I was an official observer on several elections when I was posted there. This is the start of counting at the Kubinka air base in Moscow Oblast. We were made welcome and I was even given a filled-in copy of the protocol of the results. Lebed 640, Yeltsin 394, Zyuganov 238, Yavlinskiy 190. Brintsalov — anybody remember him? — 6. 21 years ago today.

My wife just read this and made the intelligent observation that I had written it to look as if we arrived and were immediately given the final result. Not at all: we watched, over several hours, the whole tedious process of the ballots being sorted, counted and registered. We wandered around as much as we wanted, looked at anything we wanted to and oversaw the whole process. Didn’t see anything that looked wrong anywhere in the 20 or so polling stations we looked at (other than the whole family , children and all, going into the voting booth). 

And, as a followup, when we got home and voted in an election in Ottawa, we discovered that someone we had never heard of and had never rented our house to, was on the list at our address. We protested and Lo and Behold! another list, with our names on it was discovered.

Should have raised a stink but was too dumbfounded.

Cheating. On elections. In Dear Old Canada!

(BTW. I must have been in 60 or 70 Russian voting stations and never saw anything like  that.)

Halifax Harbour. I think StaNavForLant was in town and we’re all boozing it up on the taxpayers’ dime on a German ship.

June 1997, more Canada-Russia staff talks. We were on the Besstrashnyy and the conversation was a little stilted. So I commented on the quality of the ropework on the ship — real eye splices rather than metal clamps and so forth. He gave the word and one of his people came back with an example of the very complicated mast head knot and presented it to me. I still have it; it was obviously taken from a display board somewhere on the ship because it has little nail holes in it.

The first ever, I believe.