The Small Party : North America's first and most radical 'green' Party

I seem to recall meeting Elizabeth May in the summer of 1979 at an environmental fair on Halifax's Garrison Grounds just after the 1979 federal election.

She was nonplussed by the total lack of reference to any environmental issue in the election from any party and talked about forming some sort of party that would.

A few months later she did just that : THE small PARTY ran almost a dozen candidates - all but two in the Maritimes, Elizabeth among them.

I was still an NDPer (democratic socialist) then but rapidly becoming disillusioned.

I catch the allusion to "Small is Beautiful" and heartily agreed: I wanted Nova Scotia to cede from Canada and go its small way alone.

Still do.

Seeing how all the huge mega-corporations and vaulting political empires have happily co-opted the word "green" , I wonder now if the move to the Green Party label was the right one.

It doesn't seem offensive enough now, as a name.

Rupert Murdoch can see himself saying he is pro-green but never saying that he is pro-smallness.

He'd rather kill himself first.

Maybe "The small Party" label needs to be brought back out of cold storage and ran past the Nova Scotia voters once again.....

The STEADY Party : re-birthing the Greens under a new banner

Greens, yes, but by an accident of history....

The Greens had no idea how vacuous  the term GREEN would become when they set about naming their various parties all those years ago.

And in fact few choose to call themselves Green in the earliest days.

Only after the German Greens' success, did the term get adopted holus bolus by other ecologist parties.

Even deniers claim to be a little bit green today.

Maybe its time then to get at the heart of the green movement and pick a name that no Liberal, Conservative or Socialist will take up, unless they give up 200 hundred years of their party traditions.

A STEADY party is probably swiftboat-proof,by name, anyway

A steady state economy oriented party might as well rename itself the STEADY party : pure and simple.....

Paul Shreenan: trying to be GREEN in big metro

    Paul Shreenan is a true renaissance man.
    He has been a geography and urban planning prof , a two time GPC candidate, a very successful urban food gardener,a father, an avid cyclist and lately a bus driver.
   He tries very hard to live green and use as few resources as possible.
   So he doesn't own a car ,for example.
   But Paul can't take a bus to get to his work, because he is one of the bus drivers arriving at the bus garage while it is still dark to drive the early morning buses we use to get to work.
  A bit catch-22.


  So most bus drivers drive back and forth to their early morning shifts - often over great gas-consuming distances.
   A mantra of centralization means all buses for a city 400 kn across sit in one big garage.
   Paul's solution, as he told me last night at his house-warming party (shout out to all the other attendees for helping make it a great do !) is to buy a heavy ,sturdy, cheap ,one-speeder bike (aka a beater to biking fans) and cycle for 30 minutes up and down Dartmouth's notorious hills to reach the bus barn.
   Luckily it has showers, because it is heavy sledding er biking.
   Sure it helps kees Paul slim and fit but most of us aren't that fit or committed ----- simply can't walk or bike to work.
   Work is here , in this corner of metro Halifax-Dartmouth, and homes are there - many miles away.
   By way of contrast, both my granddads walked to their jobs at car plants in Windsor Ontario - because factories were built next to people in the GOOD old days.....