Queen’s Park page carries water and gets immersed in politics

Local Journalism Initiative
·3 min read

Carrying messages among MPPs in Queen’s Park and delivering ice-cold water, all the while keeping up on math and civics.

It’s all in a day’s work for Highpoint Grade 8 student Bella-Sitara Singh Soares, in her three weeks as a legislative page, from Apr. 8-25.

“I find it very fun,” she told the Herald recently on a weekend back home. Pages, from across the province, must find their own accommodation in commuting distance of Queen’s Park.

A teacher for the page program covers math and legislative process, as well as explaining their duties.

Bella-Sitara said she has learned that the pages are “esteemed delivery specialists.”

That means time spent drilling with flashcard pictures of MPPs and learning positions of their chairs in the house.

Briefings begin at 8:15 a.m. The Chamber starts at 9:30 a.m. and the end of the day varies, from late afternoon to early evening.

“Sometimes the days feel like I’ve been there 10 years, sometimes it feels like 10 minutes.”

She reminds herself to enjoy the opportunity. She was picked after applying and submitting an essay, and was chosen on the second time she applied. “I can take it slow, and really enjoy it.”

Bella-Sitara is also enjoying getting to know her fellow pages. On Fridays, they wear “civvies” instead of the three-piece suit that is the page’s uniform, and have outings, including the ROM.

She appreciated being welcomed by local MPP Rick Byers to the legislature, and was impressed that he had been a legislative page himself.

From only knowing about government from headlines, she has become very interested in how laws come to be. She is thinking of entering law as a career. But hearing that her MPP had been a page, too, made her think politics might be a possible path as well, someday.

She appreciates learning about how the house is run. From her own time on student council, she has had to help decide what’s best for a school of 520 – “I can’t imagine how they have to take care of the province.”

Bella-Sitara observed that while members might yell and interrupt each other in the house, in the hall later you can see them smiling and talking together. “It’s theatrics,” she said.

It’s been an education on government. “I now see why it is very important to have representatives inside the chamber to represent your ideas,” she said.

Pages like Bella-Sitara take their duties seriously. In fact, you will always see them looking in solemn – even when members may be laughing. She explained that’s because they’re instructed that they need to be non-partisan and “poker-faced”.

She recalls a funny situation that happened where the pages fill the glasses with water and just the right amount of ice according to the member’s preference.

The pages are told strictly to only serve water, but one member came up and took a glass with lots of ice and poured a sparkling water into it.

It’s breaking rules – but the pages witnessing the transgression kindly turned a blind eye. “You know – it’s just a Bubly,” she smiled.

Bella-Sitara is the daughter of Joey Soares and Monica Singh Soares of Dundalk.

M.T. Fernandes, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Dundalk Herald

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