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David Orchard returns to battle - again
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Race
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| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Edited | Craverguy Oct 14, 2008 07:53pm |
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| Category | Profile |
| News Date | Monday, September 22, 2008 04:10:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | The man Stéphane Dion didn't want, Peter McKay betrayed and Joe Clark called a "tourist" in the Tory party has scratched out a surprisingly long career of being blindsided and left for dead. Where does David Orchard keep finding new political life?
"I'm not bitter," Orchard said, looking a like Clint Eastwood squinting into the sun as he strolled the shore of Montreal Lake, about 100 kilometres north of Prince Albert. "I'm a farmer. You have good years, bad years and you stick with it."
Eight months after Dion snubbed Orchard by appointing Joan Beatty for an ill-fated run as the Liberal in the March byelection in Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River, Orchard's prospects are bright again. The northern riding held for six months by Conservative Rob Clarke is considered winnable by the Liberals.
The tortured political past of the crusader against free trade, uranium and war has always seen the deepest cuts inflicted from within.
Orchard, 58, says Dion and other senior Liberals had assured him they wouldn't appoint a candidate in Desnethe. Dion's rejection stung all the more because Orchard had helped crown him Liberal leader in 2006 by delivering his signed-up members to Dion.
The riding is roughly the size of Germany, spreading 40,000 electors across 347,000 square kilometres. It wouldn't be unrealistic to cover the riding with an airplane, but Orchard gets around in his 1981 Oldsmobile Holiday 88. The odometer has rolled seven times.
On a recent visit to a reserve near Loon Lake, a councillor asked him if he sleeps in the car.
"I said, 'As a matter of fact I do sometimes,'" Orchard said. "He said, 'You're a real Indian' and he took a membership." |
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