Municipal Round-Up — August 28: Papastew, I'm Through With You
All the News that's Fit to Tweet
Dear reader,
Isn’t it fun to have to follow the federal election and a municipal election at the same time? I’ll say this for the federal election season, at least it is short.
Doorbell Delight
The week started off promising some light entertainment as Edmonton Ward Nakota Isga candidate Andrew Knack cheerfully announced that he likes leaving messages at video doorbells. Rage tried to source one of these videos but no one came through for us.
We like to imagine that it was something like this:
Have you received any doorbell messages from candidates?
Drama Papastew-ing in the Ward
Edmonton Ward Papastew, (pronounced Pah-Pah-Stay-Oh) is named after Chief Papastew, also known as Papaschase, the leader of the Papaschase Band, which resided in the Edmonton area in the late 1800s. The Chief’s name translates to large woodpecker in English.
It is a name steeped in local history. Chief Papaschase signed on to Treaty Six at Fort Edmonton in 1877. A year later, surveyors with the federal government were sent out to find reserve land for the band, according to the Papaschase First Nation history.
The Papaschase band was given a meagre 40-square-mile plot, too small to support their community of 249 people. At the same time, some of their members were arbitrarily unregistered under the Indian Act and local settlers didn’t want Indigenous people too close by, so they petitioned the local government to resettle them elsewhere. Pressure and starvation led many members to take a Métis land scrip for payment and thereby lose their status.
Surviving members of the Papaschase Band are still working to reclaim their community and land. You can read more of their story here.
This felt important to talk about as Mayor Don Iveson marked the anniversary of Treaty Six this week along with elders and knowledge keepers from the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations.
This same week, candidates in Ward Papastew clashed over…well vague accusations on Twitter around endorsements and lawn signs. Because this is the round-up we didn’t reach out to anyone for an interview, but we will continue to track the story and report on it if anything emerges.
This story involves a clash of two progressive candidates Kirsten Goa and Michael Janz.
Troy Pavlek, from the Speaking Municipally podcast, tweeted out criticism of city council candidate Susan Field's website, saying essentially that it lacked depth. He also repeated a rumour about Coun. Michael Walters switching his endorsement from Goa.
Walters clarified that his endorsement still stands, but that Field is a neighbour. Field herself clarified that she is running as an independent candidate (which technically, everyone is) and she is not seeking endorsements.
This led several others to insinuate that Michael Janz or someone on his campaign was spreading false information and playing two women off of one another in order to bolster support.
It seems to me that women do often get accused of ‘vote splitting’ when it comes to progressives running in an election and we have seen similar accusations online towards other women candidates, such as Cheryll Watson.
Still, Pavlek is a pot-stirrer and regularly critiques candidates’ websites and policies, so it is difficult to attribute his intention here as solely trying to undermine two women, wherever he got his tips came from.
This Tweetstorm underlines the issues of presenting election coverage while actively supporting a candidate. It blurs the line between news and politics. As Rage said when we broke the story of Michael Janz running for a council seat, we are not a newspaper and our coverage is not an endorsement. We won’t be endorsing anyone. That doesn’t mean you will like and agree with every opinion in the newsletter, but at least you know it doesn’t come with an agenda beyond trying to inform you about the issues facing municipalities in Alberta.
In any event, it is unlikely that Coun. Walter’s lawn is going to turn the tide one way or another in a municipal election. He once called Coun. Mike Nickel a motherf*cker and that guy is still around.
Back to School Season
As Rage covered last week, school boards have had to step in to fill the gap left by the Alberta government when it comes to defining policies to keep children under 12, who can’t be vaccinated, safe during a pandemic. They’ve also stepped in when it comes to the need to share the history of Indigenous oppression in Canada.
Dropouts
At this point in the campaign season, it is difficult for many candidates whose campaigns are limping along to call it quits. There’s been hours of hard work and promises to donors and volunteers to fulfil.
It also creates some odd conspiracy theories and claims of illegal activity. Such was the case in Calgary where Carolyn Krahn announced that she was dropping out but that there were still two progressive women running in the ward. Krahn felt she didn’t want to be splitting the progressive vote.
Hilariously, this led the president of a libertarian think tank, Peter McCaffrey to insinuate that something he didn’t like must be illegal.
It is not illegal to drop out of a municipal race, and if you chose to drop out, you still retain the freedom of expression to weigh in on the race.
See you next week!
Thank you, despite following several of these people (well Troy for sure) I missed this Papastew drama!