TORONTO – How does a Toronto Liberal MPP get some face time with U.S. President Barack Obama?
Easy — invite him to your son’s wedding.
Obama was only one of many high-profile guests at the weekend wedding of Indo-Canadian MPP (Scarborough-Rouge River) Bas Balkissoon’s son Tony in Chicago, reported the Toronto Star.
Tony Balkissoon, 29, a lawyer in the Windy City, married Laura Jarrett, also a lawyer, whom he met while they were students at Harvard Law School.
She is the daughter of Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama’s most influential advisers and a long-time friend of president who heads the White House office of public engagement.
“It was kind of cool,” Bas Balkissoon told the Star on Wednesday, declining to get into details, citing his son and daughter-in-law’s privacy.
Indeed, the 280 guests at the wedding were asked not to taken any photos with cameras or smart phones.
Also in attendance were Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder, who arrived in a four-SUV motorcade and Vernon Jordan, a key adviser to former president Bill Clinton, among other Democratic luminaries.
It was held at Valerie Jarrett’s mother’s home, which is so close to the president’s private residence that he, First Lady Michelle Obama, and their daughters Sasha and Malia walked.
Guests said the reception was held in the backyard under a large white marquee tent.
Several streets in the posh Hyde Park neighbourhood were cordoned off by hundreds of Chicago police officers and Secret Service agents. Even children attending the wedding were frisked for weapons.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported that on the morning of the wedding an F-15 fighter jet chased away a single-engine airplane that had wandered into the restricted airspace over the neighbourhood.
Such measures are often taken by the North American Aerospace Defense Command for events involving a U.S. president.
While Bas Balkissoon was understandably coy about the event, another Liberal confided that the MPP was seen in deep conversation with both Obama and Holder.
Balkissoon is no slouch at politics. Prior to coming to Queen’s Park in a 2005 by-election he was a prominent Toronto councillor and was credited for blowing the whistle and exposing the MFP computer-leasing scandal.
The Balkissoon-Jarrett marriage is one of several links between Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals and Obama. From 2000 until 2002, David Axelrod, another key adviser to the president, was a paid McGuinty strategist.
Courtesy Toronto Star
