Yesterday, Saturday 23 January, was a day of firsts for me.  I have lived in Newfoundland and Labrador since 1967, and yet yesterday at the Country Kitchen Cafe in Brigus, I had my first taste of bologna! And this was not your ordinary, everyday bologna, but smoked bologna prepared by the chef and owner Dave Collins. He buys a regular Maple Leaf bologna (round, not square), coats it with a rub of his own design, then heats it on a BBQ just long enough for the rub to take effect. The result, combined with the Quay breakfast - two eggs, home fries, toast and coffee - was magnificent! My second first was gaining a confirmed vote for my election. I won't identify who it was, but the adrenaline rush it gave me set me up for the rest of the day. And my third? Planting my first election sign in the front garden of the secondary home of our leader Alison Coffin, in Brigus! All of this followed my collecting the preliminary list of voters for the Harbour Main District from the Returning Off...

  Not the kind of break I wanted... I had wanted to go to Avondale to pick up the voters list for Harbour Main, but I could not get an answer at the Returning Officer's office in the Avondale Railway Station Museum, and an email to the Chief Returning Officer in St John's has gone unanswered. I can understand that the Avondale Field Office (terminology?) might not have been open because of the snow accumulation, but the office in St John's should have been able to give me the information I was looking for. Fortunately, my Nomination papers are all submitted and in "good order". So my friend Jim and I will drive out to Avondale tomorrow morning... One piece of good news! Another friend has offered to drive me out to Chapel Cove next week-end. I'll get only a couple of hours there, but that is better than nothing. I also plan on getting to Mackinsons, where I am told there is a cluster of NDP supporters. In the meantime, I will have to rely on phone calls to get...

  Today, thanks to the remarkable service from FastSigns in St John's, I was able to pick up my order of 30 signs today, just as the snow was starting to fall. Given the current storm, and my having to rely on friends for transportation, it will be next week before I can finally install them in the Harbour Main District. I hope to place them in prominent places, but if you feel I have missed a good spot, please let me know. My budget is not large, but I may be able to stretch it to fit in a few more signs. Stay safe! Be kind to each other! Tony Chadwick NDP Candidate for Harbour Main.

 The process is almost complete. Thanks to my good friend Jim Dunne, I was able to go into the Harbour Main District and collect the required number of signatures to support my nomination. Jim is amazing!  As we drove around, he not only knew how to get to the next community, but also the road on which stood the next house. In addition, he supplied me with an endless account of who lived where, who they were related to, how they had come to own the property, and how they had met their end. In all, a six-hour history lesson that I will treasure. Everyone I met was very friendly, happy to sign my form, and wished me well on the campaign. I had set out with some anxiety, never having gone through this experience before, but each meeting (suitably masked) lifted my spirits, so that by the time I reached the Returning Officer in Avondale, the spring was back in my step. Agnes (I don't think she gave me her family name) went over my forms carefully, to make sure all the t's were cro...

  Over the past few days I have ben trying to contact people in the district who are willing to sign my nomination to run in the upcoming election. I was given a "Master List", supposedly containing the names of NDP supporters gathered in previous election campaigns, together with their phone numbers and addresses. I had thought that the process would be straightforward; a call to identify myself, to request for help, and to set a convenient time to meet. Not so simple. In the last Provincial election in 2019, the NDP could not find a candidate to run, but there was both a federal and a provincial campaign in 2015. Sadly, nearly 30% of the phone numbers were no longer valid. I left messages for a dozen or so electors to call me back. So far, none has. For many of the other people I reached, my identification as the NDP candidate was enough to end the call abruptly. Some of the others were reluctant to discuss the matter, indicating that they had not yet made up their mind abo...

PRELIMINARIES  By the time you get to read this blog, the Liberal government will have asked the Lieutenant Governor to dissolve the House of Assembly, and a date for a general election will have been set. So the question for voters in Harbour Main will be: Will you continue the pattern set by your fathers and grandfathers (sadly, mothers and grandmothers in traditional Newfoundland homes had little say in the matter) and alternate between Liberal and Tories? In which case the Wheel of Fortune will stop on the Liberal notch. Or is it now time for you, the voters in the district, to get off the teeter-totter and reflect deeply on the choice you are about to make? Over the next few blogs I'll be setting out more clearly what the options are, what the strengths and weaknesses of the three parties are, with a view to helping you, the voters avoid the reflex action of voting according to past practices (traditionalists), or of choosing "the other party" (swing voters). Given t...

  Since Confederation, our province has tottered between Liberal and Conservative Governments, neither being capable of managing the people's affairs for the benefit of the people. The time is NOW for a true government for the people.