Month: May 2025

A few thoughts on the recent Canadian federal election (April 28, 2025)

The election was held on Monday, April 28, 2025.

UPDATE. May 5, 2025: A freshly-elected Alberta MP in a very safe Conservative riding has surrendered his seat so Poilievre can run. Barring some extreme karmic shenanigans, Pierre Verb-the-Noun should win and get back in Parliament.
  • Hooray for short Canadian elections! Five weeks and done.
  • I am relieved the Conservatives lost.
  • I am chastened by their share of the popular vote, which increased, along with their seat count.
  • I am amused by a poll that showed they could have potentially won it all without a leader. But only without a leader.
  • I am deeply satisfied by Pierre Poilievre losing his own seat. He had been elected seven times previously in the Carleton riding.
  • I am saddened but not surprised by the collapse of the NDP, going from 24 seats to just seven. Singh, who also lost his seat, gave a warm and gracious concession speech and announced he would resign. The party, IMNSHO, needs to go back to being fully socialist, to give people a clear alternative to the Liberals, who are in some ways moving further from the left.
  • The Greens desperately need something to be more than a blip. Elizabeth May ain’t going to run forever.
  • Maxine Bernier came in fourth in his riding. I think the PPC is PP-Done. The bad news is the Conservatives seem happy (?) to absorb the extreme right-wing he represented.
  • The Liberals fell three seats short of a majority (getting 169), but should probably be fairly safe with help from the gutted NDP, who will not be in a hurry to have a new election.
  • The whole election is kind of a shock from what was expected before the re-election of Trump. It is not an exaggeration that Trump’s demented grandpa antics aimed at Canada helped revive the Liberals (along with Trudeau resigning), giving them a mandate they may very well have lost had the polling showing the Conservatives with a 20+ point lead held. This is good for Canada in that Poilievre would have been a terrible PM.
  • My own riding switched from NDP to Liberal. I can live with that.

Now we wait to see how Poilievre gets back into Parliament without a seat. Some newly-elected MP will need to resign “for the greater good” but I suspect the party will start developing fracture lines even if this happens. Remember, it’s the result of merging the Canadian Alliance (nee Reform) and the old Progressive Conservative parties. It’s no coincidence they dropped the “progressive” part, as the party has pushed much harder to the right thanks to the CA/Reform wing, which drive the merger. Poilievre is also taking the worst cues from the U.S. Republican Party, by constantly spouting lies, misstating and misrepresenting everything and being just an angry, unlikeable sod, and I think some in the party realize that and know the gains made in this election may have been in spite of their leader, not because of him (though with any “populist” leader, he will always have his base of cult-like loyalists).

Interesting times ahead.

So long, doodlingsandnoodlings.com!

For a time I had the idea of a more purpose-driven blog and out of that I secured the domain for doodlings and noodlings.com.

I never used it, and I am passing on the opportunity to renew it, so anyone else who wants it, go get it!

The idea seemed sound at the time:

  • Take my two main creative interests, writing and drawing, and combine them into a blog that would showcase each.
  • I could use lots of old material to get the site rolling, so I wouldn’t immediately need to create new content.
  • I could opine about writing/art in general to “fill in the gaps”.

There were a few problems, though:

  • The URL, though kind of catchy, is long. Also, I could never remember if it was doodlings andnoodlings or noodlingsanddoodlings. This didn’t seem like a good sign.
  • My brain doesn’t seem to like being restricted to just a few topics, which is why this blog (creolened.com) covers anything that pops into my head.
  • I think part of me just wanted to do something more “worthy” than rambling about random things.

In the end, I realized I was not going to seriously pursue the site and chose to let the domain expire. It’s also why, as we start May 2025, I have not yet moved off of WordPress, despite a desire to unhitch from a platform that is apparently running largely based on the whims of a single person with, uh, interesting views.

I’m still not entirely ready to start up something new, but I will let the ideas just appear organically or something–which may mean never. And if it’s never, I can live with that.