I consider myself an optimist. The glass is always half-full to me, not half-empty. If every cloud has a silver lining, I try to find it. When I break a plate or other object at home, I say to myself, “One less thing for the kids to sell at the estate sale.” When I accidentally cut off another driver on the highway and he puts down his window to yell obscenities and show me the middle finger, I say to myself, “Well, at least I didn’t cut off a gentleman.” When my wife complains that she woke up with a headache, I say to myself, “Well, at least she didn’t call me something worse.”
If I were running for public office and lost the election in a landslide, 1,000 votes to 1, I’d say to myself, “Well, at least they counted my vote.” If I managed to get two votes, I’d say to myself, “Well, at least my wife voted for her headache.” If I managed to get five votes, I’d say to myself, “Well, at least my kids remembered it was election day.”
But I really don’t know how I’d feel if I got zero votes. Would I be able to find a silver lining?
Félix-Antoine Hamel, a 45-year-old musician from Montreal, certainly seems to have done so.
Hamel recently made history when he became the first federal candidate to get zero votes in a contested Canadian election. Yes, ZERO, as in “the number of ‘likes’ Justin Trudeau has received on social media from Narendra Modi this year.”
Despite finishing below 83 other candidates, Hamel managed to find a silver lining. As he told CBC News, "When I saw the result, I was like, 'Well, I am the true unity candidate. Everyone agrees not to vote for me.’”
Hamel was a candidate to represent Toronto-St. Paul’s, an electoral district in Toronto, in the House of Commons in Ottawa (not to be confused with Patty’s Pub, the House of Commoners). Most of the 84 candidates, like Hamel, were independents who added their names to the ballot as part of a coordinated protest against Canada’s winner-take-all plurality voting system.
The winner was Don Stewart of the Conservative Party, who gained 15,565 votes, nipping Leslie Church of the Liberal Party (14,932). Danny Légaré of the Marijuana Party managed to get 30 votes — and only 15 candidates finished higher, though that’s debatable.
Out of the 84 candidates, 48 received fewer than 10 votes each, but Hamel was the only one to get zero votes, partly because he doesn’t live in Toronto-St.Paul’s and couldn’t vote for himself. He also didn’t put any effort into campaigning, didn’t even release a TikTok video playing the saxophone beside a sign that says, “More Sax in Ottawa.” As a result, he made Canadian history and got lots of publicity — another silver lining.
"I'm one of the last people that would be expected to make Canadian history in any way," he said.
He told the CBC that he was glad to make a statement about election reform and to participate in a fair democratic process. He’s concerned about declining democracy in other parts of the world.
"As long as I have the right and the privilege to get zero votes in an election, then we are truly in a democracy," he said.
And there’s another silver lining!
