A Resilient Voter: From a Lazy Liberal to a Confident Conservative

My mother volunteered for the first Trudeau prime minister. My older sister and I attended the same school as the Trudeaus’ children, with Justin and my older sister in the same class.

In our house, CBC was always on the radio. My grandparents also lived in Ottawa, and whatever the Liberals did was given unquestioned approval.

In the family, if you want to know what to do, my father will tell you—he’ll tell you before you ask. My mother has it covered if you want to know what to eat or wear.

Lessons of Experience

If you don’t eat what’s in front of you, you can sit there until you do. Once, I sat there for three days. I learned that hunger won’t kill me, and when rotten food might, it’s better to go hungry.

If you want to decide what to wear for yourself, make it. I learned to sew my clothes. Upon graduation, I bought an expensive machine, started my fashion label, and spent much time thinking about designs, fabrics, trims – you name it. During a power outage, I cut out pattern pieces by candlelight, because what else was there to do?

After a couple of years, I needed a better answer. I had no significant troubles and a promising career, yet I was deeply unsatisfied and didn’t care if another day came. There was no joy in life whatsoever. I went through the motions, wondering why bother, knowing a boyfriend or children were not the missing pieces.

Expectations of Adulthood

As an engineer, I was doing what was right by having a career, indeed, a profession.

Yet, the time came to write the professional exam, and I decided that enough of that was enough, and I didn’t. I continued wearing my ring but didn’t earn the right to put the “P. Eng” after my name, stamp a drawing, or sign a passport photo. Whoopie, I thought. I’d spent four working years with them and decided it wasn’t a group I wanted to belong to.

I wanted to be a homeowner, with a backyard, and I didn’t want to be married to afford it. My job search included only positions allowing for a rural lifestyle within an hour’s drive, not an hour’s drive that can easily become three, but a predictable commute.

If I knew what I wanted, I wasn’t sure if I could find it. As an engineer, you work in factories, corporations, or anywhere that fundamentally requires a large-scale operation—cities, not rural areas. I couldn’t help but wonder why I didn’t figure out the disconnect sooner in life.

Adaptations of Living

I learned how to pivot, adapt, and sell my meagre skills to companies that’d never heard of a Six Sigma Black Belt, nor would I care that I was any good at it.

Times changed, and suddenly, companies were in trouble. Companies in trouble heard that the new thing to do was to hire a Black Belt. Suddenly, life opened up. I got a good job on the CEO’s desire to brag to his friends that he “had a Black Belt on his payroll.” Whatever it takes, I shrugged, and bought my first house on a lake in cottage country. First dream comes true.

My little house was affordable because it was only half finished. There was a lot of work to be done. So-called friends poured out of the woodwork, declaring themselves my guests and coming to stay at my house. Many of these people I was meeting for the first time.

Due to the nature of uninvited guests, it was the last time I met them. They lost my things, apologizing off-handedly that my kayak is now missing its portal covers. I lost clothing items, books, compact discs, and jewelry. No one offered to help with the work, nor did they bring hostess gifts, as I see in magazines.

I didn’t like feeling used and abused at all, and I felt stunned that I was supposed to take this without a fight, without any benefit. Yet, when I looked around, no one acted or looked guilty.

That’s when I met the guy I am with now. He looked around, grabbed my hand and walked me out of there. That was twenty years ago, next month. I should remember the anniversary of the birth of my new perspective, but neither of us does.

I’d never wanted to entertain. With distance, I finally realized that I also hated sewing. I had never enjoyed it but approached it with defiance and self-sufficiency. With regret, I can’t believe the time I spent, wasted, and squandered on fashion when I am far more Steve Jobs today.

I have a uniform. Due to the season and activities, I have more than one uniform, but I don’t care about expressing my creativity by changing my look every day. I’ve found what works, and I’m sticking to it.

The End of Unrequited Consumerism

Like that, I quit my role as a consumer in the garment industry. I go to vote in my American Eagle thrift-store jeans, hoping not to get spray-painted by an elbows-up Liberal. But that’s jumping forward today, and I must explain why this is the first year I voted Conservative.

Shedding the indoctrination of a habit is a small thing, perhaps shrugging off the shroud of a profession a larger thing, but leaving behind cities was a long-fought struggle I’ve only recently enjoyed. Like, I retired to enjoy.

Although I left the city as often as possible, work was always down there. When the company that provided me the opportunity to live on the lake was headed for bankruptcy, I sucked up my bias and courage, and applied to a job in Toronto. I decided to use the time to return to school, perhaps to learn a valuable trade for a viable small-town lifestyle.

The End of Pretended Personalities

I shared my intentions of returning to school with the interviewer, stopping short of what I’d planned to study while immersed in Toronto’s land of opportunity. Just don’t drown.

Yet, I drowned. I was given a role where I flew out every Monday and back every Friday, almost every week—not enough not to need an apartment, but enough not to be able to attend school enough. I didn’t last long before quitting out of sheer boredom, frustration, and lack of freedom. Caged in by a team agenda and a shared vehicle, I couldn’t find enough solitude.

This pattern repeated itself, opportunity becoming a self-induced jail. I proved myself to be outspoken, independent, determined, and all kinds of things that don’t go along with the status quo, don’t find reasons to keep calm and carry on, and all sorts of other things you are expected to do when you are supposed to hand over all your decisions to someone else.

Your parents are supposed to tell you who to be. Teachers are supposed to tell you what to do. Your priests are supposed to tell you how to feel. Politicians are supposed to steer you through crises. When I ask you if you are hungry, you ask me what time it is. And on it goes. If you are a lamb. Mary had a little lamb, with a bit of mint.

The End of Shunned Disagreement

Sheep are easy to govern and simple to manage, yet they don’t move society forward. In my life and my roles, I witnessed, discovered, and ran up against many problems that seemed shocking to me. Yet when I looked around, it was like my time at the cottage—I’m the only one who sees anything wrong.

When I voice my discontent, I am met with shock, shame, and silence, as they run away from me, like, “How dare you?”

Yet, the farther I get from the cities, the more agreement I find. The farther from the corporations, unions, government employees, academics and entrepreneurs relying on grant money, the more life made sense.

Here, we debate, argue, and listen to the other side. Sometimes, we even change our minds. What we can’t do is run away. Where would we go? The other side of the street is the only option here. So, you listen because you have the time and know their name and where they live, as you do.

Recently, I became a hunter, though the label still feels odd. I got my first three-point buck with a crossbow in 2022 and a four-point buck with a gun in 2023. With over a dozen other hunters and the two weeks they had to beat me, I walked away with the first and biggest buck that year.

For the measly reward of $110, I left them to divvy my meat. They decided I deserved half of a portion. I don’t like hunting with Liberals. They take everything you have and divide it among their friends. After that, I don’t know if I’m even applying for my tags again.

When I told someone I hunted, they said, “Oh, you must be a Conservative.” I considered this while reflecting on my vote for Trudeau because I wanted weed decriminalized. With absolute shallowness, I couldn’t get past Sheer’s face, which I perceived as untrustworthy. I voted for Trudeau because I thought O’Toole sounded like a tool.

During the pandemic, I started paying attention to politics. I learned that Sheer knew his stuff and that no one controls their dimples. I read Poilievre’s biography and learned about the O’Toole era, which only made me respect Pierre more.

Today, I’m #shouldaSheer. I regret not voting for him and not bringing as many others with me as I could. I was a lazy liberal indeed.

Forced into Retirement

As housing prices skyrocketed, real estate agents came to my door regularly to tell me what my house was now worth.

When the pandemic hit, I was on the verge of launching a career as an author. I’d learned that I loved public speaking and could make an audience laugh with me instead of at me. I’d also learned that my ideas were best digested at an individual pace in the long form, which necessitated books, not courses.

My ambitions, abilities, and values started to crystallize, and then something happened that made me decide that everyone could keep their hands to themselves from now on.

The next morning, the shutdown was declared where I lived.

So much for my next career task of looking for speaking gigs – there were none. I effectively retired that day, although it took a few weeks to realize whether I was at a dead end or the perfect door to retirement.

Unsafe on my Street

Where I lived was a Liberal riding, and I’d had enough of crime. I’d had my vehicle stolen by drug addicts who were living in it a few streets over with their young son when it was found.

My neighbours adopted kids, and told me they were doing it for the money, while the kids became hellions, terrorizing the neighbourhood and their school. After I’d been vandalized one too many times, I lost my tolerance and decided to move.

I listed my house without deciding on a future location. Weighing my options, I sold everything I could. I made weekly trips to my new address, moving in one carload at a time.

At the end of it, I moved in with my long-term back-and-forth boyfriend, under the agreement that if it doesn’t work out, I can always move to the following location I was considering.

Yet, have you seen what happened to house prices? I cashed out, knowing I might never again be a homeowner.

When I arrived for the last night at my house, there was evidence of an attempted break-in, and I was so glad I was leaving this neighbourhood where I couldn’t even sleep with my windows open anymore. But I would have been if I had been there at the time, and I shudder as I remember the gratitude that I wasn’t home and would never be again.

Dreaming of Homeownership

Being a homeowner was the first thing I did right that felt that way. Living on the lake was the happiest I’d felt. Yet, my dad would say, “I don’t like the thought of you there.” No one in my family supported me being there alone.

However, I was the safest ever there. Protected by my neighbours and notoriety, everyone watched out for me. I might have been known as “The Whack Job,” but I was finding my true nature.

When I quit my job in the city, my dad came up to help me finish the house so I could sell it. While I didn’t turn him down or argue, I felt defiance take hold. The house was the one thing that gave me joy, and if I didn’t have it, what did I have? No anchor, no compass. I let him push me into signing a real estate contract with a one-year limit.

One year later, I’d had no offers on the house, but a job offer in the city again.

My new manager said that I didn’t have to be in my office every day, “because I’d just find problems to solve,” I left with a familiar pit forming in my stomach. Once again, I had no idea what I’d signed up for.

Wasn’t I hired to find and solve problems? Not without a long list of disclaimers. When you work for a fundamentally government-controlled entity, you are supposed to do what you are told, you obedient little servant.

When I refused to sign a follow-up contract with the agent, she said, “I’m calling your dad!” I shook my head in sadness at what women do to get what they want.

The Adventure of Life

When you upstage your boss, she won’t want you around. If that is what you should be doing, welcome to the world of egos, mortgages, and what people will do to protect themselves, especially women who don’t have overt strength or power but wield it anyway.

My boyfriend wonders why engineers all have to learn things the hard way.

Because we weren’t all born to Conservatives, in the protective and nurturing community of a Conservative stronghold.

Some of us had Liberals for parents and grew up in cities. As such, I required learning everything you need to know to think for yourself as an adult, when you’ve been doing this since day one. I might celebrate fifty years on the planet, but only half of those should count.

I took off my engineering ring when I retired. The groove on my finger left by it is finally gone, but I wonder what remains of my previous education, indoctrination, and life lessons that require clearing away.

Today, I look forward to finding out, every single day. It’s an adventure, with joy leading and love holding my hand. Life is meant to be lived, not leashed. You can’t live it if you don’t have your mind, heart and soul in it.

But that’s why I’ve written what I’ve written. Please help yourself, because you might be the only one who can do so.