I Say: Do Not Vote For This Man

National Post:

Author Noah Richler has announced plans to run for the NDP in the long-held Liberal riding of Toronto-St. Paul’s.

Richler is a journalist, political commentator and broadcaster who has contributed to the BBC, the National Post, the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail. His latest book, “What We Talk About When We Talk About War,” traced Canada’s “broad, jingoistic rebranding,” from peacekeeper nation to warrior nation, Randy Boyagoda wrote in a review for the Post.

“The writing will be in abeyance for a while,” he said, adding that the campaign won’t spell a permanent end to his journalism. “I don’t cease to be who I am.”

He is also the son of renowned Canadian writer Mordecai Richler, who died in 2001.

“I think he’d be quite chuffed, actually,” Richler said, when asked how his father might have reacted to his decision to run for the NDP. “I mean, we were brought up well aware of our fortune and privilege and that the best way to behave in the face of that was to be responsible to it. You know, work hard, participate, don’t piss these things away.”

Richler has been mulling a political career for several years, but said his family was reluctant about the idea until this winter, during the “relentless fear mongering” in the wake of the October attack on Parliament Hill.

“My wife said, ‘Look, you should be doing this.’”

Richler is running unopposed for the NDP nomination on July 29. The Liberal incumbent, Carolyn Bennett, has held the riding since 1997.