Does your election boil down to Chow vs Vaughan?

There’s a whole big country out there, but one of the most hotly contested races in the upcoming election is right here in the GTA, in our own Spadina-Fort York riding.

Encompassing more than 80,000 people and most of the downtown core, the riding is traditionally held by the Liberals or NDPs, with the Conservatives in third place. It’s not looking any different this year, especially in light of former science teacher and Tory candidate Sabrina Zuniga’s recent claim that because oil is a “natural substance,” any pipeline spills will be simply absorbed back into the earth. Because, she says, “that’s what oil is.” She’s wrong, of course. It doesn’t just absorb into the ground, and some studies say spilled oil can linger for decades, but it’s mostly beside the point. She wasn’t going to win anyway.

This riding is owned by Olivia Chow (NDP) and Adam Vaughan (Liberal), two quintessentially Canadian candidates in very different ways.

Vaughan was born and raised here, seldom straying far from his downtown roots. A loud proponent of the city proper, he has earned a reputation for great sound bites that range from “the rest of the country can go to hell sometimes” to “never been there” when asked about the Greater Toronto Area beyond his riding’s borders. It’s hard to argue against his genuine love of the place.

When asked by Blog TO in 2009 what he thought was the one thing his fellow councillors could do right now, he answered, that they should “… fall in love with the city all over again on a romantic level, not on a patriotic level, on a romantic level.”

The son of an architect, journalist and former city councillor Colin Vaughan, he knows the territory well. In his former career as a journalist (most notably for CityTV, where his father preceded him as a political reporter), Vaughan has covered Toronto Police Services, City Hall, Queen’s Park and Parliament Hill, written for the Star and Toronto Life and been a cartoonist for Books in Canada and Quill and Quire.

Chow’s experience couldn’t be more different, but is also Torontonian to the core. She immigrated with her family from Hong Kong in 1970 at 13, and although she has said she didn’t struggle with culture shock thanks to Toronto’s large Chinese community, she did struggle with a volatile, abusive father and a non-English-speaking mother, both of whose inability to gain employment at the level they left behind (he a school superintendent, she a teacher) profoundly affected her home life.

Her dad drove taxis and delivered Chinese food before succumbing to a breakdown that landed him in psychiatric care, where he received electric shock therapy that forever after impeded his ability to function. Her mother retired at 65 from gruelling work in the laundry department at the Delta Chelsea to a $3,000 lump-sum pension that has motivated Chow to make viable pensions a personal cause.

In 1988, she married Jack Layton, and the two of them saw the ups and downs of their party culminate in Official Opposition status in 2011 for the first time, just three months before Layton’s death to cancer.

But they’re not that far apart. She has been an advocate for the homeless and public transit, and opposed the expansion of the Island Airport. Vaughan, too, advocates for affordable housing and youth programs, and opposes casino development.

It’s coming down to a fight between two personalities.

Classic Vaughan: “My intelligence is my intelligence; I’ll live or die by it. My wit is my wit; I’ll live or die by it. My personality is my personality; I’ll live or die by it. The idea of reinventing myself to become more likeable — I don’t know how you’d do it, but I wouldn’t do it if I knew how. I am what I am.”

And Chow: “It doesn't matter where we came from or where we live - we all want a better future for our children, and that's my core belief …”

They’re both sharp. They’ve both got the experience. They both know Toronto inside and out. The city stands to win, whatever the outcome. In a post-Ford climate where so many of our politicians are crooks, buffoons and worse, these two are equally worthy of carrying the day.

Whatever you decide to do, and wherever you live, be aware that there are at least half a dozen ridings in the GTA that were decided by fewer than a thousand votes in 2011. Your vote matters. Use it.

Feature image: "Olivia Chow 2014" by Tim Ehlich - Flickr. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Commons

"Adam Vaughan headshot 2014" by Secondarywaltz - File:Member of Parliament Adam Vaughn, 2014 11 13 (15598738538).jpg. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons