Like a virgin…

This year saw the ninth anniversary of The Girl’s return to and my arrival in Canada. It further marks the start of my third year as a Canadian citizen.

It hardly seems possible that so much time has passed so quickly!

This week just passed marked yet another milestone; this being the first time that I was eligible to vote in an election here. Back in the UK quite a lot of folks (such as those from Commonwealth countries) are eligible to vote as long as they are residents in the UK. The Girl used to take advantage of this before she was granted her UK citizenship.

In Canada one has to be a citizen before one can vote in federal elections – hence my inability to do so until recently.

Anyway – I can now so do…

This current election is a provincial ballot and we here in British Columbia are – like so many others in the world – struggling to keep the nefarious tories at bay. This means voting!

In our neck of the woods we can vote early, so we trotted down to the polling station a week in advance of the final tally. On arrival I announced to all and sundry that this was my first Canadian election. The jolly lady there immediately sourced me a ‘first time voter’ sticker (just like being a teenager again!) which you can see adorning my voting card in the photo attached to this missive.

Voting here is quite slick. One takes one’s voting card and photo ID to the dude at the desk and one is ticked off the list in the prescribed manner and given a voting slip and a stiff plastic (or card – I forget which) sleeve. Having annotated the slip appropriately one inserts it into the sleeve – so that it can’t be read by others – and feeds it into the tallying machine. The machine sucks the paper out of the sleeve (which can then be recycled) and tallies the vote as it digests the slip.

All done and dusted, counted and ready to go. Most efficient and no loopholes for any possible suggestion of impropriety – though heaven for-fend that any such thing might be though even possible here north of the border.

And that’s how you do it, chaps!