Riding off into the sunset

Sex, drugs, and parliament

One name that does not count among the 80 people - 73 men and 7 women - who have represented the Hamilton-area in Parliament since Canada’s first election in 1867 is that of Norm Braden.

Braden contested the riding of Halton—Wentworth in the 1968 Federal Election that swept the charismatic new leader of the Liberal Party, Pierre Trudeau, into power with a solid majority. Hamilton helped Trudeau reach the 155 seats he would win in that election by sending three Liberal MPs to Ottawa from the five ridings that intersected with the City of Hamilton and Wentworth County - today’s city boundaries. Only the ridings of Wellington (which then included much of rural Flamborough) and deep Tory blue Hamilton West stuck with Progressive Conservative representation in the form of Alfred Hales and the venerable Lincoln Alexander, respectively.

But it wasn’t just Trudeaumania that thwarted the 22 year-old Braden’s attempts to enter parliament. When Braden set his sights on Ottawa, he found that all three major parties had candidates lined up for the seat in which he resided.

The riding of Halton—Wentworth was a new creation for 1968, having been formed from parts of other area ridings, including the sprawling seat of Wentworth that once encircled Hamilton’s urban electoral districts like a suburban moat. Wentworth’s two-term MP, the popular insurance broker and war hero John Morison opted to contest Halton—Wentworth, scooping up all the advantages that an incumbent often does and, importantly, preventing Braden from carrying the Liberal banner to the polls on June 25.

Though Braden’s politics differed from that of the opposition, that path was also unavailable to him. The Progressive Conservatives had enticed Jim Swanborough, a lawyer in Waterdown and the son of Hamilton’s esteemed fire chief Reg Swanborough, to stand as their candidate. For his part, the younger Mr. Swanborough brought some of Canada’s Red Tory superstars like Dalton Camp and Davie Fulton to Halton—Wentworth to stump for him. And, on the left, the relatively-new NDP had tapped party activist Ted MacDonald, their provincial candidate from Ontario’s election the previous fall, to stand in the new riding, completing the list for the major parties.¹  

Braden, who had returned from the exclusive and, at the time, men’s only Amhurst College in Massachusetts just a few weeks before election day, decided to pursue a different path. When Braden submitted his nomination paperwork and deposit, he decided that his party affiliation would be listed as an “Independent Liberal” - the only candidate to ever adopt that label in the Hamilton-area, though one of 11 “Independent Liberals” who ran in the 1968 election. While changes to the Elections Act now prevent anyone from running under a label like that, it was once a common way for candidates to market themselves during an election; Independent Liberals, Conservatives, and Labour candidates ran for office from 1867 to 1968, describing themselves as people who generally supported the platform of an existing party, but had not been selected as a candidate of that party for various reasons.

On the surface, Braden would have been a great candidate for the Liberals. Young, ambitious, and well-educated, the Waterdownite came from a prestigious and successful local family. His step-father was the principal of the private Hillfield College (part of today’s Hillfield Strathallan). His father, Bill Braden, was an executive with the Hamilton Street Railway and a local sportsman who died 10 years prior in an accident during a speedboat competition in Huntsville. Bill’s uncle (and Norm’s great uncle) was Harry Greening, the heir to the Greening Wire Co. fortune who served as the company’s president and was a boat racing champion in his own right. It was no wonder that, when reporting on his candidacy, The Spec noted that Braden inherited “enough money to never have to work.”

But the reason Braden wouldn’t have received the Liberal Party’s nomination even if he wanted it - and the reason he would stand as an “Independent Liberal” - was that his platform was simultaneously radical and of-its-time. As The Spec wrote:

“For the long-haired 22-year-old, the issues narrow down to one word: SEX.”

Fresh from his elite east coast liberal arts school and packed full of youthful verve, Braden aimed to “bust open middle-class morality by legalizing fornication, homosexuality, abortion, and prostitution.” His was a platform full of modernizing planks, including providing free birth control to every Canadian woman over the age of 15, formally opposing the war in Vietnam, and lowering the voting age to 18.

The Spectator reporter sent to the Braden family estate on Waterdown’s Mountain Brow Road spared no expense at painting the young candidate as a champagne socialist, going so far as to note that Chopin was playing from a faraway grand piano while the two discussed the election, the light glinting off silver cigarette case on a nearby table.

But Braden’s values came from a place of genuine concern over inequality, noting that he watched the friends and family of his rich private school colleagues paying for illicit birth control and abortions while people with fewer means suffered without access to the same. That frustration, along with his exposure to new ideas through his political science degree, led him to join Amhurst’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which had reached its zenith the same year Braden ran for parliament. SDS would dramatically collapse under the familiar weight of leftist infighting just one year later, in 1969.

Braden sought to blend practicality with his progressive policies on sex and morality. He committed to supporting the Liberal Party’s overall platform (hence being an “Independent Liberal”) while also pushing to get the government out of people’s bedrooms for good, beyond what Trudeau had done with his reforms in 1967. All Braden’s ideas were compiled into a three page platform that, when initially presented to the voters of Waterdown, caused a minor scandal for its references to abortion, queer love, and sex work. When it came to mailing out a brochure to the 29,000 households of Halton—Wentworth, he adjusted his message to be more “palatable” to voters while still maintaining his radical zeal.

Still, it did little to change the opinion of his official Liberal opponent, MP Morison. When he learned of Braden’s platform, Morison derisively told the Spec his young opponent would “be lucky to get 50 votes.” Swanborough and MacDonald didn’t speculate on Braden’s eventual exact vote count, but did say he would likely lose his $200 nomination deposit, which used to happen if candidates failed to earn at least half the votes of the winner.²

On election day, Braden proved Morison wrong, but met the expectations of his PC and NDP opponents. A respectable 399 voters in Halton—Wentworth cast ballots for Norm Braden, amounting to 0.85% of the vote, while Morison won with a solid 41.35%, roughly the same vote total he had earned during his first win in 1963.

All-in-all, Braden said he spent around $2,000 on his campaign, all from his own fortune. His frustration, aside from the obsession in the media and the community with his radical policies on sex, was that voters “thought I was a Conservative plant, set up to split the vote and conserve our millions.” He expressed those sentiments to a Spec reporter after the vote count, who filed his story on Braden under one last biting headline: Nobody Believed Him.³

Know your ridings

The election in which Braden ran was Canada’s 28th since Confederation. Now, 56 years, 9 months, and 18 days later, we’re in the middle of the 45th election in Canada’s post-Confederation history.

And this election will be very different than most others. Sure, there’s the whole ~international situation~ thing we need to deal with, but, in practical terms, this election will be unique.

When Canadians go to the polls on April 28, 2025, we will be electing the single largest parliament in our country’s history. A full 343 Canadians will be selected by members of their communities and sent off to Ottawa to represent their constituents, their own beliefs, their parties, and the national interest in the 45th Parliament of Canada. In a fascinating coincidence, 343 Canadians stood for election for the 1st Parliament of Canada, though only 181 of them were ultimately elected.

This new and improved large parliament is thanks to the addition of five seats to manage a growing and shifting population. Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario all get new seats. Despite this overall increase, here in Confederation’s most populous province, we still have the highest average number of people-per-MP, with each riding containing around 116,000 people - almost three times the number of people per riding on Prince Edward Island.

In Hamilton, our federal representation has remained steady at 5, as it’s been since Braden sought elected office in 1968. Prior to that, for nearly 100 years, Hamilton had four federal representatives. In looking at the new riding boundaries put in place for this election, I thought it would be fun to go back through history to take a look at some of the city’s ridings of yore. It’s been a long while since people have brought up the names of Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot, Hamilton South, and Wentworth—Burlington, after all.

In the spirit of once again engaging with our shared history, I’ve compiled a whole bushel of facts, tidbits, and curiosities about federal elections, ridings, MPs, candidates, and parties here in the Hamilton-area.

So here, in no particular order, are some of the most interesting:

13 in Hamilton East

Here in Hamilton, there are 28 candidates running across 5 ridings that will be represented after the 2025 federal election. The most number of candidates in a riding is in Hamilton Centre, where 8 candidates are running to represent the newly expanded downtown seat.

While that may seem like a large number, it isn’t even the most people who have ever run for a single federal seat in Hamilton’s history; that came in 1996 when 13 people lined up to run in an entirely unnecessary by-election.

***

A full 12 years before the silliest by-election in Canadian history, legendary Hamilton politician Johnny Munro had reached a crossroads. He had served in parliament since 1962, rose through the ranks of the Trudeau government, and had a reputation as an unbeatable and energetic campaigner. But a dismal showing in the 1984 Liberal Party leadership race, in which he earned the votes of just 93 delegates, showed him that it was time to step aside and make way for some new talent.

In his place, the ambitious scion of Hamilton’s Copps dynasty sought to move from Queen’s Park to Parliament Hill. At just 32, Sheila Copps had already been elected to the provincial parliament and come in a respectable second in the Ontario Liberal Party leadership race in 1982. Facing off against union leader and champion of Hamilton’s working people, David Christopherson, Copps won a narrow victory in 1984 and began ascending the federal Liberal ladder as quickly as she had done provincially.

By 1996, Copps was the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Environment, but was facing calls for her to make good on a promise she made during the 1993 federal election. Before winning her Hamilton East seat with 67% of the vote, Copps pledged to resign from parliament if a Liberal government did not abolish the GST in their first term - a pledge she repeated again and again during the campaign to the point where it became a major feature of her victory speech on election night.⁴

Throughout early ‘96, Copps was hounded by the media for an answer regarding her pledge. In late March, the Spec ran an editorial cartoon from the Montreal Gatzette’s Aislin mocking the fact that, for once, Copps had “nothing to say”, along with a prompt for readers to call in to SpecTel, the paper’s fancy new touch-tone service so that Hamiltonians could have their views heard, regarding the question “Should Hamilton East MP Sheila Copps run again for Parliament if the GST is not scrapped by the next federal election?”⁵

One month later, in a story that appeared on the front page of the Spec, a defiant Copps refused to resign, saying her original pledge “was a shoot-from-the-lip comment” despite the fact that her office was “swamped” with calls for her to resign.⁶ Weeks of protests, angry letters to the editor, and mocking editorial cartoons followed. Even her mother, Ward 4 alderman Geraldine Copps, advised that she step aside. The pressure proved to be too much and, on May 1, 1996, Copps resigned, allowing Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to call a by-election for June 17.⁷ Right before her decision to step down, Copps commissioned a poll on the urging of Chrétien and the federal Liberals. It showed that, if Copps resigned and ran again, she would earn 49% of the vote, compared to 17% for the Reform Party, 12% for the PCs, and 7% for the NDP. She insisted that the poll results had no impact on her decision.⁸

The Spec’s legendary Street Beat reporter Paul Wilson wrote about overhearing two Hamilton East voters at the old Tim Hortons (“not one of those new smoke-free models”) behind the City Motor Hotel on Queenston who argued about Copps’ chances, making a bet on whether the Reform Party candidate could beat her. The paper ran articles about whether the MP would collect Employment Insurance. Opinion columnists called on the voters of Hamilton East to “slap” the Liberals for their inability to “axe the tax”.⁹

A total of 13 people, including future MP Wayne Marston, two militant anti-gay activists, and the “biggest political loser” in democratic history, John C. Turmel, ended up running in the by-election. In the end, Copps’ polling wasn’t too far off. The renegade MP won her seat again, this time with 46% of the vote. The Reform Party underperformed, earning just 10% of the vote, while the NDP’s Wayne Marston took 26%.

After that point, Copps’ political star began to fade. Following the 1997 election, she was demoted from her cabinet positions, lost the 2003 Liberal Party leadership to Paul Martin, and then lost a nomination battle against Lincoln MP Tony Valeri, who would become the MP for the new riding of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek. All the while, her NDP opponent in the 1996 by-election, Marston, was gaining political experience. He was elected to the public school board in 2000 and became the NDP’s federal candidate in HESC in 2006, narrowly defeating Valeri and ending 44 years of Liberal dominance in Hamilton East, dating all the way back to the days of Johnny Munro.

The 514 (candidates)

When the 28 candidates presently running are added to the overall total number of candidates who have ever sought elected office in the Hamilton area, we get 514. That’s 514 people who have offered themselves up as representatives of Hamiltonians in our federal parliament ever since Canada’s first election was held in 1867.

The most prolific federal candidate in the city’s history was Johnny Munro, who contested 10 elections as a Liberal from 1957 to 1988. His first offering was in Hamilton West, against Ellen Fairclough, who defeated him soundly, 54% to 32%. That election was unique, in that it featured three respected local politicians of past, present, and future: Fairclough of the Tories (Ward 3 alderman 1945-1949, Controller 1949-1950), Munro of the Liberals (Ward 2 alderman 1954-1960, Ward 3 alderman 1960-1962), and the CCF’s Bill Scandlan (Ward 3 alderman 1964-1970, Ward 7 alderman 1970-1978). Munro entered parliament on his next try, serving as the MP for Hamilton East from 1966 to Copps’ ascent in 1984. Munro tried to come out of retirement in 1988, running as the Liberal candidate in the riding of Lincoln, but fell 400 votes behind the riding’s incumbent MP, Shirley Martin. It was Valeri who would replace him as the Liberal candidate in 1993, winning the rural Stoney Creek seat by a wide margin.

The next six most prolific federal candidates in Hamilton all share the same number of runs. Clocking in at seven campaigns each are local communists Bob Mann and Rolf Gerstenberger (no wins), the aforementioned Fairclough (5 wins, 2 losses), Wentworth’s stalwart Tory MP Frank Lennard (6:1), the pre-20th century Liberal electoral powerhouse Thomas Bain (7 wins), and Wayne Marston (3 wins, 4 losses).

The next seven in the “Top 10 Prolific Federal Candidates in Hamilton” list also share a total number of campaigns. At six each are folks like Copps, Lincoln Alexander, on-again-off-again Hamilton Mountain Tory MP Duncan Beattie (2 wins, four losses), Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale and Flamborough—Glanbrook Conservative MP David Sweet (5 wins, 1 loss), and Hamilton Centre’s David Christopherson of the NDP (also 5 wins, 1 loss), as well as long-time Hamilton Mountain MP Beth Phinney and Lennard’s predecessor in Wentworth, Gord Wilson.

While the overwhelming majority of federal candidates are “one-and-done” (338, to be precise), another 133 have run between two and four times. The intensity of a federal campaign shouldn’t be understated, so for folks to give it a second, third, or even fourth try - especially if they are unsuccessful a few times - is commendable.

The 1st election and the double seat

While Canada’s first federal election happened over many months, polling in Hamilton was complete on the first day: August 7, 1867. During that first election, the Hamilton area had just three seats for three MPs. These were Hamilton, Wentworth North, and Wentworth South. During that election, only property holding men over 21 could vote, and did so by making their way to a polling station and raising their hands in support of their preferred candidate.

The voters of Hamilton proper were spared the walk when Charles Magill, the former and future mayor, was elected by acclamation. In Wentworth North, voters sent businessman James McMonies to Ottawa while their counterparts in Wentworth South sent the rebellious farmer and anti-Confederationist Joseph Rymal off as their representative. Hamilton’s entire delegation to the 1st Parliament of Canada were Liberals - a contingent that would be repeated four other times in the city’s history.

Hamilton’s representation in the first parliament was the smallest it would ever be as, for the next election on July 20, 1872, Hamilton’s urban riding would become a “multi-member seat”, electing two MPs until the district was abolished for the 1904 election. Voters in Hamilton were given the opportunity to select two candidates. The top two winners would then go on to represent the seat in parliament. In the 1872 election, Magill lost his seat to Daniel Chisholm and Henry Buckingham Witton, both of whom were Conservatives (though Whitton ran as a “Conservative Labour” candidate).

In 1874, the voters of Hamilton replaced Chisholm and Witton with Liberals, but then split their representation between one Liberal and one Conservative from 1878 to 1887. After that, it was almost ten years of Conservative dominance, followed by a brief Liberal victory, until the seat reverted back to the Tories.

By 1904, the population of Hamilton had grown so dramatically - an the fondness for multi-member seats had declined so considerably - that the government decided to turn one seat into two. Thus was born Hamilton West and Hamilton East, two seats that would exist continuously for 100 years. Once severed, the two seats drifted apart dramatically; Hamilton West would become a Conservative safe seat, returning centre-right members for 61% of its existence, while Hamilton East was ruby red, electing Liberals for 59% of its 100 years. In dissolving those reliable seats into larger amalgams for the 2004 election, a century of political strategizing on the part of Canada’s two largest parties was erased, forcing them to regroup and reimagine how to contest new seats with new boundaries and new voters.

54 or 8?

Since 1867, Hamiltonians have voted in 53 federal elections - 44 general and 9 by-elections held for various reasons. The election on April 28 will mark the 54th time Hamiltonians will go to the polls to send federal representatives to Ottawa.

Kinda.

Our April election will actually only be the 8th time most Hamiltonians will be eligible to vote. During our first few elections, voting rights were extremely restricted, creating a shallow pool of electors. Despite a population in 1872 of around 27,000, there were only around 1,450 votes cast in the riding of Hamilton.

Over the years, voting rights were slowly expanded to include more and more people, as well as secure the votes of those who were eligible to participate.

The election of 1874 (the third general election in Canada) was the first to use secret ballots. That meant doing away with the old system mentioned in the section above of heading to a polling station and raising your hand to signal which candidate you supported. Imagine being in a room full of drunk, angry, and belligerent supporters of one party and daring to raise your hand for a candidate from another party. During those first few elections, voter suppression was through the roof, leading to some bizarre election results. In the 1872 election, the riding of Bagot in Quebec, for example, had a result of 1,184 votes for the incumbent Conservative MP to just 4 votes for his opponent. That was not unlike the result in Témiscouata, where the Tory candidate earned 1,125 votes to just two for his Liberal opponent - an opponent who would go on to win the next election, held using a secret ballot.

It wasn’t until 1917 that some women were granted the right to vote, based on the military service of their family members. Only for the 1921 election did all white women and men who did not own property get the right to vote.

The 1949 election expanded the franchise to people of East Asian origin. The 1962 election marked the first time that all Indigenous people could cast ballots. It wasn’t until the 1972 election - four years after Braden included the plank in his radical platform - that the voting age was lowered to 18. Voting rights were expanded to federal judges for the 1988 election, people with mental disabilities for the 1993 election, and people incarcerated in jails and prisons were only made eligible to vote for the 2004 election.

So then this, our 54th election, is really only the 8th election where nearly every Canadian - with the exception of the Chief Electoral Officer - is eligible to vote.

36 parties

In those 54 campaigns, the 514 candidates running to represent Hamiltonians have done so with 36 different parties - 27 if you don’t count all the branches and variations of the Conservative Party. Of those 514, 202 have been some form of Conservative (including both PC and Reform/Alliance candidates when they ran against each other), 201 have been Liberals (not including Braden), and 143 have been NDPers/CCFers/Labour candidates.

The next most prolific party is the Greens, though their inability to field candidates in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek (HESC) and on Hamilton Mountain in this election is notable; that marks the first time in HESC’s history the federal Greens have not run a candidate and the first time in 25 years there hasn’t been a Green candidate on Hamilton Mountain.

***

It’s worth pausing on the Greens for a moment, as their contingent in this election is the smallest they’ve offered in Hamilton in recent memory. The first Green candidates in Hamilton were retired teacher Bill Santor in Hamilton—Wentworth and university student Robert Keddy in Lincoln in the 1984 federal election, the year after the German Greens (Die Grünen) entered their parliament and set off a wave of Green organizing around the globe. Santor told the Spec that he aimed to appeal to the people of Hamilton interested in economic justice, non-violence, and responsible stewardship of natural resources, though admitted “his chances of capturing Hamilton—Wentworth for the Green Party [were] minimal,” given his $500 budget and inability to canvass due to working “full-time on his 25-acre Jerseyville-area farm.”¹⁰ Both Santor and Keddy earned under 350 votes, each placing fourth in their ridings.

Starting in the 2000’s, the Greens consistently ran candidates in all of Hamilton’s ridings (with the exception of Hamilton Centre in 2011). Their best result came in 2008 when Peter Ormond earned over 5,000 votes and 9.1% of the vote in Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale. A brief bump for the party’s candidates in 2019 has been followed by a precipitous drop in Green fortunes, leading to their inability to run a full slate in Hamilton in this election.

68 sections

The last little tidbit that I want to share is some high-level geography nerdery, so apologies in advance.

I have a way of looking at the world that really focuses on “place”. Places are spaces that we have ascribed some kind of meaning to as humans. As someone who is very into politics, electoral districts are some of those places for me. They are where people campaign, where elections are held, and where people do the everyday work of democracy, from reading the news to protesting to connecting with their MP about something.

A question I always have isn’t so much “which riding am I in right now?” (mostly because I always know that) but “what riding has this place been in over time?” Growing up on the west Mountain, I always found it interesting that I was on Hamilton Mountain but, just down Upper Paradise was the “downtown” riding of Hamilton Centre, and a couple of metres to the west was the riding of Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale.

So, naturally, I mapped all of Hamilton’s ridings on top of one another to create segments showing the progression of our federal representation. The result was 68 unique sections of the city that have switched back and forth between ridings since 1867.

The neighbourhood in which I grew up (Carpenter), for example, was part of Wentworth South from 1867 to 1904, Wentworth propert from 1904 to 1949, Brant—Wentworth from 1949 to 1953, back to Wentworth from 1953 to 1968, onto Hamilton Mountain for a brief spell from 1968 to 1979, over to Hamilton—Wentworth from 1979 to 1997, Hamilton Mountain from 1997 to 2012 (where I cast my first ever ballot), and to Flamborough—Glanbrook until this election, where it’s shifted over to Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas.

This also gives us a chance to see what the “most” Liberal, Conservative, and New Democrat parts of the city are using all available historical data. The most Liberal area of Hamilton is, interestingly, much of Ward 3, which was once part of deep red Hamilton East. The most Conservative area is Upper Mount Albion, now part of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek. And the most New Democrat is the Concession Street area on Hamilton Mountain.

1 vote

During my first election, when I was knocking on doors for the NDP’s Chris Charlton on Hamilton Mountain, she always used to say that, on election day, it didn’t matter if you were a multimillionaire or a senior on a pension - you all get one vote, and that vote matters.

Make sure you know which riding you live in now by checking Elections Canada’s website here. If you’re not sure if you’re registered, you can check your status here. And, if you need more info on who is running in your riding, check these links from Elections Canada:

• Flamborough—Glanbrook—Brant North

• Hamilton Centre

• Hamilton East—Stoney Creek

• Hamilton Mountain

• Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas

Hundreds of candidates, 80 MPs, 25 ridings - and you’re part of it all. Your vote matters. So make the most of it.

1  _{Gordon Hampson. “Halton-Wentworth - Knock-knock: The Candidate’s Game” Hamilton Spectator, June 4, 1968 (Spec archive link).}

2  _{“A student’s bid for seat in parliament” Hamilton Spectator, June 21, 1968 (Spec archive link).}

3  _{Jerry Rogers. “Nobody Believed Him” Hamilton Spectator, June 26, 1968 (Spec archive link).}

4  _{Ken Peters. “Hamilton Copps big hitter” Hamilton Spectator, October 26, 1993 (Spec archive link).}

5  _{Opinion Section. Hamilton Spectator, March 27, 1996 (Spec archive link).}

6  _{“Copps refuses to resign” Hamilton Spectator, April 26, 1996 (Spec archive link).}

7  _{Jim Poling. “Copps quits after poll” Hamilton Spectator, May 2, 1996 (Spec archive link).}

8  _{"" “Copps’ ‘calculated’ risk” Hamilton Spectator, May 3, 1996 (Spec archive link).}

9  _{Don McGillivray. “Liberals need a slap from Hamilton East” Hamilton Spectator, May 4, 1996 (Spec archive link); Paul Wilson. “Sheila’s image loses its glow” Hamilton Spectator, May 4, 1996 & Lee Prokaska. “Copps has no plans to apply for UI” Hamilton Spectator, May 4, 1996 (Spec archive link).}

10  _{Bruce Stewart. “Green Party’s candidate colours his chances” Hamilton Spectator, August 3, 1984 (Spec archive link).}