{"id":12307,"date":"2015-10-21T16:46:01","date_gmt":"2015-10-21T20:46:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=12307"},"modified":"2015-10-28T15:58:32","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T19:58:32","slug":"aurora-rides-red-wave-for-liberals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-rides-red-wave-for-liberals\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora rides red wave for Liberals"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Canadians from coast to coast rode the crest of a red wave on Monday night, handing Liberal leader Justin Trudeau a resounding victory and a majority government with 184 seats, and bringing to Aurora two new Members of Parliament in the process.<\/p>\n

Aurorans turned out in droves for advance polls and on election night to select Liberal candidates Kyle Peterson and Leona Alleslev as their next Members of Parliament for Newmarket-Aurora and Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill, respectively.<\/p>\n

Mr. Peterson handily won Newmarket-Aurora by over 1,450 votes ahead of Conservative incumbent Lois Brown. Elections Canada results peg Mr. Peterson\u2019s victory with 25,513 votes over Ms. Brown\u2019s 24,059. NDP candidate Yvonne Kelly came in third place with 4,806 votes with the slate rounded out by Vanessa Long of the Green Party and Progressive Canadian Dorian Baxter.<\/p>\n

This is in sharp contrast to the 2011 Federal election in which Ms. Brown was sent to Ottawa with 54% of the vote with 25,557 votes cast in her favour, while Mr. Peterson came in a distant second with 11,207 votes.<\/p>\n

Elections Canada estimates have Newmarket-Aurora\u2019s voter turnout at just under 68 per cent, with 56,471 of 83,108 voters casting their ballots. By contrast, 58,421 ballots were cast in Newmarket-Aurora in 2011.<\/p>\n

South of Wellington Street in the newly-created riding of Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill, Ms. Alleslev collected 47.3 per cent of the vote with 24,104 while Conservative challenger Costas Menegakis, the incumbent for the southern tier of the newly-create riding, came in second with 23,043, or 45.2 per cent.<\/p>\n

They were followed by NDP candidate Brenda Power with 2,908 votes in a slate that was rounded out by Randi Ramdeen of the Green Party and Kyle Bowles of the Animal Rights Party. <\/p>\n

At Newmarket\u2019s Colonel Mustard\u2019s Pub, Mr. Peterson paid an emotionally-charged tribute to his late father, who died this past May, before saying Monday\u2019s election results signalled Canada had \u201cturned a corner.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHere in Newmarket-Aurora, we committed to running a positive campaign, and we did,\u201d he said. \u201cWe worked so hard and we called so many thousands of people and knocked on so many thousands of doors and got that message out one person at a time, one event at a time, one morning at the market at a time. People started to listen and it is a great feeling. I look around this room tonight and I see so many people that believed in what we were doing and it wasn\u2019t belief in me alone, but it was a belief in an idea and the commitment to a better Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am just a messenger for that belief and I really do believe that we can build such a better Canada. You have proven Canada can be so much better, but it can only get better if we continue to fight for it. We can\u2019t take anything for granted. We can\u2019t take democracy for granted, we can\u2019t take freedom for granted, we can\u2019t take justice for granted\u2026and tonight we proved that. We proved it together and that is the best thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Alleslev spent the early hours of Tuesday morning with a jubilant crowd at Turtle Jack\u2019s in Richmond Hill, where she paid tribute to her family and the volunteers who shaped a brand-new riding.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been the longest campaign, but one with the best results we can ever hope for: a Liberal majority,\u201d she told supporters. There are no words to adequately tell you how grateful I am to everyone in this room. We took a riding that didn\u2019t exist and we built it from the ground! We started with just a few people and look at where we are today. This shows you what a team can do when they believe in themselves and the individual contribution they can [have] to make a greater difference in their own corner of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

As excitement of the crowds calmed, both of Aurora\u2019s new Members of Parliament shared their Election Day experiences with The Auroran. Mr. Peterson said he spent the \u201crollercoaster\u201d of the day working at a couple of key polls in Newmarket while Ms. Alleslev spent the \u201cnerve-wracking\u201d day working to get out to vote. However they spent the day, it was worthwhile in the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can tell you right now it is better to win than to lose,\u201d joked Mr. Peterson reflecting on his 2011 campaign. \u201cIt was a rollercoaster because you never know. You are always optimistic and as soon as those numbers started coming in, I started breathing better. We won every poll by a little bit, but a little bit, plus a little bit, plus a little bit started adding up. The trend was there and I was feeling good about halfway through.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a different feeling this time around from Day One of the campaign, he added. A long campaign, the longest one in Canada in over a century, ultimately worked out in his favour, he said, as it gave him more time to introduce himself to voters and get that message out.<\/p>\n

In an election such as this, incumbents are always more familiar faces, but the long campaign evened that score \u2013 and the same can be said for Canadians and Mr. Trudeau.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had 76 days to convince Canadians he was legitimately Prime Minister material and he started to resonate with Canadians,\u201d said Mr. Peterson.
\nOver the next week, Mr. Peterson says once all the loose ends of the campaign have been tied up, the first thing on his to-do list is meet with residents to start prioritizing their concerns and setting up his constituency office to serve them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first thing on my agenda is to make sure I use the momentum we have created from this to now start to build the plan for what I am going to do next,\u201d added Ms. Alleslev. \u201cWe have been honoured to be given this opportunity to lead, make changes, create the vision and implement it. Tomorrow is the first day of doing just that.\u201d <\/p>\n

The morning following the election, Ms. Brown expressed her thanks to the people of the riding.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would just like to say thank you to all the people of Newmarket-Aurora who have given me the privilege to serve them over the past seven years,\u201d she said. \u201cIt has been an awesome privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Voters paint the town red and send Leona Alleslev and Kyle Peterson to Ottawa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news","category-vote2015"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/2015-10-22-11.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3cv","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-18 06:38:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}