political involvement came during the 1970s when she joined the NDP's left-wing Waffle movement. In later years, she continued to work on behalf of the NDP doing everything from door-to-door canvassing to organizing fundraising events for the party. Alexa McDonough, the party's federal leader asked Lill to run in the 1997 federal election. At the time, Lill had finished writing Corker, a play that shows how government spending cuts affect vulnerable people. "It's about the same theme I always write about," Lill told a local journalist, "the big divide between the elite and the street—and how if you don't like what's going on, you gotta change the world. I guess I decided it was time to see if I believed my own words." Lill ran in Dartmouth, a riding that contains everything from an industrial harbourfront and urban downtown to burgeoning suburban neighbourhoods and rural villages such as Cherry Brook and the Prestons that make up the country's oldest African-Canadian community. As she knocked on doors, Lill found voters receptive. "The voters talk to me about exactly the same things the NDP have made issues in this campaign," she said, adding that people feared for their jobs and were angry at losing government services in the cutbacks imposed by the federal Liberal government. On election day, the 46-year-old Lill surprised the pundits when she won the riding by a margin of more than 2,000 votes. She was re-elected in 2000, defeating former provincial cabinet ministers, Bernie Boudreau and Tom McInnis. In the fall of 2003, Lill announced that she would not be running in the next federal election. She revealed that she had been suffering from the effects of multiple sclerosis for the past three years. Culture and rights advocate During Wendy Lill's seven years in the House of Commons, the NDP took advantage of her background in the arts and her experience as a journalist appointing her as its critic for culture, communications and the media industries. She also served as the party's advocate for human rights, children and youth and, people living with disabilities. Lill used her voice in the Commons to press the government on a wide range of social and cultural issues including homelessness, child poverty and the lack of a national housing program. She criticized the Liberals for slashing funding for the CBC, the country's main public broadcaster. She repeatedly called for stable, long-term CBC