After voting for a Liberal in their first federal election, residents of Kitchener South-Hespeler went in a different direction provincially.
Citizens of the new riding picked Amy Fee of the Progressive Conservatives as their first MPP, although that result was only determined after a nail-biting wait which saw Fee occasionally toppled from first place by NDP candidate Fitzroy Vanderpool.
The riding was one of the last in the province to be called. When the dust settled, Fee had 16,510 votes to Vanderpool's 15,741.
Surekha Shenoy garnered 6,335 votes for the Liberals, while David Weber picked up 3,198 for the Greens. Rounding out the ballot were Libertarian candidate Nathan Lajeunesse, with 423 votes, and independent candidate Narine Sookram, with 275.
Fee is a Waterloo Catholic District School Board trustee who waged a public battle with the board last year over an attempt to get a service dog to accompany her son in school. The argument eventually ended up in front of Ontario’s human rights tribunal, which ruled that the Fees had been unable to prove the dog’s presence would help the boy with his education.
