After a campaign marked by extremes, Scottish-born dentist-turned-politician Peter Bevan-Baker listened to the first returns of Prince Edward Island’s (PEI) provincial election at home. Polls suggested that the Greens might form a majority government, making him Premier of Canada’s smallest province, an island with about 153,000 residents in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. One poll from MQO Research put them at 40 per cent of the vote earlier this month—an 11 percent lead over the second place Progressive Conservatives, an almost inconceivable notion to the man who had presided over this change of political fortunes.

Canada’s Green Party has been waiting for a breakthrough. The sudden rise in PEI has become a great curiosity not only for the pundit class, but for voters. PEI is a mostly centrist province that has had Liberal or Conservative leadership since the nineteenth century, and features a disproportionate number of middle-aged and elderly voters. But for a while this spring, it looked like PEI could become the first provincial or state government in North America to be led by a Green party. While in the end, the Progressive Conservatives took the lead in the election this past Tuesday, the Greens are nevertheless expected to wind up as the official opposition against a Progressive Conservative’ minority government, finishing with 8 out of 26 seats compared to the PC’s 12. They even earned more of the popular vote than the incumbent Liberal party. And the tiny provincial election has quickly become a symbol of possibilities in the current, transnational era of political dissatisfaction and hastening climate change.

By the time Bevan-Baker joined the victory celebration Tuesday night, the Greens were in second place to the Progressive Conservatives. The party was still mourning the tragic death last week of Green candidate Josh Underhay and his young son, from a canoeing accident just days before the election. But even without a slam-dunk electoral win, the party could celebrate an astonishing electoral outcome. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt as overwhelmed with both joy and grief simultaneously,” Bevan-Baker said on-stage. “My heart is so full. But it’s also breaking.”

National surveys in Canada and the United States show that the voting public is increasingly concerned with climate change and the environment. It’s not just a fringe, third-party issue, but a growing concern for the political mainstream. With an October election in Canada and the 2020 election in the United States ahead, environmentally minded politicians can extract certain lessons from the changes seen in this small-c conservative region.

“I think it’s a message for other politicians and political parties, including the Green Party federally, that people are looking for something different than politics as usual,” said Jo-Ann Roberts, deputy leader of Canada’s federal Green Party and PEI native.