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"Rouse up, sirs! Give your brains a racking
To find the remedy we're lacking,
Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!"

It's Election Day in Canada! We get to choose the politicians who will represent us in Parliament and form our next Government. Will they come up with suitable remedies for what ails our country and our people, or will they have to be sent packing, maybe even before four years are up?

We're also at the tail end of National Poetry Month, which is why I thought it apt to cite the above lines from the Robert Browning poem, The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

While the poem dates back to the 19th century, the legend is much older. In a nutshell, the town of Hamelin, plagued by rats, hires the piper to play his pipes and lure the rats out of town to meet their doom. The town doesn't pay the piper so the piper strikes up a new tune and lures the town's children away to THEIR doom. Kinda like the Sixties Scoop, you know? In fact, back in the day when I memorized the poem for school, the sixties scoop was ongoing, but I didn't know it then. Instead, in history class we were fed a highly expurgated version of the evolution of Canada, through romanticized books like Fair Domain and One Dominion (yes, those are the actual textbook titles).

Here's Wikipedia's entry on the pied piper legend:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin

And here, from Gutenberg.org, is the Robert Browning poem with illustrations by Kate Greenaway:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18343/18343-h/18343-h.htm

So anyway, my partner and I voted today. I hope you vote too, if you're eligible.

It was actually quite quick and straightforward. We set out for the polls just after 10:30 AM and were out of there by 10:45. On the way back home, the mail truck was parked by our community mailbox and we were able to pick up the mail, such as it was.

Back home, we had lunch and for dessert, we went out and treated ourselves to our first ice cream cone of the season (Muskoka Mocha for me, Key Lime Pie for my Companion). I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.

I may scream even louder once the election results come in. I just hope it won't be a scream of pure agony!

Back in 1968, Canada elected a swinging "young" prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

Only thing is, he was nearly fifty!

Also in 1968, a movie was released, Wild in the Streets. It featured a catchy soundtrack of songs by the fictional band Max Frost and the Troopers, one of which was "Fourteen or Fight", advocating a lowering of the (U.S.) voting age from 21 to 14. At that time, you had to be at least 21 to vote in Canada as well.

In the "Wild in the Streets" scenario, folks were shipped off to concentration camp once they reached the age of thirty. Of course, the inevitable happened. The leader of the youth uprising, Max Frost, already 25 when the film began, soon realized he was rapidly reaching the artificially-imposed age of decrepitude. "Nothing can change the shape of things to come" warned another song from that movie.

According to Wikipedia, which may or may not be a reliable source, folksinger Phil Ochs (who committed suicide at a rather early age) was offered the role of Max Frost but turned it down. Apparently he didn't approve of the storyline, though evidently he later decided he wanted to die before he got old.

Fast forward to 2015. Our voting age has been 18 since the early 1970s, round about the time Trudeau fils was born. He'd like to be Canada's next prime minister, but his detractors are saying he's "just not ready". Really? Personally, I'd have said he'd been groomed for the role since birth, if not before! But then again, it's not young people who are clamouring for the vote these days! Fourteen or fight? It's enough of a battle to get the 18-to-30 demographic out to the polls! Apparently it's only about a third of them who plan to vote and presumably even less who are taking a more active role in the current election campaign. Those most likely to vote and get actively involved are seniors, especially the younger seniors, those baby boomers who would have been between 14 and 21 back in 1968!

To be sure, it may simply be that baby boomers are more likely to be retired and have the time to get involved. It may be that more young people would vote if we made it more convenient for them - say, by allowing them to vote online, or by making the identification process less stringent. Still, many seniors manage to vote in spite of major mobility and identification challenges!

Were young people more or less political back in the day? Certainly the anti-Vietnam war protests spread to Canada, for a variety of reasons. But then there was also the turning on and dropping out and going back to the land movement as well.

Is it a question of apathy and complacency, of feeling that the feminists and the other human rights and civil rights activists have already won all the major battles that need to be won? Or is it that young adults are so preoccupied with the day to day battles of finding un bon boss et un job steady, of taking care of the next generation, and of just getting by in life?

I don't have the answers, but I do still hold the perhaps old-fashioned view that voting is a civic duty, assuming you are eligible. Even if you don't really feel your vote will make much difference to the election outcome. And for this election that's coming up in October, it looks as if the outcome is anything but a foregone conclusion.

So get out and vote. You may be pleasantly surprised by what happens!