General

Location, locution

At Hollywood on the Queensway, the bar in Ignatieff’s Toronto riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore that, as mentioned in a previous post, has served as his election-night HQ, the crowd is thinning out. It’s not a venue that recalls his Ivy League days.

When the Liberals haven’t got the place booked, the big draws are NFL football, oldies dance nights, and a Thursday blues bash. Down the block there’s an import wholesaler specializing in sunglasses and lingerie, a legal services storefront (“Traffic ticket? x traffic cop helps you”), and a cell shop that promises to “repair and unblock all phones.”

It would have been hard to think of Ignatieff holding forth in this sort of joint, with his precise professor’s intonation (the better for taking notes) when he first came back to Canada from Harvard. Now, it’s not nearly as difficult. No doubt, that evolution in his persona—constituency pol paying his dues paid and all that—will serve him well. Whatever comes now.

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