VANCOUVER ISLAND—Most people don’t find the lineup for the Brentwood Bay ferry terminal to be a relaxing place, but for Elizabeth May’s aides, weary after three long hard days of campaigning, the 40-minute wait provides a welcome respite.

Their boss is another story. As the afternoon sun casts a golden hue on the Vancouver Island bay, May responds to emails and takes calls, seemingly oblivious to the charms of her beloved environment. The Green party leader never stops.

“I’m known for hard work, but that’s ‘cause I work all the time,” May joked an hour earlier to a high school auditorium full of locals during an all-candidates debate in her Saanich—Gulf Islands riding.

Part of May’s riding is a collection of small islands between Vancouver Island and mainland B.C.

In just four days she attended six local debates plus announcements, interviews, canvassing blitzes and visits to a local school and candidates’ offices. The trip wrapped up with a rally in Nanaimo before she headed to Ottawa for Monday’s televised national leader’s debate.

“I’m confident we have the right approach to building a larger Green caucus,” May, 65, says while travelling up the east coast of Vancouver Island.

With party fundraising way up and national polls showing climate change is a top issue for voters, many political observers speculate that the Greens, who had two seats in the last parliament, might finally break out.

For May, the years of hard work might finally pay off.

Born in Hartford, Conn., May’s family moved to Margaree Harbour, Cape Breton when she was 18. Her British father never did like living in the U.S., she says, where she found little in common with her fellow students at the private school she attended.

“They were all Republicans, they hated us,” May says, recalling some of the students throwing their textbooks in the air to celebrate the day Democrat president John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Because of her mother’s activism and her family’s financial struggles, she was bullied in school, a problem made worse when someone stole her coat and the entire school was punished for it.

May welcomed the move to Cape Breton, she says, but it ended up being a disastrous time for the family, pushing them into poverty.

Her parents lost all their money trying to run a gift shop and restaurant in Margaree Harbour.

The hard times denied her of choices in her 20s, May says. Though she had always planned to attend an Ivy League law school, instead, she waitressed and cooked before finally attending law school at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

But in Cape Breton she found a sense of purpose in the fight to protect the local environment. She got her start as a volunteer in a campaign against aerial insecticide spraying, which contributed to the practice being banned in Nova Scotia.

May built a reputation as an effective environmental campaigner and was courted to to run for the NDP, federal Conservatives and Liberals. In 2005, when she was 51 years old, she finally took the plunge into politics, choosing the Greens.

Former Green leader Jim Harris had pulled her aside at a climate March in Montreal and told her he intended to resign and asked her if she would run for leader.

At the time May said she wasn’t interested, but softened her stance while watching a televised leaders’ debate in which, she felt, all of the candidates were weak on climate issues.

“I thought at this point, without a strong Green party in this country, nobody ever stands up for climate,” May says. She jumped into the leadership race for Green Party of Canada and won in 2006.

The party was little known at the time but May was determined to have a seat in the Commons where her voice could be better heard. Twice she ran, finishing second in a byelection in London North Centre in 2006 and in Central Nova during the 2008 federal election. Finally, a move to Vancouver Island in search of a friendly riding paid off. She was elected in Saanich—Gulf Islands in 2011 and again in 2015. Earlier this year, Paul Manly became the second Green MP when he won a byelection in the B.C. riding of Nanaimo-Ladysmith.

In the current campaign, the party is hoping increased awareness of climate change will mean May and Manly are not the only Green party MPs. But even if that breakthrough does come on Oct. 21 May says the work is not over.

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“I plan to stay in Parliament for as long as I have good health,” she says. “I’ve worked hard to build this party. I want to make sure that the leader who comes along next is someone with whom I can work, someone I respect so we keep our values intact.”

She’s not a politician, she says, and this has sometimes shown.

At the 2015 Parliamentary Press Gallery dinner May was politely ushered offstage by Conservative MP Lisa Raitt during a rambling speech including profanity for which she later apologized. May explained in an interview with CBC news it was an “attempt at comedy that misfired” after she had been travelling and was sleep deprived.

During the current campaign, the party has had to deal with the increased scrutiny — or what May calls “attacks” — that comes with growing popularity.

Rivals, for instance, have accused the Greens of being weak on abortion rights and national unity. Last month, after seven NDP members defected to the Green party in New Brunswick, concerns about racism in the party were raised after one of the defectors, former NDP executive Jonathan Richardson, told The Canadian Press some members left believing NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s race could be an obstacle to victory.

“In the next election campaign I think it will be wise for the party to go through its own process before the election to say ‘have we booby trapped ourselves somewhere?’” she said.

Today, there’s no sign anyone wants to turn May out of Saanich-Gulf Islands, a riding dotted with Green signs. In a neighbourhood in Broadmead, a small community north of Victoria, May’s presence brings out a block party atmosphere as residents come out to meet her during a door-knocking blitz.

She works a cul-de-sac like a charity champagne brunch, introducing neighbours who have never met and smiling relentlessly as she greets the people with her small dog, Xo, by her side.

In the middle of it all is Shelagh Levey, a retired schoolteacher and one of May’s campaign volunteers. Like a colonel on the battlefield, Levey is clearly in charge of this canvassing operation, which moves with military precision.

Levey also takes care of Xo when May is in Ottawa.

“It makes me realize how hard Elizabeth works. Sometimes I reunite her with her dog at 11 o’clock at night,” Levey says.

She explains her dedication to May comes from feeling “it’s now or never” for Canadian governments to begin treating climate change as the serious issue it is. The party’s best hope, she believes, to help Canada do its part to avert climate catastrophe is if no party wins a majority in this election.

“I want Elizabeth to hold the balance of power,” Levey says.

By the time the short canvassing session in Broadmead is finished, four houses have agreed to put up Green party lawn signs and May is on her way to another debate further north in Sidney, squeezing in some Thai food just before it begins.

Back at the Brentwood Bay ferry terminal, after 20 minutes, May finally joins her campaign workers on the patio and orders a gin and tonic.

“I may regret this later,” she says when the drink comes. “But there’s nothing like a gin and tonic in summer and this is the last moment when it might fit.”

A sip or two later, the small ferry named Klitsa comes into view to take May and her team to Mill Bay. She leaves her gin and tonic, abandoning a rare moment of relaxation to make two more events by sundown.

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