It takes a certain special something to criss-cross rural Saskatchewan in your electric car to talk to voters about climate change knowing full well a total shellacking is imminent.

But Glenn Wright, a former oil-and-gas engineer turned self-styled environmentalist, knew from the get-go how it would end when he signed on as an independent in the electoral district of Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek.

“I recognize this is not winnable for me — right now, you could cut the legs off most people in this riding and they would still drag themselves to the polls to vote Conservative,” said Wright.

“For some people, they can’t even envision who are they without thinking of themselves as Conservative. And it’s gotten so divisive now, it’s moving toward hatred. People are wearing hats that say ‘F—k Trudeau.’ I see pickups with stickers on the back with Trudeau’s face that say, ‘Does this ass make my truck look fat?’ ”

This election, like any other, comes with its share of jesters, cranks and opportunists. Long-shot candidates like Wright are the beautiful dreamers.

But why would Wright even bother? He doesn’t hesitate. It’s for his three teenagers, aged 15 to 18. It’s for family, friends and neighbours. It’s because he understands climate science — as a former extraction engineer with 20 years’ experience, working first with Husky Oil and later, with a uranium mining operation — and he believes the climate fight is winnable.

“The Stone Age didn’t end for lack of stones and the oil age won’t end for lack of oil. We can move forward, we can deal with this crisis. And so I see my role as an independent candidate to go out there and ask difficult questions and try to make people think,” said Wright.

“Doing it this whole campaign in an electric car that easily handles 40-below Saskatchewan temperatures (a Hyundai Kona, if you’re wondering) shows by example. I want to give hope to my kids, to demonstrate that you never can give up.”

Wright’s run is especially interesting because he’s doing it on a shoestring budget, while simultaneously bringing in the final 25 per cent of the harvest from his 800-acre grain farm (he grows barley, canola, lentils, alfalfa, rye and camelina). And, if that wasn’t enough, he’s also finishing up the final year of law school.

Wright said he regards the Conservative and Liberal parties alike as “captured” by the influence of the oil lobby. And he admits that although he offered himself previously as an NDP candidate, even that was an awkward fit.

“I have lost trust in all our political parties, to be honest. In some parts of the west, especially Alberta, they all have become captured by the industry. And when you run under the banner of any party, you are expected to trot out the platform to legitimize a system that to me is broken. So I felt really dejected to have to stand there and answer questions and say, ‘This is what the party stands for’ when deep down, that’s not what I stand for.”

Which is why, regardless of how it is certain to end, Wright feels so liberated by independence.

The night before the Star caught up with Wright, he drove to an all-candidates meeting in Rosetown, where he spoke afterward with several men who work in the oilpatch, as he once did. He was readying for another public meeting that night in Humboldt — a round trip of 320 km there and back, easily within the 415-km range of his e-car.

“In Rosetown, meeting the oil workers, I told them, ‘I’ve been in your shoes.’ These guys are just trying to pay their mortgages the same as anyone. But as an independent candidate, I can at least talk frankly and honestly and warn them the market fundamentals are shifting and it is happening globally and we need to be ready for it,” said Wright.

“My biggest worry is what happens if we end up investing in more pipelines, only to find out it’s beyond (Alberta premier) Jason Kenney’s power to bring back the oil boom. Who wanted to invest in horse ranches after Henry Ford got his assembly line up and running?”

Wright isn’t the only one tilting at windmills on the campaign trail.

You might well wonder whether the tongue-in-cheek Rhinoceros Party feels somehow eclipsed by our 21st-century reality, as the politics of the absurd takes hold in the U.S. and beyond.

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But in fact, the Rhinos — launched in 1963 with the pledge to “abolish the law of gravity” — have embraced 2019 with satirical gusto, targeting several major party leaders, including Justin Trudeau in Papineau and Andrew Scheer in Regina-Qu’Appelle (the Saskatchewan platform includes a pledge to “dig a canal to Regina to bring oil tankers and tidewater.”)

The real Rhino genius, however, is evident in Quebec’s Beauce district, where the People’s party Leader Maxime Bernier is up against a Rhino challenger with precisely the same name. The Rhino campaign includes a ballot-spoiling meme urging Beauce voters, “Don’t take a chance — vote for both!”

If Rhinos aren’t your thing — and for those who trust their dog more than they do politicians — another choice awaits in the Animal Protection Party of Canada, which proudly bills itself as “North America’s first federal party dedicated solely to the protection of all animals and the environment.”

APPC Leader Liz White told the Star the party is fielding candidates in 17 ridings in eight provinces, all galvanized around the message that man-made climate change represents the threat of extinction for thousands of species.

As Calgary-Centre Animal Protection candidate Eden Gould told an all-candidates meeting earlier this week, “I believe it is time animals had their voices heard in Parliament.”

Scan elsewhere through the Elections Canada candidate lists and you will find various strands of populist fury, grassroots and otherwise. A party billing itself Canada’s Fourth Front has popped up in Calgary Skyview, focused on affordability issues and vowing to “shake up the status quo and the moribund Canadian politics” by offering an alternative to the three main parties.

Yet you will also find old-school true believers like Edmonton Centre independent candidate Adil Pirbhai, who is, rather bravely for an Albertan, running on a platform to stop the provinces from blackmailing Ottawa. Pirbhai speaks glowingly of Trudeau — Pierre, not Justin — and is calling for strong central government in the name of “Canadian unity from sea to sea.”

And what would a Canadian election be without John “The Engineer” Turmel who, at 68, is making his 99th run for political office, this time as an independent candidate in Brantford-Brant.

Turmel, who already holds the Guinness World Record for his habitual candidacy, did not respond to the Star’s outreach — he’s been busy fighting, as ever, for elusive legitimacy, accusing the Brantford Chamber of Commerce (“bunch of crooks!”) of conspiring to deny him a place in the televised local candidates debate.

Turmel has never won any of his previous 98 races. But there’s something oddly reassuring about the way his hope springs eternal, even in the face of not infrequent ridicule. His standby answer, from elections past, is just wait till next time: “He who laughs last, laughs best.”

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