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Re-elected Vancouver Centre MP Hedy Fry gives full credit for the Liberal victory to Justin Trudeau

by Travis Lupick on October 19th, 2015 at 11:34 PM
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      A lot can change in four years.

      In 2011, the Conservative party led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper was re-elected with 166 seats over the NDP's 103 and the Liberal' 34.

      Michael Ignatieff was criticized as leading his campaign for prime minister from an ivory tower. The outcome was the Liberal’s worst defeat in well over a century.

      In 2015, the same party led by Justin Trudeau experienced a swing in momentum greater than they dared hope.

      Indeed, while a number of polls taken during the final week of the election did project a Liberal win, the majority with which they ended tonight (October 19) was so unexpected that it left their B.C. celebration at a bar on the edge of Olympic Village without candidates in attendance until long after 10 p.m.

      Among the first to finally arrive was Hedy Fry, the long-time MP for Vancouver Centre.

      "People in Canada stood up and said, 'We want our country back'," she shouted over the crowd.

      A Liberal party celebration at the Steel Toad Brewery on the edge of Vancouver's Olympic Village was in full swing by the time candidates began to arrive after 10 p.m.
      Travis Lupick

      Fry gave full credit for the Liberal's unexpected victory to Trudeau.

      "He made people believe again in a positive government, in a government that will be there for the people," she said. "A government that doesn't have to be nasty and full of fear and hate and divisiveness."

      "I think the turning point came when people began to hear him in the debates, when they began to see him speak, and when they heard his message, which was so different from the other parties' messages," Fry continued. "It was full of hope, it was positive, it was bringing people together, and they liked that. They wanted it."

      At the time of writing, results for a number of ridings were still trickling in. But the front page of the October 20 edition of the Globe and Mail was already out with a clear statement on just how much the country has changed, seemingly overnight.

      The Liberals took 184 seats compared to the Conservative's 102, the NDP's 41, and the Green party's one seat for Elizabeth May. "Trudeau triumphs," the paper's headline reads.

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