Today was a splendid day. It started out with a trip out to Earl Buxton elementary in Riverbend to visit a pair of grade six classes.

Among the numerous school visits I’ve made during the campaign I’ve enjoyed the grade six visits most as they offer the hardest questions—perhaps because they study municipal elections and local government.

As usual, these young Edmontonians peppered me questions as good as their parents offer at the door. This group was a little different though: by now I’ve been to some of their doorsteps and spoken to them or a family member, so some already knew me!

This is great since they’ll be conducting a vote on the 15th themselves, and they’ll compare it to the real outcome. I told them that I’d rather win their poll than the real one since winning theirs meant good things for our city in six to nine years when they begin to vote for real. (I’ve asked their teacher to let me know how it turns out.) Ideally, of course, I’d like to win both.

Meanwhile, in the evening we chartered an ETS bus to get some folks out to the forum, also in Riverbend. It was truly inspiring to see the bus full of supporters and friends, and we had a great ride over. It not only made for a good photo op, but it created a good opportunity to talk about building better transit.

The forum itself, I should note, was tremendous fun. Great questions and good contrasting viewpoints. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I have the feeling that I picked up some votes.

Most rewarding, though, was finding out later from one of my volunteers that there were a couple of Earl Buxton students in attendance too, one in particular who insisted to her father that they should come out so he could also hear me.