We had a judgment call to make this week.
Was a disagreement over protocol at the Remembrance Day ceremony in Sechelt newsworthy? Could we – as reporters inevitably do – hang a “gate” on it? Was it “wreathgate”?
In the end, after talking to the people involved, we decided it didn’t rate a stand-alone story, and it certainly wasn’t gateable, but it was worthy of comment. And because I did the legwork, I got handed the job of making the comment.
NDP MLA Nicholas Simons took to Facebook last week to accuse Liberal candidate Mathew Wilson of trying to take the place of the person he’d asked to lay a wreath on behalf of the provincial government.
For as many years as I’ve been attending Remembrance Day ceremonies on the Coast, it’s been the practice that if the MLA, MP, mayor, etc., can’t be there in person, they choose someone to stand in.
Simons told us people kept asking him why he chose Wilson, so he wanted to set the record straight. He also said he felt bad for the person he did ask, former Ontario MPP Margaret Harrington.
Wilson told us a different story. He said he did not show up Nov. 11 with the intention of laying a wreath, but was asked by Legion officials, and when it became obvious that Harrington was also expecting to do it, he asked her to join him and they went up together.
You could argue that the correct thing for Wilson to do was politely decline. In fact, Simons has made that argument.
In the end, nobody agrees on what really happened. It could have been a deliberate snub. It could have been a politician taking advantage of a spur-of-the-moment opportunity. It could have been a miscommunication or understandable human error by the hardworking Legion volunteers.
It could have been none of those things, and it could have been all of those things.
What it surely became, thanks to the ensuing social-media fracas, was the opening bell for the 2017 provincial election campaign in the riding of Powell River-Sunshine Coast.
From this point on – with three main candidates confirmed (Simons, Wilson and Kim Darwin of the Greens) and six months until we go to the polls – everything those candidates do, say, or pose for photographs during, is political.
There’s an old saying (often credited to former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill, but likely going back further) that “all politics is local.” These days, whether voters like it or not, it’s also 24/7.
There’s been criticism from some that both Simons and Wilson politicized the Remembrance Day ceremony, and one thing that weighed heavily in our decision not to pursue this as hard news was a reluctance to see the Sechelt Legion caught in the middle.
On that we all seem to agree. In our conversations, Simons and Wilson made it clear they didn’t want their disagreement with each other to end up drawing criticism toward the Legion or their volunteers.
They also said they want to see a campaign focused on issues.
I’m taking it on faith that Darwin, and any other potential candidates waiting in the wings, are on the same page. I’m willing to grant a do-over to give them all a chance to have that issues-based campaign. Because having to hang gates on things is the worst part of my job.
