The elections of Tuesday, November the 4th were historic, followed closely not just by Americans in places that voted, by Americans wherever they lived, and by the world.

I happen to know that the results of the election were felt across the border,

341 miles north of New York City in Toronto, the city in which I grew up.

My family, including my 91-year-old father, was watching, and I know what they were thinking.

They were thinking about a cold March night 44 years ago, election night in Ontario in 1981.

I'm just 11 years old. It's just the two of us in

the car, my father and me, finally off our feet after a long day of bus stops and leafleting. We're

driving back to the campaign office in the district that another party has held for decades.

The very notion that my five-foot-three-inch brown immigrant Muslim father of Indian origin by way of South Africa and Kenya would even run for office was improbable.

The idea that he could be elected there was unthinkable.

Toronto in 1981 was not the cosmopolitan place it is today.

Immigrants had scarcely been elected anywhere in Canada, especially to

major office. So back to that night, the polls are closed, but we're still 10 minutes out from

the campaign headquarters. No real rush, we thought. My father reaches over and turns on the radio

at the top of the hour. The polls have closed across Ontario, the announcer reads. It's too early

to tell who will form the government tonight.

A beat. Then the disembodied voice continues. We can, however, declare Dennis Timbrel, the winner

in the district of Don Mills, Toronto. And there it was. The Call. One I would learn to make

years later as a journalist covering elections. It's exactly 8.01 p.m., amazingly

fast. The only problem is that Dennis Timberl, the guy who won, isn't my father. My father is Marad Valshi,

the man driving the car, the man who just suffered the swiftest, most definitive loss of the

entire election.

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