How the election played in Canada

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Obama's win was all over the front pages of our newspapers today and the lead story on our television news. From what I could tell, it was a really big deal for Canadians. I know that's not exactly a scientific way to put it, but I do know that public opinion polls showed overwhelming support for Obama leading up to the election, that there was genuine interest in the election and its outcome, and that, by and large, Canadians were paying very close attention. Certainly among the people I work with, political junkies at the Government of Ontario, the attention was obsessive. And as for me, well, just take a look at this blog.

Basically, what happens in the U.S. affects us Canadians profoundly. It's as simple as that. And Obama's win was, and is, a celebrated event. We understand its historic significance. We understand what it means both for the U.S. and for the world. And we wanted change, too. In a way, the president of the United States is sort of our president, too. Not to take anything away from our own democratically elected officials, but the president wields enormous influence here. It may be indirect most of the time, but it is nonetheless tangible. The impact of American economic policy, for example, doesn't end at America's borders. Just like our friends to the south, if less intimately, and if less dramatically, we have suffered through eight years of Bush. Thankfully, we now have Obama.

Anyway, I wanted to pass along some anecdotal evidence of the significance of yesterday's election:

I work in downtown Toronto at the main provincial government complex. At lunch today, I went for a walk in search of The New York Times or The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal or USA Today. It's fairly easy to find these and other major American newspapers in Toronto, and I wanted one or more of them as keepsakes. But... nothing. I couldn't find anything anywhere. Everywhere I went, almost everything was sold out. At most, there were a few copies left of our major Toronto papers. At one newsstand, the guy told me that pretty much everything was gone by 10 am. Not just at his place but, from what he'd heard, pretty much everywhere.

Now, I realize that many of the copies may have been bought up by Americans. There are a lot of them here in Toronto. But what was clear was that I wasn't alone in wanting an American newspaper today. The election -- and specifically Obama's win -- was an historic event the likes of which we are rarely privileged to witness. And people, many people, many Canadians, wanted to remember it, to have something to commemorate it, to have a newspaper they could look at years from now, perhaps even generations from now, to show their children and grandchildren. It is that important to us.

As for me, my younger daughter is too young to take anything from the election, but I'm happy that my older one, who is eight, was able to be witness history. This morning, as I was getting ready for work, she called out to me: "Who won?" "Obama," I said, and she was happy. Barack Obama, after all, will soon be her president, too.