Chapter Seven - Part Five
Just before I left political parties and the anti-poverty movement I heard one New Democratic party member describe me to an N.D.P. Member of the Legislature. "That man," this member said about me, "is one of the slipperiest slimiest member of this party I've ever known." This man may have been right. Still, he forgot to mention that I voted for him in a long ago nomination contest. But he remembered that I had failed to show up in another nomination battle where he was campaigning for a candidate who was defeated.
Yet it wasn't just my flawed behaviour that led me to leave political parties. It was also the political climate that swirled around North America and Canada in particular in the 1990's. Events shattered my dreams of a democratic socialism. The rise of the reform Party and massive federal deficits led nearly every political party to swing in a conservative arc.
In the 1990's the Mulroney Conservative government signed on to two North American free trade agreements, first with the U.S. and then with the U.S. and Mexico. These free trade deals tied the hands of any government that wanted to bring in any new social programs. Then the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 discredited any kind of socialism, even the democratic kinds like what the N.D.P. used to offer.
One beautiful spring day in 1997 I travelled down the Fraser Valley to the small town of Hope. Here, the mighty Fraser River swings west towards the Salish Sea and Vancouver, a two hour journey away. The sun shone down from a clear blue sky as I gazed at the river and the huge mountains that it streams past.
"I'm done with political parties," I told myself. "I'm still a progressive but I'm not going to be involved with politics and social movements any more." On the banks of the heaving Fraser Raver I waved an imaginary goodbye to COPE, the N.D.P. and the anti-poverty group called End Legislated Poverty or ELP. I was now 55 and it was time to leave behind the passions of the past.
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