For the record, online readers treated the beheading of hitchBOT the robot as a much bigger story than Stephen Harper's early election call Sunday.
But then, hitchBOT had a soul. No, no, no, must take that back.
It's much too early in the campaign - and the weather is far too nice - for ad hominem attacks, whether they be about Harper's heart, Mulcair's beard or Trudeau's hair/state of readiness.
Plenty of time - 11 looongg weeks - for the snarling to get petty and personal. At 78 days, this campaign will be longer than the Stanley Cup playoffs.
The entire Falklands War, from Argentinean invasion to British victory, only lasted 74.
One of the first campaign shots was fired, almost by accident, when 200 Canadian Broadcasting Corp. supporters (and a handful of confused Asian tourists) showed up for a Friends of Canadian Broadcasting rally at Victoria's Mile Zero monument Monday.
By accident, because the rally had been scheduled long before Sunday's election call.
The occasion was the unveiling of the 800th We Support CBC! lawn sign erected in the Victoria riding. Acting mayor Pam Madoff did the honours, with the voice of St. John's Mayor Dennis O'Keefe piped in from Newfoundland. The point was to emphasize the idea of the public broadcaster as a force for national unity.
There was nothing overtly partisan about the event. Murray Rankin, the incumbent Victoria New Democrat MP, was there to watch. So was Liberal candidate Cheryl Thomas. Green Party candidate Jo-Ann Roberts - the former host of CBC Radio's All Points West - was not; turns out she had a longstanding personal commitment in Prince Edward Island.
Conservative candidate John Rizzuti wasn't visible, which wasn't a surprise, since A) the candidates only found out about the rally through word of mouth, not invitation, and B) the Conservatives aren't exactly on the Friends' Christmas card list.
The group might be non-partisan, supporting no party in particular, but there was little doubt which one the Mile Zero crowd opposed.
The Friends - a national group that is particularly strong in Victoria, where a concerted grassroots effort brought the capital its own CBC Radio station in 1998 - argue the Conservatives are systematically dismantling one of the institutions that keeps Canada together.
The budget has been cut by
$115 million, programming has been gutted and supporters say the broadcaster that once featured the likes of Barbara Frum and Peter Gzowski is losing its voice. The counter-argument is that the voice, particularly on the radio side, is mostly that of a certain type of Canadian - mildly left-leaning, small-g green, with a social conscience.
If your idea of must-see television is The Bachelor, or your radio tastes tilt toward Top 40/fart jokes/ Howard Stern, you might prefer Ottawa take the $1 billion a year that it is devoting to the CBC and spend it elsewhere.
Why throw that kind of money at an outfit that is, like other traditional broadcasters, suffering from the fragmentation of an audience distracted by the likes of Netflix, Sirius XM Radio and whatever online source is featuring the latest clickbait list of 10 Celebrities Who Were Born With A Tail?
Nobody has more than a small slice of the pie.
Back come the Friends with the argument that, in this increasingly fractured market, it's vital to have one place that all Canadians can think of as their own.
Hence the wevotecbc.ca campaign and the 800 We Vote CBC! lawn signs planted in Victoria lawns.
The group is focusing its efforts on 19 constituencies - including Victoria and the newly configured Courtenay-Alberni - identified as swing ridings.
Its understanding was that allocating 800 signs, costing $4 a pop, to each of those constituencies would take it to the edge of Elections Canada spending limits.
However, that was before the early election call, which triggered higher spending limits, so more signs might be on the way. (Note that Victoria has more Friends of Canadian Broadcasting members than any other riding in the country.)
The one thing that stood out at Monday's rally? It stayed on topic, focusing on the issue, not personal attacks.
At Mile Zero of a long campaign, it was good to take the high road.
