A Sign Of Our Times

From NAL publisher Doug Draper

Some of our Niagara At Large readers will remember that we began a segment on this site more than a year ago called ‘Sign Of Our Times’, featuring signs posted somewhere in our greater Niagara region that say something about our wild and crazy times.

We haven’t posted all that many signs in recent months that fit the bill for our Sign-of-the-Times segment until this one came along.

It was campaign sign for this Ontario election, and one that ultimately worked for Niagara Falls Liberal incumbent Kim Craitor because he won back his seat this October 6 in a tough race against Conservative candidate George Lepp and NDP candidate Wayne Redekop.
The sign we are featuring here was posted on lawns across a Niagara Falls riding that encompasses that city and the towns of Fort Erie and Niagara-on-the-Lake, and created a bit of a dust-up in the local mainstream papers during an election where you would think the media would have more important issues to cover and analyze but this sign.

Nevertheless, attention turned to Craitor’s campaign signs, which were unconventional in the sense that there was no mention of the party he was running for on them.

That’s not surprising for anyone who has been following Craitor’s political career going back to his days as a Niagara Falls councillor. He has always prided himself in being somewhat of a free spirit or “maverick,” as some have dubbed him, and he always made a point of saying he places the concerns of his constituents above party politics.

Who knows, maybe his decision to shun the Liberal stamp on his campaign signs may be one of the reasons Dalton McGuinty was the only leader of the three main parties not to pay a visit to Niagara during this election campaign. And maybe it is one of the reasons Craitor prevailed to represent his constituents for a third term at Queen’s Park in an election where a good many people wrote letters to the editor and told their friends and neighbours that when it comes to the three main parties and their platforms, they felt like going to voting both and writing in “none of the above.”

For that reason alone, maybe Craitor’s partisan-free campaign placard truly is a sign of our times.

If you spot what you feel is a sign of our times, take picture of it and send it to Niagara At Large at drapers@vaxxine.com along with a brief explanation of why this sign reflects our times, and we will post it here. In the meantime, feel free to share your comments below on  this sign of our times.