I’ve been trying to think of something meaningful to add to the slew of information about why it’s important to get out and vote, and it’s been said well many, many places, by many people with a larger audience than I have.

Still though, I wanted to add my two cents.

For those of you that have been to my house, this picture may be familiar. It’s part of the mismash of inspirational things I keep at my desk.

This is my Great Grandmother, Elsie Ritch.

For those of you that know my penchant for flea markets, this is not something I gleefully scooped up at a great price. It’s her wedding portrait.

Elsie was born and grew up in Toronto, and came from a fairly well-to-do family. She married someone else from a well-to-do family, and had three children, my Granny Sue among them.

Elsie’s family were of the progressive variety. Her cousins were among the first women in Canada to attend medical school at U of T, and she was, quite notably, one of the first women to drive a car in Toronto, and one of the first women in the city to venture out of the house pregnant (with twins, no less). She climbed the Rocky mountains. She wore pants.

She was also part of the first generation of women in Canada to get the vote.

We are not even 100 years away from women getting the vote. 

I think we have a tendency to accept the status quo, because it’s easier to live in the now. The past is behind us, and concerning ourselves too much with the future, which is always uncertain, can feel daunting.

However, it’s where we’re all going, whether we get on board or not.

I’m not sure if Elsie knew that someday, most women around the world would be able to drive, or vote, or go to medical school, or wear pants every day, or marry other women. I’m not sure if she knew she was opening doors, or windows, or if she just needed to go somewhere one day and was tired of waiting for her banker husband to come home. I’m not sure if she overthought the decision to waddle out of the house, heavy with twins, to do her errands, or cared about what her neighbours would think of her swollen feet, if her pregnancy swelling was anywhere near as bad as mine was.

Still though, she and other women did these things, and now they’re commonplace, and that’s amazing. It’s amazing to think that they weren’t before.

But they weren’t. Less than 100 years ago.

We should never take the past for granted, and assume the future will be the same. There are a lot of things hinging on this election. Here are some things I’m considering with my vote tomorrow.

– My ability to access clean water.

– My Canadian-born Father’s right to continued Canadian citizenship.

– My right to religious freedoms (I’m agnostic today, but who knows what the future holds? I have a cousin who recently converted to Islam).

-My right to liberty, privacy, and freedom of expression.

– My right to get an abortion.

Perhaps I’m being dramatic, but I don’t think so. I’ve watched, with horror, for the past five years as so many of the things that I proudly thought I stood for as a Canadian were shoved aside, until there was very little left to hold onto. Ten years ago, I proudly sewed a maple leaf on my backpack and traveled Asia. Would I do that today?

I’m not sure. And that stings.

It stings for me, but it also stings when I think about the sacrifices and efforts that those that came before me put forth to make Canada a place where people wanted to live. A place my Jewish grandfather’s family felt they’d be safe from Europe’s persecution. A place my mother’s Scottish ancestors, who counted themselves Canadian before Canada was a country, worked to make a reality.

Tomorrow, I’m going to vote, because it’s what they’d expect of me. It’s what I owe them, what all of us owe every person that’s counted themselves Canadian and will count themselves Canadian in the future.

I don’t want my son to grow up in a country that doesn’t respect the environment. A country where his wife (if that’s the route he chooses to go) might not be able to have dominion over her own body. A country where his grandfather could, in theory, be sent to a continent he’s never visited (though, if I’m being honest, he’s a very unlikely terrorist and more likely to relocate himself to the US, since the medical care is better than it is in rural Nova Scotia right now, even if he does have to pay for it).

I want him to travel and proudly sew a maple leaf on his bag and know that his parents gave a shit about his future. That they recycled, and had a garden, and did their best to live within their means, and acted socially responsible. I want him to be proud of his mutt heritage, to embrace those that came before him, from his First Nations roots on his father’s side to his first generation grandfather on mine, and know that, all these people, all their decisions brought him to this place, and that this place is pretty great. That it’s a place worth loving, and being proud of, and calling home.

I want him to know that, when we started to question our government representation, we spoke up and voted with conviction, even if that vote takes us in a direction we may eventually not support, because, despite everything, we were optimistic about the future.

None of us can know what the future holds. We can only hope.

That’s why, even if you think the current government is full of thieves and liars (as some of my East Coast friends have noted on Facebook in recent days), or that your vote means nothing, we should all hold out hope for a better future, and taking 15-20 minutes to leave your house tomorrow, to mark an X in a box (neatly within the edges, please) is the best means we have to do that in the world, as it stands today.

We all have the ability to spark change, to reach people, to have our voices heard. But we have to speak to do it. Even if our audience is small, even if it doesn’t feel like we’re doing anything grand. We can’t know what the ripple effects of our actions will be, though, if we look back at the change that was sparked by more Canadians NOT voting than those who elected our current administration, the writing sort of appears on the wall.

By sitting at home and tossing your vote, you’re giving a hell of a lot of power to someone else. Someone who you might disagree with. Someone that might spiral your children’s, and your children’s children’s world in a very different direction than you’d hope for.

We can’t guess what the world of our great grandchildren will look like any more than Elsie Ritch could guess what today’s Canada would look like. I’m sure she’d guffaw at the internet, and cellphones. She died in the sixties, after all. I think though, that she’d be smiling, knowing that the steps she took made her extraordinary actions very ordinary in the future.

We can’t know, but we can hope. And to quote the late, great Jack Layton, hope is better than fear.

So hope.

And vote.

(And tell people you voted, because peer pressure results in more people voting, and that’s really what it’s all about.)