The post-election party was only a few dozen feet away, but in an office at the United Steelworkers Local 7106 building, Tom Lindsey was worried. It was 11 p.m. on election night and he was leading the vote to such an extent that several media outlets, including The Reminder, had projected him to win, but there were still doubts.
Then, Lindsey’s phone rang. He answered the call, reclining in his chair. A short conversation ensued. The person on the other side of the line is a mystery – until both parties can be heard congratulating each others’ effort during the campaign.
Lindsey ended the call and visible relief washed over him. Was that the call the campaign was waiting for – Theresa Wride, the Progressive Conservative challenger, congratulating him on a victory?
“Yes,” said Lindsey, taking a deep breath and flashing a grin.
“Time to crack the champagne?” asked one of the volunteers.
“I think so,” Lindsey said.
The vote may not have been as close as the four-way race in which Lindsey won his first term in office, where he won by less than 200 votes, but the result was possibly just as in doubt. Wride mounted a strong campaign, visiting nearly every community in one of Canada’s largest provincial ridings.
The results, as of 1 a.m. election night, showed Lindsey with 2,435 votes in total with 48 out of 58 polls reporting. Wride was second with 1,294 votes. Manitoba Liberal Party candidate James Lindsay had 279 votes, while Saara Murnick of the Manitoba Green Party received 203 votes.
Both the frontrunners improved their party’s performances in Flin Flon. While the parties remained in first and second place, Wride received with at least 300 more votes than Angela Enright did for the PCs in 2016. The victorious Lindsey received more than twice the votes he got in the 2016 provincial election.
At a speech from her campaign headquarters in Norway House, Wride was disappointed with the result, but her trademark positive attitude came through when speaking with supporters.
“We all have a part to play,” she said, praising the other candidates running in Flin Flon.
“We all have a piece of the puzzle we can bring to the table. We're all wanting to work for the for the same thing – for the betterment of us.”
Lindsey’s win was part of a northern sweep for the NDP, which won all four northern Manitoba ridings. In addition to Lindsey’s win, Amanda Lathlin won re-election in The Pas-Kameesak by 1,730 votes over PC candidate Ron Evans. Keewatinook, formerly in the hands of ex-Manitoba Liberal Party member Judy Klassen, went to NDP contestant Ian Bushie, who received more than half the vote in the riding. Completing the sweep was NDP debutant Danielle Adams, who took Thompson from PC incumbent Kelly Bindle by more than 800 votes.
While the north went NDP orange, it was the PCs who were the big winners on election night. The party won its second consecutive majority government, this time likely winning 36 seats province-wide. While it’s a modest drop from the 38 seats the party held before the vote, the PCs and premier-elect Brian Pallister will maintain far more seats than the 29 needed for a majority in Winnipeg.
“The sky used to be dark, but the clouds will lift, perhaps not tomorrow or the day after, but they will lift and there will be a new day,” said Pallister said in a victory speech in Winnipeg.
“It will be a brighter day and it will be under a blue sky, I say to you, because of your dedication, and because of the values that Manitoba has demonstrated today and choosing forward.”
The NDP jumped in overall seat count from 12 to 18, which Lindsey thought would give the party more strength in provincial affairs.
“I look forward to us being an even stronger opposition than we were. We were pretty effective as an opposition with 12 of us. We're just going to be that much more effective with [18]. We're gonna hold Brian Pallister to account for things that he wants to do. We might not be able to stop everything he does, but we’re going to be heard,” he said.
“I think it sends a strong message to Brian Pallister that the north was tired of either being ignored or facing his cuts, because a lot of these things, like Lifeflight, affect everybody.”
Following the shutdown of polling at 8 p.m. sharp, it took over an hour for the first results from the Flin Flon riding to be shown publicly, making it the last riding in the province to post its first vote counts online.
Along with the public and the other candidates, Wride was left waiting with bated breath for something, anything, to come in.
“Anyone who runs probably [looks for better results],” she said.
“As the results are coming in good, they looked pretty good, this is a bit of a nail biter here.”
While the tone of the election was combative at times between the parties, the candidates each thanked each other for their compassion toward their opponents. Public events involving all four candidates were mostly civil affairs. Personal attacks were kept out of the discussion.
Wride was appreciative of the cooperative tone in the Flin Flon riding throughout the election.
“We were very respectful through it all, between all of us here, to be able to encourage one another. We know the challenges of running in the north, covering 20 per cent of the province,” she said.
Lindsey, who will be entering his second term in office, will represent a different Flin Flon riding than the one he was first elected to. Late last year, the communities of Norway House and Cross Lake were added to the riding in order to meet a minimum population threshold per riding.
Lindsey said his plan in office will be similar to what it was during his first campaign.
“The whole point has been to advocate for people, people's rights, trying to advance things in the north. In more communities, health care, health care and health care are the big issues out there. Roads, cell service, all those issues – they're the same issues we've got elsewhere in the riding. There are additional issues with flood agreements and Hydro and things like that, but I look forward to expanding that to represent those folks as well.”
Wride said she thought most issues were covered in the election run up, but pointed to some health care specifics she said could use more attention.
“it's not just a blanket issue,” she said.
“It is different, from on-reserve or off-reserve health care services. For a lot of folks, when they heard ‘health care cuts’, that is actually pertaining to the provincial and not on reserve.”
Wride said travelling throughout the north should be mandatory for public servants.
“I think it's very important for folks who are serving the north to be able to travel the way northerners travel, to be able to stay grounded and to be able to experience what they experience.”
Wride will go back to working as a career counsellor and job coach at the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies (SIIT) Work Prep Centre in Creighton now that the election is over. She didn’t say whether she sees a future for herself in politics.
“I can’t say that right now – let me just get over today,” she said, laughing.
“For myself, I've always been in the communities. I'm going to continue being in the communities, helping the best I can.”
