In April 1968 the Canadian Liberal Party held a convention to elect a new party leader. The convention was held in Ottawa’s stadium at that time, the Civic Ottawa Center.
Although he was not seen as a favorite to win, the charismatic Pierre Elliot Trudeau had garnered a lot of support as the convention arrived. However there was a large field of candidates, and a definite anti-Trudeau movement. This made for a very exciting atmosphere.
In those years I had become somewhat politically active — or at least interested — and, together with three friends from school, decided to try to attend the convention. As I recall, none of us had any particular political leaning… we were just interested in the process
The only way we could attend was by coming as volunteers to work for various candidates holding signs in the stands and cheering them on. Although the four of us were in favor of Trudeau, when we got to his offices we were told that he already had a full compliment of volunteers and was not allowed to take more. This was quite a disappointment, but it didn’t take us long to decide what to do… We went to the office of a competing candidate, Paul Hellyer, and volunteered to carry his signs. This worked, and we were not the only ones to do it: as soon as we got our passes and got into the actual convention we dumped his signs and took Trudeau signs. Clearly, the Trudeau camp expected this, and they had people waiting inside with tons of extra signs.
As I recall, the convention went on for about 3 days, and since high school was still in session, we were all skipping school for a couple of days. The experience however was an educational one!
We listened to all the candidates speak, and watched as the party delegates voted. It actually took five ballots to decide the leader, since a majority of 50% was required to win. After the results of each ballot was announced, we could observe lots of delegates visiting the various candidate camps, trying to convince the ones who were not doing well to drop out. It was actually very interesting.
In any case, I do have a few pictures that I took at the time both from inside the convention, and of my three friends as we proceeded to the convention in downtown Ottawa. (Unfortunately, there was no such thing as a selfie camera so I am not in those shots!)
(Set up my camera on a self-timer for a “selfie”)
