Michael and Zsuzsanna with their Etobicoke-Lakeshore family. Photo: Frank Raymond
The Liberal Express rolled into its final stop on Saturday—a community service barbecue honouring firefighters, police and first responders in Etobicoke. It was great to see old friends but we did feel some sadness waving the bus goodbye.
The summer tour leaves behind a wave of memories for Zsuzsanna and me.
We remember the ladies’ choir that greeted the bus when we rolled into Elliot Lake at sundown. We think of the PEI fisherman who took us out on his boat to inspect a breakwater and then served us Malpeque oysters which we washed down with a beer on our way back to the dock. I think of a retired couple outside the Masstown market in Nova Scotia who wouldn’t come in to the store because, they said, they couldn’t afford it in there. We met a lot of seniors having trouble making ends meet.
I remember travelling 11 hours by plane to Inuvik—we weren’t always on a bus—and dancing with the Inuvialuit dancers in the high school gym.
We stood in flooded fields in Saskatchewan talking crop insurance with farmers. We opened the Ayers Cliff agricultural fair in Quebec. We watched a demolition derby at the Comber Fair outside of Windsor. The derby was question period with cars!
We stopped in over a hundred communities, small towns, and villages in ten provinces and three territories. Over and over the bus lost cell phone and internet coverage so we came home knowing there is a digital divide in Canada we must overcome.
Everywhere we went we met Canadians who were glad we showed up at their wharf, their fair, their market or their barbecue. We took politics out of Ottawa and onto the road and the crowds seemed to love it. We put up the big red tent and asked Canadians to come on in—and they did.
Our thanks to everyone on the bus—to our great drivers, the candidates, senators and MPs who hopped on board, the media who joined in, the young Liberals who cheered us on at every stop and the young team who kept us rolling day and night from coast to coast to coast. Most of all, my thanks to Zsuzsanna who was there every step of the way.
- Michael Ignatieff
