VICTORIA—The teenagers could not be missed.

Huddled next to Elizabeth May as she gave her speech in the wake of the Green Party letdown on Vancouver Island on Monday night, Rebecca Wolf Gage, Emma-Jane Burian and Elliott Anderson were weeping.

Anderson stared to the sky, jaw trembling, taking deep breaths with a tearful Burian’s arm draped over her friend’s shoulder. Wolf Gage, who had shaved “vote” into her hair, slumped beside her friends as her eyes welled up.

“Voters didn’t vote for a future that would be sustainable for us,” Wolf Gage told Star Vancouver.

“We feel like the government isn’t going to act.”

The three had spent the past 11 months canvassing for the Greens’ candidate in Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke, David Merner.

The riding was pegged as one of those most likely to be won by the Greens. Though Merner came in second to the NDP’s Randall Garrison, the margin of victory was still more than 5,000 votes.

Polls across the island had shown the Greens in a powerful position with the chance to make big gains. May herself had predicted a Green sweep of this lush hunk of land on the West Coast of Canada, where environmental activism has a rich history.

But somewhere between the speeches by Bloc Québécois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet and New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh, the crowd at Green Party headquarters in Victoria began to realize their breakthrough was not coming.

It was supposed to be the year the party, with members here and there at all levels of politics across Canada, finally hit the big time — capitalizing on the importance voters have said they place on environmental issues.

But, with the seat count stalled at three for some time as the Liberals minority government solidified, supporters began trickling out of the Crystal Garden in downtown Victoria even before leader Elizabeth May got to the mic for her own election night speech.

“We never had as many finishes in close seconds and in 10 per cents,” May told her supporters of her party’s performance. “We can make a really significant contribution in a minority Parliament, and we will.”

Staying positive, she praised the party for winning three times the seats it did in 2015, including one outside of B.C. in New Brunswick, and doubling its popular vote. May vowed there would be “crispy toes” in Ottawa as her party held the government’s feet to the fire on climate change.

At the outset of the campaign the Green Party had raised more money than the New Democrats and polls showed the party was poised to take the island’s seven seats. Somewhere over the writ period the support faded.

“Jagmeet did very well in the debates and that momentum I think really hurt us locally,” Merner said. “That’s just the way it goes in politics. People are looking for the winner, they like voting for winners.”

But, speaking to reporters, May had another assessment, slamming the New Democrats for what she said was a campaign full of “lies” directed at the Green Party.

Via campaign literature on Vancouver Island, the NDP had raised questions about the Greens’ commitment to abortion access after May said she would not whip party members and also suggested the Greens would support a Conservative minority. The Green leader said the NDP tactics are the only explanation for the party’s disappointment on the island.

“We’ve learned some things,” May told reporters. “We didn’t think that smears and attacks would be sufficient to erode the leads we had, but we were wrong.”

May still won her riding in a landslide of nearly 19,000 votes, but she said she would like to see amendments to the Elections Act to address “when another party says things that are just factually wrong.”

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Throughout the campaign, the Greens and New Democrats battled hard and were an undercard event to watch. When it was over, nothing had really changed on Vancouver Island. May and Paul Manly, MP for Nanaimo-Ladysmith, won their seats back and the rest of the Island remained NDP.

But the three teens who earlier stood next to May said, while disappointed, they would not let their grief hamper their resolve.

“We’re going to keep striking. We’re going to keep fighting until all of Parliament is Green,” said Burian.

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