TRUDEAU-MANIA RETURNS TO MUSKOKA AS COWIE ACCLAIMED WEDNESDAY

Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

Photos by Lois Cooper | MuskokaTODAY.com

PORT SYDNEY — Liberals who saw the door open to a return to power in Parry Sound-Muskoka may not be in for a cake-walk.

After a warm greeting at a Bracebridge fire station at 6 p.m., where he thanked flood first responders, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was met with a few protesters an hour or so later at the Port Sydney Community.

That’s where he was greeted by about 10 demonstrators who hung a large, white sign on the chain-link fence at the road as he entered for the Liberal nomination meeting and acclamation of candidate Trisha Cowie.

Nothing unusual for the PM — or anything he wouldn’t have expected a kilometre from the home of former Tory MP Tony Clement.

But, after the start to his day with the fallout from the vindication of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, the love-in that greeted him inside likely more than made up for it.

A large throng of about 200 Liberal supporters greeted him with much the same Trudeau-mania as he received at the Bracebridge Sportsplex in the run-up to his first 2015 election win.

Many of them were young families with young children, too.

It was photo-ops everywhere he turned — selfies here, there and everywhere.

In between, he managed to say a few words, including thanking the volunteers and soldiers who helped out in the Muskoka flooding.

He said “that’s what Canadians do.”

And he offered the newest Trudeau Team member Cowie encouragement for on the campaign trail at her coronation (she was acclaimed).