Brigitte Pellerin: Voters are showing up at town halls with notebooks. They're bringing friends to events. And I am loving it.

If you’d told me last spring that I’d be reaching for my beat-up copy of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America to find parallels to the Ottawa municipal campaign, I would have laughed in your face. And yet.

I spent most of the late spring and summer complaining the race felt desperately dead. Labour Day came and went, and the pace picked up, as we expected. But then, something really unexpected happened.

Attending events, rallies and town halls throughout the city, and following candidates on canvasses in various neighbourhoods, I am struck by how engaged my fellow Ottawans are.

Starting with the very high turnout for the first four days of advanced voting, which suggests we may have a new high-water mark to feel good about. We had 27,553 voters casting a ballot during the first four-day period of advanced voting, a 46-percent increase from 2022 when 18,876 people voted early and a whopping 76-percent increase over the 15,703 people who did so in 2018.

Mostly, though, I am impressed by the level of engagement on the part of people who are tuned in. The people who are engaged, are fully engaged. I am loving it.

That’s true for the candidates, obviously. Recently the advocacy group Gotta Go asked people running for office detailed questions about their support for more public washrooms around town. Volunteers running the campaign expressed genuine admiration for the way candidates responded — with detail, passion and interesting ideas. When people running for office write you paragraphs about bathroom equity, we’re well beyond soundbites and box-ticking. We’re dealing with people who have thought long and hard about the city they want to serve.

That’s also true for voters. When you ring their doorbell, as I’ve done with several candidates now, people are generally happy to talk. And boy, do they have things to say. From transit that needs to be reliable to the infrastructure deficit that needs to be addressed, to the need for affordable housing, to public engagement exercises that need to listen to citizens before decisions are made and not after, Ottawa residents are remarkably well informed and eager to talk about issues — and what’s even more important than that, they are keen to listen to one another.

They show up at town halls with notebooks. They tell stories that illustrate the need for improvement in city services. They bring their friends to events. They line up to tell the terminally curious columnist (hi) why they’re there. After a recent canvas in the Glebe with MPP Catherine McKenney, Jeff Leiper took the bus home and posted on X that the ride had turned into an impromptu town hall. There is an ebullience and enthusiasm about local politics this election cycle that I don’t remember seeing in my 26 years in Ottawa.

As he toured the United States in the early 1830s, French aristocrat and writer Alexis de Tocqueville emphatically noted that what made American democracy so special, powerful and vibrant were all those voluntary associations he saw. Everything from churches to community groups to town halls and service clubs. He called this, people cooperating with one another in the pursuit of common goals, the “mother science.” I like to call it democracy’s secret sauce. And I love feeling it everywhere I go on the campaign trail this season.

The power of community, created and maintained through association and strengthened by strong democratic habits, is what makes a society healthy, wealthy and wise. I am delighted to see how deeply Ottawans know and care about municipal issues. It’s making my little Tocquevillian heart want to cry for joy.

Brigitte Pellerin (they/them) is an Ottawa writer.