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Speak Up

In Saturday's opinion pages, the Telegraph-Journal published a photograph of Canadian soldiers at a forward operating base in Afghanistan exercising their right to vote. The voter registration station was not unlike that in many small communities, with one obvious exception: a handgun sitting within easy reach on the table, ready for action.

The image is a reminder that the right which millions of Canadians will exercise today should not be taken lightly.

Canadians did not fight a bloody revolution for democracy, as our neighbours to the south did. But the right to govern ourselves was won by men and women who were revolutionary. From the opening of the first legislative assembly in Nova Scotia 250 years ago to Nellie McClung and the "famous five," who won Canadian women the power to vote in the 20th Century, the movement for democracy has been led by people of vision.

Canadians fought as British subjects in two world wars, but they fought for the right of self-determination - their own, and that of nations that had been ground under the heel of invading armies. The basic right to elect a government which was first won in this country by political debate and peaceful persuasion was preserved at the cost of tens of thousands of lives.

There are as many experiences of voting as there are Canadian voters. In a world of increasing complexity and overwhelming volumes of information, where news and views and images can circle the globe in seconds, the moment of voting is one in which time seems to still and wait for an individual decision.

Alone with the ballot, each voter is left to contemplate the political options and render a decisive verdict. This is one of the few opportunities each of us has to make a momentous difference in how our communities are governed. It should be welcomed, respected, and cherished. The results are seldom perfect - but what is?

We'll leave the last word on the subject of voting to Sir Winston Churchill, who delivered a famous rebuke to political cynicism in the British House of Commons on Remembrance Day, 1947:

"Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government - except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."