POT-PROMOTING POLITICAL ROOKIE HAD EVERY RIGHT TO DREAM

The TV star was disinclined to dawdle with a municipal politics
neophyte.

Leaving the polling station at St. Jean Baptiste church on Drolet St.
yesterday afternoon, Guy A. Lepage offered a polite nod and "Merci, a
vous" when Marc-Boris St. Maurice said, "Passez une bonne journee." As
host of Tout le monde en parle, Lepage plays in the cultural/political
big leagues. A man who's interviewed mayoral candidates didn't have a
lot of time for a guy on his way to a distant fourth-place finish in
his maiden run for city council.

St. Maurice was bundled up in a Kanuk parka with a fur-trimmed collar
- - the church casts shade on Drolet. The 40-year-old musician and
marijuana activist had unfolded a blue canvas chair and set up camp on
the sidewalk, a good vantage point for practising the low-key personal
politics that characterized his campaign.

"If you want to just leave your bike unlocked, I'll keep an eye on
it," St. Maurice promised a young voter. "You know, bicycle theft is a
problem in this neighbourhood, and doing something about it is part of
my platform."

"Yeah, it's something that doesn't seem to concern the cops much," the
cyclist said. "To them it's not a big crime, but my bike is my only
way to get around."

There wasn't a horse in sight, so I assumed the bicycle was the
official means of transportation for St. Maurice's quixotic campaign.
Spending well under the $11,000 limit and investing mostly in large
yellow signs, St. Maurice tilted at windmills by stressing local
issues - a clean needle exchange, the urgent need for public urinals
in an area blessed/plagued by many bars - and ringing many doorbells.

It was an uphill battle in the Plateau, which is to Projet Montreal
what Alberta is to the federal Conservatives.

Jeanne Mance is bounded by the mountain, Lafontaine Park, Mount Royal
Ave. and Sherbrooke St. The district is the beating heart of hip
Montreal, a neighbourhood where a pot-promoting political rookie had
every right to dream, but no realistic expectation of winning.

"My victory will be if I block Richard Bergeron's path," St. Maurice
said. "I'm not impressed with him. This is coming from a guy who
founded the marijuana party, but he's a fringe candidate."

He hoped to siphon enough progressive votes to deny a Jeanne Mance win
to Projet Montreal's Nima Machouf. But the mayoral candidate's
co-listee won easily, ousting veteran Michel Prescott.

St. Maurice admits he campaigned to raise his visibility. In trying to
craft a future in politics, he tried to "establish a wider palette
than just the cannabis cause."

To do so, he recruited some young idealists. Peter Michaud looked like
he'd time-travelled from Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign.
The 23-year-old McGill grad, whose day job is teaching English as a
second language, looked GQ sharp in crisply pressed light-beige
khakis, a button-down blue dress shirt and what may have been the only
necktie worn in the Plateau yesterday.

He's St. Maurice's campaign manager. Michaud spent yesterday running
volunteers out of a storefront on St. Laurent Blvd. The white room is
decorated with canvasses by local artists (some of the work way out
there, even by Plateau standards), a Foosball table, three ratty
couches and a small stereo playing Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

Philippe Allard, a St. Maurice supporter who will run as a Liberal in
Laurier-Ste. Marie next time there's a federal election, dropped in.
Nadir Moukheiber, who'd been working another poll, came by to report
decent turnout.

"Lots of anglos," he said, "but sparingly you find the youth vote. For
them you have to open a polling station from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. - and
you'd need a Breathalyzer."