Political careers start in all kinds of ways, but not many start over a disgusting insult.
In 2016, Sarah Hamilton spoke — despite her dislike of public speaking — at the Progressive Conservative party’s special general meeting in Red Deer. There as a volunteer interested in policy, Hamilton stood up, said her piece, and sat down feeling good.
“And then this guy came up to me and called me a cunt.”
Right before that meeting, someone told Hamilton she should think about running for council, “and I was like, ‘Absolutely not.’” But her post-speech encounter “struck me like a match — to quote a classic piece of Canadian literature,” Hamilton says, referencing Canadian writer Timothy Findley’s The Piano Man’s Daughter.
Standing up felt like a risk for the soft-spoken Hamilton, now in her second term on Edmonton’s city council. She admits the last year has been tough for her and her council compatriots, and she’s not immune to criticisms. But every day she’s inspired by the citizens she serves.
“I don’t know if Edmontonians would necessarily say that they’re big risk takers, but when you have tens of thousands of people coming here to make this city their home, they’re taking risks just to get here. I think we kind of get down on ourselves so much that we don’t realize what we have to offer the world.”
That her 2016 comment prompted such an absurdly awful reaction showed Hamilton that her fear was unfounded, because “there’s no risk small enough to avoid something like that.” And when she realized “that you can’t make yourself small,” it became liberating to take up space.
“I also consider it a personal victory that I did not stab him with the stem of my wine glass.”
This article appears in the Nov/Dec 2024 issue of Edify
