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I have this folk art painting of Trudeau on the wall next to my desk. You can't tell in this image, but the flaky things around the edges are shredded money -- $2 and $5 bills -- and it's painted on a hunk of wood.

It was made by a rasta guy from Salmon Arm (hm, can't get away from the rastas) who did a series of Superheroes. It tickled me that everyone in the series was fictional -- Wonder Woman, Obi Wan Kenobi, Lt. Uhuru -- except Trudeau and Che Guavera.

Pierre came into my life on the first evening my ex and I spent on Galiano a few years ago. We were in the cosy market café and the art had just been hung; I squealed with delight and instantly started peeling off bills to buy Pierre, and got into a bit of a Tense Standoff with a local woman. There was some Disquiet at the off-islander flashing cash like this. I was kinda insistent, though (no urban eastern stereotypes there), and when the gentle tussle was over, I'd prevailed and Janet from Galiano was grumpy.

So now Pierre presides over my work space -- once hung, appropriately, in the bedroom I shared with my ex ("the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation"). Sort of a partly ironic, partly genuinely appreciative, icon of ... some kind of idealism, tapping into that swell of genuine excitement when some political leader emerges who seems to truly coalesce a desire for some significant change. I'm always a little aware of the direct contribution the Charter has had in creating the society we live in now, the direct impact it's had on my own life, my own ability to claim whatever form of love I choose.

So there's Pierre, and this weekend I was a little caught up in the leadership convention, sort of out of the corner of my eye, and to my surprise, felt a little of that excitement in response to Kennedy's speech. I'd never particularly warmed to him, but he tapped into that part of me that incubates a little idealism.

My friend D was in Montreal, for other reasons, and he and I were texting about the speeches, and the next thing I knew, he'd sort of accidentally found himself in the Kennedy party. Then the phone rang, and he was burbling over with a story of having run into Justin Trudeau ("gorgeous and intense,") and having gone up to him -- "I have a friend in Toronto who'll kill me if I don't meet you -- she's a huge admirer of you and Mr. Kennedy." Goof. And a blow by blow cellphone report on what Trudeau was wearing, his peregrinations among elevators as he attempted to draw supporters to Kennedy. The two of us giggling at him stalking Justin Trudeau on "my" behalf, two 40-somethings who teeter between pragmatic cynicism and starry eyed idealism.

I'm not unhappy that Dion won. I haven't actually voted Liberal since the Trudeau era, and would not vote liberal in this riding in any case, having zero regard for the scurrilous Ianno. But touching down into that moment of belief in ideas that matter... sort of giddy-making.