised at that. By any measure I am a bloviating blowhard apparently convinced that my opinion is after all, the only consequential one. Well, perhaps that’s not how I appear nowadays, age having rounded off some of my more ragged edges, but you should have known me back then. I was unbearable, a bright arrogant boy, all wet behind the ears, cocksure of myself. It was like I was perfect for politics. I love being in charge and I love authority, ever the more so if it’s mine. And I’ve always loved the limelight. The best centre I know is the Centre of Attention so you can see, on the face of it I would have made a perfect politician.

It was September 1967 and I was at the University of Victoria in Victoria BC. I was seventeen and in my first year at university.

In the late 60’s universities were a hotbed of student unrest, even in sleepy conservative Victoria where I lived. I can remember the day the entire student body at UVic marched on the Legislature to protest the testing of nuclear bombs on Amchitka Island, in Alaska. All five thousand of us. The residents of The Empress Hotel on the Inner Harbour must have spilled their tea at the very sight of it.

I recall listening to Gerry Rubin, an American anarchist, one of the infamous Chicago Seven speaking on campus, ramping up a very white and privileged middle class student body, rapt with attention, emboldened by his revolutionary rhetoric. The US government had targeted Rubin and six others claiming they conspired to cause a riot at the Chicago Democratic Convention and the media dubbed the defendants ‘The Chicago Seven’.

By 1968, widespread civil unrest and protest had become a huge part of the times. In quick succession the 60’s had stood witness to growing social and political protest and convulsive social change. Feminists protested gender inequality. Youth protested the growing US commitment to the war in Vietnam, a war which would eventually leave 65,000 American boys dead, killed in a war few wanted and even fewer understood. Black Americans protested racial inequality, police brutality and the racism that still remains so embedded in the American cultural experience. In quick succession John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated. Cities were in flames and the US seemed on the brink of open domestic conflict. Protest was an everyday headline.

I of course was not one of the protesters. I was still a lifetime away from that. No, I was back in my study cubicle in the McPherson Library on campus, wearing a sports jacket, white shirt, school tie and spit polished shoes. I am not kidding.

But student politics beckoned and I ran for Student Council 1st Year Arts Rep. I can still remember the twenty foot long poster we posted on the McPherson Library wall near the doorway, a large black and white photo of me in my jacket, shirt and tie, two foot high hand painted bright blue letters and my catchy slogan:

                                        ‘PLACE PEYTON’

My slogan, I can remember thinking at the time, was an ever so clever play on ‘Peyton Place’ the ‘blockbuster novel that had ‘shocked the nation’ as the TV ads leered. It was all the talk and conveniently available for a budding young student politician. To this day I’m not quite sure why I ran nor what platform I ran on. I was an utterly faceless, anonymous student and was not riled up about any particular domestic issue, safely cocooned in my upwardly mobile middle class upbringing such as I was. I suspect it was more the challenge, the idea of winning an election that intrigued me. Why not? Give it a go Tony. Right then. Yes but I still needed an issue.

And right there, right on cue along came feminine hygiene deodorant. With the pure uncluttered instincts of a budding politician, I grabbed it.

Feminine hygiene deodorant was new on the market, a somewhat controversial product in that evolving era. Feminists both loved and hated it for reasons that should by now be abundantly clear. In 1970 it was marketed as a feminist breakthrough. The UVic student paper ‘The Martlet’ ran a satirical ad for ‘Pussy Wash’. it was a full page black and white photo of a soaking wet and furious pussy cat hanging from a clothes line. The headline:

‘PUSSY WASH FOR THE MODERN WOMAN’

Hilarious? It really was. Satire? Check. Pushing a boundary? Of course, what do student newspapers exist for if not to push boundaries. Offensive? Perhaps, although by today’s standards it wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

Apparently though I was incapable of recognizing satire when it stared me in the face but like any good politician it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I grabbed it and ran with all the righteous indignation of a MAGA politician decrying ‘childless cat ladies’. All vacuous hyperbole and outrage, I quickly realized this was my ticket. I was right of course, it was puerile, the teenage authorings of two male editors and it was misogyny but in those times it was compellingly counter culture. Whatever inherent embedded insult it bore would have to wait its historical turn; this was 1967 and we were there to throw out any stuffy pre feminist notions of propriety!

But what did young Tony Peyton, your candidate for 1st Year Arts on the UVic Student Council know about any of that? It was my issue, a centrepiece in my speeches and debate. My political instincts were impeccable. Without ‘Pussy Wash’ I was doomed to be defeated on the ash heap of ‘Tony Who?’ With ‘Pussy Wash’ I was quickly ‘YES, THAT Tony Peyton!’. Unwittingly it gave me visibility although I suspect with the clarity time and distance can provide, that visibility was mostly as the butt of many jokes. Never mind a little idle mocking though, a small price to pay. I was elected to the UVic Student Council in a landslide gathering more votes than all other first year rep candidates combined. I had found my issue and I had found my calling: I was going into politics.

But it turns out getting elected is a lot more fun than being elected. My brush with Pussy Wash, had served its purpose. It had given me profile, it had made me visible. In a sea of faceless candidates it let me stand out. For that alone I will be forever grateful to Pussy Wash.

But that getting elected thing was the easy part. I was not ready for the next part and man oh man! I was in for it. The editorial staff of The Martlet quickly figured out they had a shiny new toy to play with: Tony Peyton, 1st Year Arts Rep. Week after week I was the editorial focal point in the paper. I saved them all. Of course I did, they were after all talking about me.

‘Poor naive Tony Peyton’

‘We implore all the young women on campus to introduce young Tony to your hidden secrets’

‘It’s 1967! How does a ‘Tony Peyton’ happen in this day and age?!’

Unwittingly of course, they had hit the nail on the head. That was a question I was wrestling with as well. Now don’t get me wrong. My dating life improved after the campaign. A lot. Perhaps the young women of UVic had taken up the challenge laid down with such plaintiff elegance by The Martlet. In any event I shall be forever grateful.

And so there it was. The beginning and the end of any interest I would ever have in politics. Turns out that the title came with all manner of commitments and responsibilities, meetings, committees and reports. Nobody had told me about that. I quickly realized it was not for me. There’s no authority in committees. There’s no place for a bloviating blowhard in a respectful exchange of ideas. No, I found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time and ego aside it was a lesson best learned early. Best to crash and burn young. I couldn’t help but see my own reflection in this short experience though; to this day I’ve not met a politician unencumbered by self interest, who was not glib and fatuous in response. I would have been perfect for the job.

Actually I did dabble in student politics one more time. My son Toby decided to run for Student Council President at KSS in Kelowna BC. It would have been around 2004.

“Hey Tobes, I have some experience in student politics. Can I help?”

“Well yes Dad, that would be great. I need a slogan. You know something memorable. Remember, like you told me about when you were at UVic.”

‘DON’T BE HATIN’ VOTE PEYTON’

“Thanks Dad.“

Landslide.

2 for 2!

Turns out I’m good at political slogans.

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