I entered the BMO convention centre two hours before registration began on Thursday, hoping against hope to receive a press pass from a Conservative Party that had been studiously ignoring me for weeks. Volunteers were milling about, deploying tables and getting oriented, and the first delegates were trickling in. Everyone was friendly. Nobody knew what to do.

My name wasn’t on the list of accredited journalists. 

“I don’t know the reason why,” said Sarah Fischer, the party’s director of communications, when she finally appeared two hours later. Her face was blank. “All I know is, if you didn’t receive accreditation then you don’t have it. It’s a private event.”

It was the shortest conversation I had that day, and also the coldest. But in terms of predictability, it was no different from the rest.

I may have been blocked from the escalator which led up to the convention’s official proceedings, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t talk to people. The BMO Centre boasts a cavernous lobby where throngs of delegates from all over the country were loitering — many hadn’t seen each other since the last convention, and the air was full of friendly greetings; I was free to mingle there. Outside, too, the sun was beaming down on a rare spring-like day, drawing its own small crowd of recent arrivals from Eastern Canada’s deep freeze. 

I stepped out and saw the Pleb, standing alone in a black t-shirt, basking in the heat. “You’re in a lot of shit,” he said with a laugh when he saw me. His fellow influencer, Mario Zelaya, had posted an indignant rant on X after reading my story about the CPC’s creation of Influencer passes for this convention. I’d named Zelaya as one of the people who received such a pass, which he claimed was false. “I didn’t read your story but I know he’s pissed,” said Pleb.

“I reached out to him and offered to discuss any factual errors in my piece,” I replied. “He never got back.”  (It wasn’t an error: later that day, I saw a picture of Zelaya inside the convention wearing an Influencer lanyard.) 

Pleb and I have a cordial relationship despite occupying extreme opposite ends of the political spectrum. We’d formed our strange bond as we both trailed Pierre Poilievre during the federal election campaign, spotting each other at rallies all over the country; he a culture-warrior who frequently espouses views I find despicable, me a lefty print journalist he finds pedantic. Seeing each other now for the first time since April, we updated the chasm between our worldviews.

I asked how he feels about Alberta separatism: “Alberta’s like a victim of spouse abuse,” he said. “Do I want them to separate? No. But I’d understand if they did.” 

Had his admiration for Trump declined at all? “No! He might be bad for Canada, but he’s great for America.” 

A........

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