A sombre grey door, positioned along a silent hallway, betrays not a peep of the energetic buzz of activity going on behind it. When opened in greeting, sunlight illuminates three tiny rooms, a surprising number of people and a grand total of eight desks.

Green Party of Canada Leader and MP for Saanich—Gulf Islands Elizabeth May, seated at a coffee table, stands to provide a warm welcome and address her guest’s irrepressible look of bewilderment. “This office was designed for a Member of Parliament and two staff members. As there is currently no room for me, I use my desk on the Hill to work, listen and intervene in Parliament more than any other MP; the last time I checked.” She laughs noting that having her own desk is perhaps the tiniest of reasons she is hoping that the Green party achieves official party status in the upcoming election.

Asked how her office is digesting the federal government’s recent approval of the Trans Mountain expansion project, May shakes her head. “We have to fix this. The struggle goes on and the pipeline will never be built but it is harder now. This project is not in the national interest and the idea of putting public money into a project that doesn’t make any economic sense is outrageous.

“If a country is in a climate emergency, you recognize that everything you do has to be directed to ensuring that we preserve a habitable biosphere and ensure the survival of human civilization through the lifetime of our children minimum.”

Turning the pages of a copy of “Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women,” she asks, “How did the federal government not pay attention to this portion of the report before approving a government of Canada project?”

“There is a tremendous amount of detail about how the presence of extractive mine sites and pipeline construction sites and the substance abuse and addiction of the men who live in these industrial work camps increases the vulnerability of Indigenous women to violence and unsafe situations. I have heard about this for years, but it is really striking that this report has just come out right before the announcement,” she said.

“This pipeline is taking everything backwards at every level: reconciliation, responding to the climate emergency, threats to our drinking water and will drive species to extinction faster.”

Tracing May’s history back to her childhood in Hartford, Conn., it becomes evident that environmentalism, activism and advocacy were woven tightly into the fabric of her person, likely before she could walk.

Her earliest memories are of a very stable existence living on seven acres with ponies, sheep and chickens. “We rescued a meddlesome, homesick donkey named Eeyore for a year and a half as she was getting through the fence, wandering down the main street of town and into the local bookstore. Luckily her family missed her too much and she got to go home.”

May’s mother, a sculptor, turned to activism when Elizabeth was very small upon learning that nuclear weapons testing could increase the chances of childhood leukemia. She first questioned doctors about the possibility of a vaccination and then contacted a professor at the local university who suggested that extra calcium might prevent the absorption of strontium-90. “I have very clear memories of drinking powdered milk with extra calcium added to it. She was first trying to protect us and then others on a global level.”

Praising her mother’s instinct for organizing, May credits her mother for instilling in her many career-building life lessons. “She taught me so much but mostly that if you see injustice in the world, or something that needs fixing, just do it. And that you cannot be a bystander. It was an enormously empowering experience having a mom, who didn’t see any obstacles, despite being a housewife and mother of two small children in the 1950s with no science training, become one of the key organizers of a treaty to ban nuclear weapons testing.”

Her father, a British insurance accountant, also played a valuable role in shaping May’s future successes. “People used to think that my mother was the activist but in many ways my father was more radical. He was just quieter. My dad was always so supportive of first my mother’s campaigns and later mine.”

As Elizabeth and her brother grew, the family broadened their efforts for change, including becoming active in several United States presidential campaigns, until the spontaneous purchase of land, during a summer vacation in Cape Breton, N.S., led them north to start a completely new life.

“My parents were in their mid-forties when we planned to move and needed to work. We bought a restaurant and gift shop that had been shut down because the owner was polluting the river. I took a leave from university and we put every penny and more into rebuilding the business.” Proudly she recalls that she and her mother were able to get it ready to be opened by the time her dad and brother were able to join them.

“The first summer, I waitressed both shifts, and by the second, I was waitressing the morning shift and cooking the dinner shift. By the third year, I was cooking from the time I got up in the morning until the end of the night. A graduate of Dalhousie University’s school of law and admitted to the bar in both Nova Scotia and Ontario, May calls her legal training enormously important, but ranks waitressing and cooking as perhaps even more so. “Those years of cooking and serving taught me how to carry a million things in my head at once and order them sequentially. I learned empathy, how to keep smiling through chaos and built physical endurance by spending many long hours on my feet.”

Now the mother to her own daughter, Cate May Burton, age 28, May says that she didn’t have to instil more than parenting basics, like manners and chores, as Cate seemed to have it all together before she was born. “I had always wanted a baby and was so blessed to have Cate. She was two weeks late and looked like the Gerber baby. I remember the minute she was born they put her right on me and she looked up calmly with these huge blue eyes. We are still incredibly close.”

May calls Cate’s childhood unusual as she came to work with her mother until she was three. “At the time I was the executive director of the Sierra Club Canada and, although it didn’t feel like it at the time, hugely lucky that I didn’t qualify for maternity leave. When Cate was just fourteen days old, I cautiously took her in a snuggly to meet with a minister and left thinking, ‘Wow, a baby is the best lobbying trick ever!’”

Noting that a big part of the Green party’s platform is the provision of universal daycare, May is also keen on parents having a wide range of options. “Bringing a baby back to work can change the workplace. If we want to change the world, we need to bring the babies with us.”

Married to John Kidder, founding member of the Green Party of B.C. and current Green Party of Canada candidate, in April of 2019, May and Kidder’s recent honeymoon consisted of a relaxing train trip back to Ottawa from Vancouver.

To get through sometimes gruelling days and late nights as leader, May requires her staff, faith, love, her family and dog, Xiomara. A devoted grandmother, she is boosted by making plans to see the many smiling faces featured in her nearby calendar.

Strength is also maintained with Fairtrade organic coffee, gluten-free granola, tamari almonds, vitamin C and a superpower ability to power nap for nine minutes and wake up completely recharged.

A favourite motto, inherited from her mother, is: “You can accomplish anything you want if you don’t care who gets the credit.” May would love the opportunity to put together a non-partisan cabinet of the best, smartest and most highly-skilled.

As to what a dream election result would be for her, she doesn’t hesitate. “A majority government for the Greens. It isn’t likely but it really would be the best thing for everybody.”