Election Sign

It's been a few weeks since the Toronto municipal election when Rob Ford was elected mayor.

It's still a little bit of a shock to realize that he won: a man so evidently out of his depth, whose ideas  reveal such lack of insight, sophistication and compassion.  My teenage children were especially shocked and dismayed by the outcome.  But we told them the sun would rise the next day...and it did.  I remember my dad saying something like that to me when George W. Bush won...twice.

'How could this happen?' we wondered.  It's an imperfect world. 

The election signs are down now and we'll have to live with Ford for awhile.  But at least we live in a democracy.  At least we can talk openly about what we feel needs to change in our communities.  At least we can still agree to disagree.  

If the guy at the top ends up making a lot of mistakes, maybe it will mobilize the rest of us to keep talking to each other, keep working together, keep standing up for our beliefs.

Keep changing what we can, from our own little patch of green.