I’m getting old. My old friend Dan Hurley, with whom I conspired when I was politically active in my youth, is running for the Liberals in Winnipeg Centre against NDP MP Pat Martin. Of course, he used to be Stéphane Dion’s chief of staff, so he’s accomplished quite a bit in the interim. (Whereas I post cat pictures and make cracks about the Olympics. Sigh.)

Meanwhile, Richard Mahoney, the twice-defeated Liberal candidate in Ottawa Centre, has been asked by Dion to run in Pontiac — i.e., my riding — against Transport minister Lawrence Cannon. I’m ambivalent in that it feels like the Liberals are giving us their urban sloppy seconds, though to be fair to Mahoney he’s got a cottage in the riding. (But ask me some time about the tensions between full-time residents and cottagers.)

Neither of these seats are Liberal gimmes — Winnipeg’s urban core was solidly NDP in recent memory except between 1988 and 1997, and Pontiac has historically vacillated between the Liberals and Conservatives, making it one of the most Tory ridings in Quebec — and they have strong incumbents. We’ll see what happens.