LIFE WITH ELIZABETH (May) No. 5

It’s…let me look this up…as a writer I rarely know the day or date…after all it’s all one life.  It’s march 15, TWENTY-TEN.  The new millennium continueth, and all the Canadian provinces with, I think, the exception of Saskatchewan have turned their clocks forward.  Leap forward into spring…Backwards into fall.  But only by an hour…I’m getting the feeling I should blog again, so here I am…About a month later…

 What I think I’m going to blog about is a phenomenon that I think is happening in Canada…”Green Fever” and of course, “Elizabeth.”

 As part of my daily habits, I try to check a few polls.  I love polls.  They give you what’s happenin’ across the map politically.  Accurate sometimes, inaccurate at other times.  You get a chance to jump into the political process with your own opinion because you don’t actually know.

Anyway, I had a little chat with Elizabeth recently, as I say, always edifying, by e-mail, and she was questioning me about some statistical info I had sent out, clarifying, clarifying, as usual clarifying, so I clarified something about some statistics in a rural Ontario riding (EDA) where the Green Party had something like a 5% showing.  Not something the Greens like to see (they like the double digits) but I think still pretty interesting: that way out in rural Eastern Ontario, a full 5% of the electorate says its planning to vote Green in the next federal election.  I pencil these people in as “the fed ups.”  They may or may not know their local candidate but they don’t think much of the Big 3 (Conservatives, Liberals, NDP), and may or may not like the Bloc Quebécois, who knows.  (That poll didn’t reveal the Bloc percentages if my memory serves me correctly.)

 These “fed-ups” may not even know their local candidates name, I wager. But I’m sure they all know Elizabeth, from the last national debates where many pundits felt she walked away with the show.  She’s a big part of  our Canadian “green” phenomenon.  She does her part so effectively.  But also sensibly.  Like a good pair of Birkenstocks.

What I do remember e-mailing to “Elizabeth” a few week ago is that I thought that 5% might be a reflection of something I just invented on the spot “Green Fever.”  So, of course, having invented the concept, I’ve got to make it mine by coming up with some examples.

I think what I was creating in my mind when I created the concept of “Green Fever” was based on my own on-the-street block organizing in my home EDA (riding) where I just strolled out onto the main street of my burg with a Green pin on my coat and did nothing.  Suddeningly people became subtlely friendly (like Elizabeth).  Over the next few weeks I kept strolling around with or without my Green button, saying nothing about “green” policies or ideas. 

 Eventually it dawned on me these people actually wanted a button.

So when I left the Green Party National Office the next few times, I stuck a button or two in the pockets of my black winter coat and shyly asked a few merchants and their staff if they wanted a button.  Their faces lit up and they shyly accepted.  These people by the way all happened to be immigrants, probably sidelined from the mainstreet society into businesses, while they improved their English skills, never to actually find mainstreet employment.  At least so far.

 With these minor successes, I felt I was on my way to races.  Distribute a few buttons and wait. 

 As luck would have it some more success awaited me.  A Lebanese restaurant owner told me he treasured his button and kept it with him in his kitchen, where he cooked for his patrons.  Later on he invited me to invite the local Green candidate and other staffers  into his restaurant.  Lebanese largess to be sure.  I was thrilled, and got in touch with our glossy young candidate, Caroline Rioux, a fully bilingual young married woman who grew up in the riding. Fully bilingual meaning, of course, fluent in French and English.  Another hurdle Canadian immigrants must face: not one, but two European languages.  Unless perhaps you’re Lebanese.

 Green Fever. 

Other indicators.  Remember I studied a lot of sociology and I like statistics.  Most of the time.  Oh yes.  Today is March 15, and St. Patrick’s Day, which should make you feel “green” too. Feedback by e-mail from Elizabeth about the polls…Quebec is rollicking in the double digits, I  think partly because of our new Quebec leader, a guy names Rivard.  A famous Canadian name if you follow bank robbers at all.  No relation I’m sure.  But after wallowing at 3.5% for quite a while the Green Party poll is now at 10% in Quebec across the province, and Rivard is on the Internet too, fully bilingual, and congratulating his crew. 

And other Green staffers have e-mailed me back on an EKOS poll I sent them talking up the under 25s.  Youth.  Green is very hot with young people in the polls.  Cool you might say.  A Green woman staffer known as Kathy writes, over the Internet:

"Also, highest in <25s across the country (22.6%). Extremely high figure for <25s in BC (50.2%) (low sample number, high margin of error, but still — a clear majority!)."

 Green Fever again.  I think I may unto something.