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Hélène Nadeau, 89, has voted in every election since she was 21, going back to when Louis St. Laurent was prime minister.

Monday will mark the first election in which she’s failed to mark her X, but not for lack of trying. When Nadeau showed up at Woodroffe High School at 9:30 a.m., she was told there was no deputy returning officer for her Ottawa West-Nepean poll — Poll 60 — and that she would have to return later. Her second trip — the school is about a one-kilometre round-trip walk from her Carling Avenue apartment building — proved no more fruitful than the first.

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She says she called Elections Canada when she returned home from her second failed attempt, whereupon, after spending some time on hold, was disconnected without speaking to anyone.

Photo by Bruce Deachman / Postmedia

A third trip to the polling station did nothing but convince her that her voting streak had come to an end.

“I’m not coming back. And that’s sad, because it’s the first time I’ll miss voting in my 89 years. I feel terrible.”