‘Two Years……Less a Day’

The other night as I looked over at the list of candidates for the position of President of our local South Delta Minor Hockey Association, I couldn’t help but notice that my name was the only one on the list.

In chairing our Annual General Meeting as Interim President of the SDMHA, I found it tough to withdraw at that point and besides I had looked forward to a night of electioneering and campaigning.

I had dreams of Michael Wilson walking across the convention floor past John Crosbie coming to me, like the young Joe Clark, to be crowned as the new leader of the Progressive Conservatives. Or a young John Kennedy almost winning the US Vice Presidency in 1956 as young first term senator -not knowing that years later Marilyn Monroe would be singing “Happy Birthday Mr. President” to me. I had a dream.

But without the fireworks and the ‘Vote for Pedro’ sloganeering, it was left to Kellie, our energetic and efficient board Secretary, to move my election to one of acclamation, asking the same question 3 times.
(The meeting was held in Tsawwassen after all, and half of us will likely miss hearing 1 or 2 of the questions!)

“Are there any other candidates from the floor that would like to put their name forward for the position of President? ”

Suddenly it was if people’s hands had been nailed to the sides of their chairs, the annual report suddenly looked like an absorbing novel, and adults started sending emails home to their kids with reminders to feed the cat.

With thoughts of Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s line ‘that you shouldn’t trust anyone who really wants to be the Prime Minister’ …..I accepted my sentence….er… nomination saying.

“I am honoured to serve as the President of the South Delta Minor Hockey Association for a term of …two years less a day”.

Now as I sit at my home office at Tim’s central in downtown metropolitan Tsawwassen I can see that the signs have been taken down, the volunteers have gone home with hangovers from a post-election celebration – a beer at the Rose & Crown – and all that remains are the encouraging words from my family

“Dad, does that mean you still have to go to all of those meetings?”

and the congratulatory emails from fellow members

“Well done Murray -so does that mean that there is going to be an A-3 Peewee team this year?”