NDP Leadership Convention

Mommy and Daddy went to the Federal NDP Convention in Toronto and the boys stayed back in Calgary with Grandma and Grandpa. It was 26 degrees on the shore of Lake Ontario.

People were swimming in the pool at the Sheraton, the hotel Noah was staying at. We were at a different hotel closer to the lake.

The bunch of us were on team Niki Ashton. Some of these photos are a bit out of order because they are taken off of three different devices. This was from when the first ballot had been revealed and Niki went off the ballot. She was corned by the media as they were asking her who she was moving her support to.

Niki said she wasn't going to reveal who she was voting for and her supporters should support whomever they wanted to.

She gave a big thank you speech to her team afterwards.

Every convention Noah and I have gone to, our friend Alex Ng from Vancouver has also attented. He is a button collector and has the largest collection I have ever seen.

The convention centre was really large and it was hard to get food. You had to walk a few kilometres to get anything good.

This was from the day before the first ballot results were revealed, when all the candidates gave their final speeches and "showcases".

One of the greatest parts of visiting Toronto was that we could visit many people in a short period of time. Mads and Bobs' great grandpa lives in Wasaga Beach and he was brought up to the hotel for a visit by aunt Jane.

Grandpa hadn't been in downtown Toronto since right before the CN tower received it's top. I think that is great! Living nearby the big Smoke, but not feeling the need to visit the interior city.

We met some great people that I have been conversing with on twitter and facebook. Some of the people I recognized from their twitter photos and I approached them asking if they were so and so.

In the evenings we went to a few hospitality suites and one night, Daddy's cousin Charlotte joined us after inviting us to a Korean BBQ place on Queens St. She fit right in.

Charlotte lives in Oshawa these days and works in downtown Toronto in the auto industry in marketing.

Once we were no longer able to continue voting for Niki ( who is incredibly passionate and talented ), we were all very confused as to who we should throw our support behind. I bounced around from Cullen, Topp and Mulcair.

We sat in the Topp and Cullen sections for awhile...

And eventually decided to vote for Mulcair on all the subsequent ballots. We knew he was going to be the winner and we were ready to give him our full support.

We spent quite a bit of time watching Noah and Niki and others practice their speeches in the campaign office. Each candidate had a room to gather their team.

The final day was very long as there were voting delays. But we made sure to get great seats to hear Mulcair's victory speech.

Then it was time to say goodbye to Toronto and head back to Calgary to see our boys and thank Grandma and Grandpa for taking such good care of them, and not only keep out house in perfect order, but seeing some surprise home improvements to boot!