Can you smell what the province is cookin'?

Can you smell it? A provincial election in the air?

The aroma should be as obvious to your olfactory sense as the amounts of money the Tories have doled out and the various road construction projects that have snarled traffic lately.

Not that I’m complaining. Road reconstruction is a wonderful thing, especially if you’ve left your transmission at any of the myriad potholes in and around our fine county during the latter half of the winter and into spring.

A perfect example of rags to riches (in a metaphoric sense) is Prospect Road in New Minas, which leads down from the Big Stop to the SuperStore and Commercial Street.

As recently as midweek last week it was a tortuous concourse of broken pavement and ragged asphalt that tore at tires and challenged the rally car driver buried deep within.

Still, a road can be rugged, right? People can handle that and 99 per cent of the cars out there are built to take a bump or two.

But it’s something else when you have to slalom your way down a street and circumnavigate potholes large enough to jolt fillings from your back teeth should you hit them. And if you’re successful in this endeavour, what’s a little shudder as you roll over pavement as pitted as the surface of the moon? A small inconvenience when compared to the ball joint-breaking impact of a foot-deep hole.

Now, however, it’s heaven. You glide along as if on a breeze, the pavement’s so smooth and uniform. What a difference and long overdue.

And Prospect Road’s not the only artery to get a makeover, either. I’ve come across road reconstruction in several places and no matter the nuisance at the time, it’s a blessing once it’s done. Nothing makes a voter happier than good roads, kids.

Another election indicator arrived last week in the form of over half a million dollars in grant money throughout the Valley from the province’s recreation facility development program. Community groups, not-for-profit agencies and organizations were given plenty of cash to improve playgrounds, develop trail systems, construct soccer fields and build outdoor multi-purpose centres.

See Page 10 in this week’s edition for a list of who got what, but the bottom line is this: it’s all good; we will all benefit; and it says, to me at least, that the government knows its time is short.

Best to get what it can off the books, spend hugely on community-oriented programs, create a positive vibe and gird itself for the inevitable. The NDP and Darrell Dexter are likely good to go, particularly since they lead opinion polls at the moment, and Stephen McNeil’s Liberals are resurgent, in second place according to pollsters, and they probably won’t play ball much longer.

Ah, yes: good roads and community infrastructure. Individually, probably nothing to get worked up about. Together, they add up and provide a pretty clear indication that things are afoot even if no one’s talking and it’s all speculation.