When Mitzie Hunter was declared the winner of the Scarborough-Guildwood by-election shortly after 10 pm on Thursday, a new Scarborough subway burst through the wall of her campaign party, much like that scene in Skyfall.
No, it didn’t. That’s apparently not how it works. How it does work, however, remains a mystery.
I arrive at Hunter’s party around twenty minutes to midnight. People are still milling about, having their pictures taken with the Liberal victor. The band is still playing. And the small buffet is still open, the smells of its various deep-fried offerings wafting through the Rembrandt Banquet Hall.
Rembrandt is at the northeast corner of Markham and Progress, across the street from Centennial College and tucked behind an Armenian church. It is next to a future station on the light rail line that “subway champion” Hunter has actively worked to kill. Her victory, in part, was the result of a campaign against providing rapid transit to Scarborough-Guildwood.
The red dot represents Rembrandt:
Diagram taken recent City of Toronto report [PDF].
Five kilometres south, at Qssis Banquet Hall, the NDP was throwing a party for Adam Giambrone, the NOW columnist who’d finished third. This surprised no one, except perhaps Giambrone himself, and if it did, he didn’t show it.
It was a respectable third place, with 28.4% of the vote to Hunter’s 35.8% and Progressive Conservative Ken Kirupa’s 30.8%. (The Green’s Nick Leeson, the lone advocate for LRT, finished with 2.2%.)
And so the mood was celebratory. Servers passed around hors d’oeuvres. A DJ brought his own laser. And Giambrone made it to the second page of his speech.
He also gave a two-minute scrum, much of which consisted of CP24 inquiring as to whether he has further mayoral ambitions. He answered with points about how this was really an NDP victory in Scarborough.
I asked: “There’s a lot of speculation you’re looking at Olivia Chow’s seat for when she runs for mayor.”
To which he answered: “Well, there’s a lot of speculation about lots of things…”
He then somehow segued into talking up the NDP triumphs in Windsor-Tecumseh and London West. He is skilled.
