Last summer, a good year ahead of the current Pokemon Go craze, Windsor autoworker Tracey Ramsey got caught up in an all-consuming new hobby — one that also involved a lot of roaming around neighbourhoods in pursuit of a prize.

Ramsey had decided to run for the New Democratic Party in the riding of Essex, trying to unseat the Conservatives who had owned the territory since 2004. She spent the summer and early fall knocking on doors, getting to know the voters. And now, a year later, Ramsey hasn’t been able to shake the habit.

This week, as the temperatures in the southernmost part of Ontario were soaring to muggy, uncomfortable heights, Ramsey was still out pounding the pavement to talk to voters — even though she has been the MP for Essex for 10 months and the next election is more than three years away.

“You become addicted,” Ramsey says. “I’ll be driving by a place where I talked to people a year ago and say to myself: ‘I wonder how they’re doing today.’”

A lot has changed for the 45-year-old Ramsey in the past year, as she traded her two-decade-long career on the Ford Motor Co. assembly line to be a cog in the democratic machinery of Parliament.

Ramsey’s favourite part of the job is the stuff that most Canadians don’t know as well: the day-to-day work in the constituency, helping people solve their problems with government.

“For me this is the most rewarding piece of it,” she says. “Even the best speech I’ve given in the House and the honour of that doesn’t compare to sitting with a senior who tells you ‘thank you’ because they never even knew about the disability tax credit.”

Yet for all the effort that Ramsey has been pouring into the local aspect of her job, some of the most memorable experiences for her in the past year have been on the big national stage.

Ramsey was front and centre back in May when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stormed across the floor of Parliament and accidentally elbowed NDP colleague Ruth Ellen Brosseau in the chest. A photo taken by Conservative MP Michelle Rempel shows Ramsey giving Trudeau a piece of her mind — Rempel posted it on Twitter with the caption: “standing her ground.”

Ramsey said that nothing in her pre-political life had prepared her for that moment.

“That took me aback,” she said. “You know, I come from a working-class section of Canada, right down here in Windsor—Essex County. My workplace, for all accounts, is a pretty rough-and-tumble place … but I’ve never experienced anything like that.”

As it happens, that incident occurred during a week in Parliament when Ramsey had other reasons to be reminded of her working-class life before politics. The previous day, Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen had introduced a private member’s bill that attempts to make it easier for women to get employment insurance benefits when they are forced to stop working during pregnancy.

Ramsey stood up in the Commons and told her story of trying to juggle her assembly line work when she was expecting her second child, Maliq — a difficult pregnancy that sent her to hospital almost weekly.

“There were many anxious conversations at home and work about my health and ability to work in this environment with chemicals and a physically demanding job,” she said. “I would go to work every day, uncertain about what job I could do, and would often push myself to try jobs I knew I could not perform, trying to be part of the solution, trying to stay working and balancing my health. It was exhausting and stressful.”

In interviews later, Gerretsen would say that he was touched by Ramsey’s contribution to the debate.

It’s been a roller-coaster year to be a rookie MP for the NDP, Ramsey says. Immediately after the election, there was a definite mood mismatch between the new MPs and the veterans. While the rookies were all caught up with the excitement of being elected and learning the ropes, the old hands were more glum about the party being back in third place in the Commons — especially after seeming to come so close to victory in the campaign. Ramsey was disappointed by Thomas Mulcair’s defeat in the April leadership review, too.

But she says that she’s looking forward to the leadership race, and is happy in the meantime to keep knocking on doors in Essex and sitting down with constituents.

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Ramsey’s husband, Germaine, recently told her she was “made for the job” and her younger son, Maliq, now a teenager, said he thought it was “cool” to have a mom who was an MP.

“There’s no higher praise than a 13-year-old telling you you’re cool,” Ramsey said.

House-trained is a summer series on new Ontario MPs. sdelacourt@bell.net

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