Dear Editor,
Today I held the power of change in my hands. Handed to me by people wearing masks who swore oaths of privacy and following due diligence of the law. People who took pride in their jobs and made sure that all the details were done prior to sending me off to my “voting station” where I was again named and IDed.
Being handed a piece of folded card stock paper and a tiny pencil I went to the safe, private space. Opening it up to see the grey shades (very fitting) with names and party affiliations beside them typed neatly inside in rows, some were familiar and others not; gave me yet another reason to be a proud free Albertan/Canadian! Look at me voting!
Look at me having the “Right” to be at a ballot box. No corruption or intimidation or police state standing guard. Just me with my mask! At the end of each name/party was a small grey circle. As I took my tiny pencil to mark my X where I felt it would help make change I suddenly teared up and that tiny pencil became a mighty sword. I had Power, I had a Right and I had Options. Unencumbered!!!
It was very Powerful indeed. The BALLOT! The little piece of paper that gives every Canadian Citizen the RIGHT to vote. The “Right” to choose a party and a leader that has the values and beliefs that you do, or at least in many aspects. That ballot is what democracy is, what Canada is. A Democratic Country. I recall the first time I voted and I voted as my parents had as it was all I knew. However, as times have changed and I have changed and technology advanced and the world has become our back yard and in our homes I see things differently. I vote differently. My values have changed through experiences and the fact that I have that right to speak out and mark my X in that grey circle makes all the difference in our Canada.
These many months have given way to such diversity and division in our great nation and we all are fighting for our rights as we see them. Sometimes we forget that the power is at the ballot box and not in a protest in front of our hospitals. Pick up your sword at the voting stations and feel where the true power lies. In your hands, in your Citizenship, in a grey circle… in a tiny pencil!
— Susan C Kokas
A Free Canadian
A Masked ,Vaxxed, Albertan Sept 13/2021