Amanda Mainville from Chelsea, Que., reacts as television channels declare a Liberal government at Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s election night event in the Canada Hall, at Rogers Centre in Ottawa.Ashley Fraser/The Globe and Mail
It seems scripted all wrong by the universe that Pierre Poilievre’s bid for the Prime Minister’s office should end with the sort of half-hearted result this election provided.
The Conservative Leader has never done anything by half-measures or watered-down subtlety; his political talents lie in being the human embodiment of one of those horned Viking helmets.
And yet, for most of election night at the Conservative event – party seemed the wrong word for it – the whole thing just kind of hung there suspended in some beige middle ground, until the bleakness set in late.
The party opened the event to supporters with a public invitation, and the guests and east coast results started trickling in around the same time, shortly after 7 p.m. The event was held at the Rogers Centre, a downtown Ottawa convention venue of perfectly polished glass nothingness, which was also hosting a software engineering conference.
A merch table outside the huge convention room was selling navy “Canada First” ballcaps and T-shirts, and lots of people grabbed team colours to outfit themselves on their way in. Several men – they were all men – wandered around with phones on selfie sticks held out in front of them like attention-seeking antennae, live-streaming everything that crossed their paths, including conversations with fans who came up to greet them.
Two huge screens on either side of the stage showed the television broadcasts, and they flipped from one network to another every few minutes, adding to the fragmented, tentative feeling in the room. The crowd numbered perhaps 300 to 400 people at its peak, though the chairs set up in the huge hangar-like room would have accommodated twice that number.
Through the first couple of hours, as only the east coast results dribbled in and they showed nothing close to a red wave, there were cheers from the crowd each time the TVs displayed another seat going to the Tories. A bigger cheer went up a little after 8 p.m., when one network showed the seat count on the east coast temporarily tied at 13 apiece, and a brief chant of “bring it home” revved up.
Later, when the TVs showed footage of Liberal Leader Mark Carney and his wife watching the results come in, the Tory room inflated itself for a moment with some lusty booing.
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Once polls from Ontario to Alberta closed, the results tumbled in fast. CTV was the first network to call the election for the Liberals, a bit after 10 p.m. No one in the convention centre booed; a few shook their heads in disgust, but mostly they just stared stonily at the screens implacably laying out the bad news.
A few rows back from the empty stage, Amanda Mainville burst into tears, and instantly, every camera in the vicinity swung its lens toward her. She shouted an expletive as she wiped her eyes, bathed in the blue light bouncing off the walls and stage.
Fortunately for her, Jon Gurman and his daughter Raquel were standing nearby, ready the moment the mood turned. Mr. Gurman reached into his jacket and produced a plastic canister labelled “Anti-Liberal Wipes” (“Now with extra logic!” was emblazoned across it) and a metal can of “Anti-Liberal Rash Cream.” They occupied all the cameras and reporters for a few minutes with a spiel about their joke product, available online.
By the time their sales pitch had subsided, Ms. Mainville, 45, felt calmer and ready to talk about how the results had caught her off-guard.
“If you would have asked me eight months ago, I would have thought for sure a supreme majority vote,” she said. “Today, majority.”
She lives in Chelsea, Que., and has three children in their 20s; the youngest didn’t vote and the middle one was with her on election night. She figured that younger demographics who spend a lot of time online had been fed a particular version of things that explained the outcome that night.
“My oldest daughter voted Liberal tonight and her husband as well, only because of what social media portrayed Pierre Poilievre to be,” Ms. Mainville said.
The previous night, she had attended the big rally in Mr. Poilievre’s riding of Carleton on the outskirts of Ottawa – where, as of this writing, he was behind and at risk of losing his seat to his Liberal challenger. She found it to be a transformative experience, much different from watching his videos online.
“He fills my soul. When I saw him in person, the whole crowd was crying, we were in tears,” she said. “You feel from the soul of Pierre, just bringing that out to everybody.”
Just as I finished talking to Ms. Mainville, a TV anchor summed up what was clear so far in the still-unfolding vote count, including the outcome for Mr. Poilievre.
“One thing we do know is he will not become prime minister,” she said.