Last Monday night, a group of Citizen employees gathered at the Coast Inn of the North's lounge to watch the presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Two men were sitting nearby having dinner and watching the Toronto Blue Jays play the New York Yankees on another TV.
When one Citizen employee asked the Coast server to change the bar TV to CNN, one of the men couldn't believe it, asking aloud why Canadians were so interested in the American election.
The man and his friend - both American hunters relaxing after a successful guided excursion through the region (they loved it here) - also said they were both voting for Trump.
They just don't like Clinton.
They also didn't stay to watch the debate with their new Canadian friends.
For millions of American voters, including these two men, politics is boring as hell and watching presidential candidates debate would be a tortuous waste of time. While 84 million Americans watched the proceedings last Monday night, breaking a record that went back 36 years, it was nowhere near the 100 million viewers predicted. To put that number in context, more than 110 million people watched the Super Bowl on TV in five of the last six years.
That's the hard-hitting action Americans would prefer to watch.
That means viewership for tonight's vice-presidential debate between Hillary Clinton's running mate Tim Kaine and Donald Trump's running mate Mike Pence won't be high on either side of the border, with the Blue Jays facing off against the Baltimore Orioles at the same time in a one-game playoff tonight for the right to play the Texas Rangers in the divisional series.
October baseball or vice-presidential debate?
Like that's even up for discussion.
Yet there are plenty of reasons to pay a little bit of attention to what Kaine, the Democratic senator from Virginia, and Pense, Indiana's Republican governor, say during tonight's veep debate.
Both men are in their late 50s, meaning this might not be their last presidential campaign, win or lose. One of them will be a heartbeat from the presidency with either the oldest first-term president in history (if Trump wins) or the second oldest (if Clinton wins, she'll be a handful of months younger than Ronald Reagan was when he took office in 1981). Although it hasn't happened since Richard Nixon in 1974, 20 per cent of American presidents haven't finished their term, either due to death or resignation.
The VP has an important role to play, depending on the president.
Barack Obama's veep, Joe Biden, worked Congress and was that extra sober mind at the table for those important discussions and decisions. For George W. Bush, Dick Cheney was the details man, looking after operations and leaving the optics and politics to Bush.
Both of those examples might be in play in this election.
In a Clinton presidency, her senior advisor will be the former president who also happens to be her husband. Kaine will always be second fiddle but, like Biden, he can be both loyal lieutenant and a sounding board.
In a Trump presidency, Trump will be like Bush, only more so, meaning Pence will likely be even more like Cheney. In business terms, Trump will operate like the chairman of the board, with Pence as his chief executive officer running day-to-day operations.
For all the people frightened at the prospect of a Trump presidency, they should be more worried about Pence.
While Trump would be making headlines by mouthing off about building a wall at the Mexican border, bombing ISIS back to the Stone Age and ripping up trade deals, Pence would take over the domestic agenda.
That would mean appointing conservative Supreme Court justices to roll back Roe vs. Wade and same-sex marriage, just for starters. Keystone XL? Worth a second look.
Watching the veep debate might be a little like watching junior hockey.
One of these players will be in the big leagues come January and one of them might someday soon be the occupant of the Oval Office.
That's worth checking out.
Between innings in the Jays-Orioles game, of course.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
