election night score sheet, get yer election night score sheet

Toronto Star, December 5, 1960. Click on image for larger version

I suspect there are devoted municipal election junkies, especially among Twitterati, who'd love a sheet like this at their fingertips on October 27. Adjustments would be required for the present day: five minute increments on the chart would suit the rapid pace of the internet age (or two-and-a-half if your handwriting is as small as mine is). The suburban mayoral races of 1960 would be replaced with either key council battles or, for the truly dedicated, all 44 wards.

***

In case you're curious, here are the final results in the Toronto mayoral race from December 5, 1960:

Nathan Phillips: 81,699
Endorsed by the Telegram, the "Mayor of all the People" won his third straight term. His luck ran out in 1962.

Allan Lamport: 58,254
After half-a-decade as chair of the TTC, Lampy decided to reclaim the mayor's office he held in the early 1950s. He was endorsed by the Star. He was defeated by Phil Givens in his final run for the top spot in 1964, but had a last hurrah as a reactionary councillor from 1966 to 1972.

Jean Newman: 31,999
The first woman to run for Toronto's mayoralty, Newman was backed by the Globe and Mail. A councillor since 1954, she served as the city's first female budget chief after topping the citywide vote for the Board of Control. Following an unsuccessful run for a provincial seat in 1962, she retired from politics.

Ross Dowson: 1,643
A perennial candidate and Trotskyist, Dowson ran for mayor nine times between 1948 and 1964.

Harry Bradley: 1,511
Bradley was another perennial candidate whose attempts to hold public office stretched back to a council run in 1928. In 1968, the Globe and Mail declared him "the city's most unsuccessful civic candidate," having lost all 35 elections he ran in (Unfortunately his final campaign in 1969 proved to be loss #36). Described as a "former lathe operator, civic employee and consultant on civic affairs," Bradley's vote totals ranged from 548 in 1928 to over 20,000 in 1950. He once told a reporter "I'll continue to run until the undertaker gets me."

Bradley's 15-point platform for his 1960 mayoral run included a subway running from Hamilton to Oshawa (which one could argue was accomplished above ground with GO) to be funded by taxing breweries, and persuading one of the major oil companies to fund the construction of the new City Hall

"The last thing Harry Bradley could be called is politically apathetic," observed Globe and Mail writer Harry Bruce. "For him no day of the year has ever held the excitement and promise of municipal election day. That is the day he has always risen in the council chamber and delivered the five-minute speech which is his right as a candidate. And this year, as a mayoralty candidate, the pleasure will be tripled because he will be allowed a 15 minute speech. No one who has heard him doubts his ability to speak publicly for a quarter of an hour."

Toronto Star, December 5, 1960.

The score sheet appears to be a handy promotional tool for the Star's election night coverage, in conjunction with CFRB, CJBC (then part of CBC's Dominion network, soon to became the local Radio-Canada outlet) and CBLT-TV. Combined, all four media outlets provided the all-star team of analysts and reporters pictured above. CJBC boasted that it offered seven remote locations for suburban politicians to be interviewed, to spare them the hassle of driving downtown (though candidates in East York and Leaside had to venture out to Scarborough to share their feelings about the evening).

Additional material from the November 18, 1960 and the September 12, 1968 editions of the Globe and Mail.