VANCOUVER—Since 2011, when she barely eked out a win, Adriane Carr has been the lone Green on Vancouver City Council.

That changed Saturday night, when Carr and running mates Pete Fry and Michael Wiebe won council seats. Plus, Carr and Fry earned first and second spots when it came to the number of votes.

“We were pretty much jumping for joy,” Carr said.

A total of nine Greens were elected to Vancouver City Council, park board and school board, increasing their presence from six. In neighbouring Burnaby, one Green council candidate and one school board candidate were elected for the first time.

“We were elated — not only that out of the 10 candidates that we ran, nine got seats, but topping the polls as well,” Carr said.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May tied the municipal wins to “a growing groundswell of Green support from coast to coast,” referring to several recent breakthroughs for the party.

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In B.C.’s last provincial election in May 2017, the Greens increased their seats from one to three and now hold the balance of power in government because the minority NDP needs the support of the Greens to continue to govern.

The Green Party won its first seat ever in Ontario’s provincial election in June, while in New Brunswick the Greens went from one to three seats this September. In Prince Edward Island, where the party currently has two seats in the legislature, recent polling showed the Greens with the most support among decided voters, beating out the Liberals and Conservatives.

The party is calling the sum of their victories the “Green Wave.”

Carr, who co-founded the B.C. Green Party in 1983, said it hasn’t been an easy road to get elected. She ran eight times before winning office in 2011, while Pete Fry, the son of Liberal MP Hedy Fry, also ran multiple times before finally gaining a council seat on Saturday night.

Joe Keithley, the lead guitarist of the punk band D.O.A., has been trying to break into politics since the mid ’90s before finally succeeding in an election that saw voters in Burnaby oust a five-term mayor over the issue of renter evictions.

While campaigning, Carr said she did hear a lot of concern about the effects of climate change and the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For “a segment” of voters, the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion was also top-of-mind, Carr said.

But housing remained the No. 1 issue for voters across Metro Vancouver, and both Carr and Keithley say the issue will be their first priority as they take office.

Carr has been criticized for voting against housing projects and plans, including a recent proposal to allow duplexes in all single-family neighbourhoods. But she said her stance is misunderstood.

“If you look at why I have voted against projects, it’s not because I’m against including more density in neighbourhoods,” Carr said.

“Often it’s because the housing that was being produced was unaffordable, either condos that were way out of the price range of local people or rental buildings out of price range of people with local salaries.”

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Reigning centre-left party Vision Vancouver — which had pushed a “greenest city” agenda — was destroyed this election as voters blamed the party for not reacting quickly enough to housing woes. Meanwhile, many other parties were offering just a few candidates to choose from.

“That really speaks to the value of the party structure behind you,” explained Mario Canseco, president of Vancouver polling firm Research Co.

“Let’s say you’re a centre-left voter that supported (independent mayoral candidates) Kennedy Stewart or Shauna Sylvester, but you’re looking for specific councillors ... Voters felt more comfortable going with three or four Greens.”

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