-by Anne Finlay-Stewart

In early September, Larry Miller reported to the media that every one of his election signs had been removed from the village of Shallow Lake, a traditional sea of Conservative blue. The press release warned that the loss had been reported to the police and the offence of "moving, removing or vandalizing" election signs carried a fine of up to $5000 or two years in prison, as well as the risk of further trespassing charges. A week later, Miller reported that the OPP had been alerted to a similar crime in Desboro.
And that was only the start.
Although there were no media releases, nor official police complaints from candidates, Mr. Miller's opponents have seen destruction, defacement and removal of their signs throughout this campaign. Besides the excrement and creative writing, some of the attacks on signs have been disconcertingly aggressive. One strong supporter of the Liberal campaign awoke to find the two large Kimberley Love signs on her property (and they were on her property – not municipal land) replaced by two equally large Larry Miller signs. No one would suggest that this was done with Miller's blessing or knowledge, let alone at his direction. But when another woman found a Miller sign on the municipal land in front of her home on a quiet rural road, and asked her Conservative neighbour if she could move it closer to their home so as not to imply any endorsement, she received a phone call from the candidate himself, warning her of fines or jail for touching that sign.
We do not see the worst of it in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound of course. In Stephen Harper's Calgary riding, a campaign of putting "24 hour surveillance" stickers directly on his signs was short-lived, but telling. In Brampton, a vandal caught on video kicking down the signs of rivals before erecting Conservative signs responded by saying "I'm doing my job". And perhaps the most chilling: a candidate in London Ontario, a former schoolteacher who had been his community's representative in the Ontario legislature for eight years, found racist slurs spray painted on up to 35 of his signs at the height of the Conservative's anti-niqab and "barbaric practices" rhetoric.

In Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound we have seen signs that read "Anybody but Miller and Harper" and the impossible-under-the-current voting system "Miller, not Harper". For the first time, people who want to change the government, the incumbent and even the electoral system itself have connected through social media and crowd-funded a poll to reveal the candidate most likely to take the seat from Harper. Orange and green signs have been taken down, if reluctantly,  and the demand for red signs has risen. Miller himself reports a "negative connotation" to the local campaign, although he hardly raises the tone by adding "the people who are detractors this time are some of the most ignorant people I have ever met."

For years hundreds of organizations, partisan and not, have been speaking out against the Harper government and the flawed voting system that allowed it all the power with the support of fewer than 4 out of 10 voters. This year individual Canadians, in this riding and across the country, seem to be raising their heads and saying "Not in my Canada".
The signs are all there.
Monday will tell.