STRAIT AREA - This region went blue in a big way on election night in Nova Scotia, with all four local ridings electing Progressive Conservative candidates that will be sworn in on Tuesday morning as part of PC Leader and Premier-designate Tim Houston's new majority government caucus. 

With each Strait Area candidate taking over 50 per cent of the popular vote even though three of them were taking their first cracks at provincial politics, Guysborough-Tracadie's Greg Morrow and Richmond's Trevor Boudreau suggested that the region as a whole was ready for change. The only incumbent re-elected in the Strait Area was Inverness candidate Allan MacMaster, who had served for the previous 12 years as a PC MLA. 

During that same period, Morrow was the news director and morning news anchor for 101.5 The Hawk FM in Port Hawkesbury, and he noticed a subtle difference in the press releases issued by Houston that set him apart from a typical Opposition Leader and made the PCs as a party a more attractive option for Morrow's first run for political office. 

"You get news releases in from the opposition parties all the time, and it's 'criticize, criticize, criticize,' and that's the role of the opposition leader, but one thing I noticed about Tim's releases is that he criticized - as is often the role of the opposition - but he always offered a solution," Morrow recalled. 

"And he's put a lot of those ideas forward during the campaign, and now we're excited to put those ideas into action."

While Morrow recalls a chaotic election night at his Tracadie home, with he and his children running through the house to find each other when his victory was made official, Boudreau recalled a ritual from his high-school hockey days at Isle Madame District High (IMDH) in Arichat, and started the evening with a heaping helping of Kraft Dinner. 

"It got a bit of a chuckle out of the people in the community and the people who were in the room, so I did it to ease the tension a little bit," recalled Boudreau, who served for 7.5 years as a town councillor in nearby Port Hawkesbury before a Richmond run that saw him fend off three other candidates, including outgoing independent MLA Alana Paon.