KENORA, Ont. – The north-most road in Northwestern Ontario ends in Taxi Bay, southwest and across the water from the polling station with the historically lowest voter turnout in the Kenora Riding.
After spending months on the First Nations Rock the Vote campaign trail, Tania Cameron had her sights set on spending Election Day in Pikangikum First Nation.
Even though she didn’t make it, she still made all the difference.
Cameron and four volunteers waited in Taxi Bay for three hours but no boat arrived to take them to the remote community. Her contacts in Pikangikum were “freaking out” with no idea of how to register people to vote.
The team drove all the way back to Kenora, then took to Facebook and spent the day walking first-time voters through the process. Cameron’s mother lent her hand to support elders, many of whom only spoke Anishinaabemowin.
But it would be the enthusiasm of Pikangikum’s youth that would lead to a 280-voter turnout, obliterating the 75 votes the 700-member electorate in the community cast in the 2011 election.
Pikangikum was no anomaly.
Voter turnout in First Nations across the Kenora riding increased anywhere from 50 to 200 per cent.
In Shoal Lake 40 and Onigaming First Nations, polls had to print more ballots when they ran out.
Voter turnout in Onigaming increased from 97 in 2011 to 180 on Monday night. Considering the community declared a suicide crisis a year ago, the figure was empowering.
The surge in First Nations turnout played a role in electing Liberal Bob Nault as Kenora’s next MP and reduced incumbent Conservative Greg Rickford to a third place finish.
“My first goal was to increase voter turnout 20 per cent and we smashed the old records,” Cameron said.
“My preferred party didn’t get in but we still sent Rickford packing and that makes me very happy. (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper’s stepping down. I feel like, ‘ding dong, the witch is dead.’”
Cameron ran under the NDP banner in 2008 and 2011, both times losing to Rickford, who rose to become the Conservatives’ Minister of Natural Resources.
Both the Liberals and the NDP approached her early on to attempt to tie their names to First Nations Rock the Vote. Although Cameron would reveal her political leanings if asked, she said she told the parties the only way they could help was in a non-partisan effort that helped indigenous people register to vote.
The campaign exploded when Cameron was called before an Assembly of First Nations conference in Edmonton and local television media took the First Nations Rock the Vote to the national level. Organizers were calling from across the country and she helped them model local campaigns after her effort in Kenora.
It was the Conservatives’ Fair Elections Act that prompted Cameron to change tracks from seeking election to turning back to the grassroots. Cameron said the changes that made voting more difficult for those who didn’t have driver’s licenses could have put a crater in voter turnout at the polls in remote communities.
“Harper, with the Fair Elections Act, attempted to suppress my vote as a First Nations person. He attempted to disenfranchise and disengage so many people in this riding where there are 40 First Nations,” she said.
“He saw the Idle No More movement and the momentum we were building and he said, ‘we have to make sure those people don’t vote.’ That’s what I believe.
“And we rose up and said, ‘you’re not going to do this to us this time.’”
