For a guy who just got run over by a steam-roller, the Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry Liberal candidate – somebody whom 99.1% of voters had never heard of three weeks ago – had a strange take on the excruciating experience. “Feels good,” said Devon Monkhouse, a token candidate if there ever was one, while he gushed about how proud he was to be part of Team Bonnie, and that he was happy with the overall results. Duh!
Of course, nobody in the Liberal camp expected the candidate to beat Nolan Quinn, or even come close.
As expected, Team Ford flag-bearer Nolan Quinn coasted, and that is being charitable, to victory gathering up 62 per cent of the SDSG vote, while the Liberals and NDP candidate Jeremy Rose, who did have a strong Cornwall riding connection, fought it out for second place.
Monkhouse was parachuted into the riding after the “head hunters” beat the bushes for a local sacrificial lamb with no success. Responses were along the line of, “Sorry, I’m busy that day.”
These are challenging (a.k.a. desperate) times for the local Libs. There was a day, not that long ago, when local prospects lined up for the nomination.
A defining moment, as they say, was when Guy Lauzon crushed super star Liberal candidate Bernadette Clement in 2011 and 2015. The writing was on the wall. It wasn’t a great night for Monkhouse, and Team Bonnie. It was reported that he was doing double duty as a campaign manager for a Liberal candidate in a Toronto area riding who finished a distant third.
Bonnie Crombie lost her seat but vows to stay on. (That isn’t her call). Fact that Liberals, who last ruled under a disaster called Kathleen Wynne (who succeeded McFibber), managed to nail down official party status is a poor consolation prize.
Bottom line is that they got smoked by Dougie Dollar and Co. who outflanked them by playing the Trump card.
Meanwhile, Quinn’s massive victory bodes well for the local federal chapter of the local Conservative association. It shows that anyone challenging Eric Duncan and the Big Blue Machine in the expected spring/early summer election faces an uphill battle of Mount Everest proportions.
There’s another local Tory steam-roller warming up in the wings. Calling for a big Duncan win isn’t exactly crawling out on the proverbial limb.
BACK IN MARCH 1957 – A section of Cornwall Collegiate built in 1877 was torn down to be replaced by a modern section that would have 30 classrooms…Destroyed by fire in September, the Royal Hotel at Montreal Road and McConnell Avenue was rising from the ashes. The new Royal would have 50 guest rooms…The new town of Ingleside recorded its first structural fire. A building owned by Seaway Enterprise was destroyed in the blaze…Council voted to establish a sub-fire station at the former township annex at 400 St. Felix. It had served as a township police station…The last house was moved to Long Sault. In all, the huge house movers had re-located 126 homes to the new town…To celebrate its move to a new station on St. Andrew’s Road north of the city, Louis Emard Petroleum gas station on Pitt lowed pump prices to 37 cents a gallon…Levesque’s women’s and children’s clothing store opened a new store at 29 Second St. E… A crackdown on speeders was paying dividends for court coffers. Over a two-week period, 200 speeders paid fines. The going rate was $1 for every one mile per hour over the limit…The federal department of transportation said it was prepared to acquire 1,000 acres in Bonville for a municipal airport. The proposal called for the airport to be turned over to the city for a nominal fee…A 12-month head count at the United Counties Jail showed that on average the old facility housed 28 prisoners each day. On average, four of the inmates were female…City lawyer Lucien Lamoureux, representing 44 local gas station owners, asked council to freeze new station licences for one year. He said the large number of stations made it hard to make money pumping gas…Cornwall native Eddie Rowe, captain of the Clarkson College Golden Knights, was named All-American. Meanwhile, Cornwall native Ray Baker, was the freshman team’s leading scorer…An 18-month-old Glengarry boy died after swallowing several blood pressure pills at the family home. He died while his parents rushed him to Dr. P. A. Tidman’s office 16 miles away in Lancaster…An Ottawa District Hockey Association (ODHA) playoff game between Cornwall Comets and South Mountain (Comets won 7-4) ended with an on-ice brawl that included fans of the visiting team. City police were called in to rescue referees Gus Lebrun and Wally “Chief” Garand who had been locked in their dressing room by some of the upset fans.
TRUMP TAKES: Elon Musk represents the dark side of capitalistic greed…Is anybody surprised that Conrad Black has planted himself in the Trump camp?….Hey, what ever happened to Trump supporter ‘The Pillow Guy’?…Bet ya The Great One would love to take back that thumbs up he gave the U.S.A. bench at the Four Nations game with Canada…Record shows that Trump signed the free trade agreement that he now criticizes as a bad deal for America…Albert Einstein had it right when he said that three forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.
TRIVIA Cornwall native who won the Jack Adams Trophy (NHL coach of the year).
TRIVIA ANSWER George Stanley who designed the Canadian Maple Leaf flag, first raised on Parliament Hill on Feb. 15, 1965, was dean of arts at Royal Military College (RMC) in Kingston.
QUOTED “We’re not going to move away from the United States. We’re going to be friends, willy-nilly and probably more willy than nilly.” – Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1971 interview
