Jan Slakov

The Salt Spring Green Party office opening ceremony featured bags of buttery popcorn; it was also the launch party for a short film about our MP, Elizabeth May. Why make a film about Elizabeth now? As Elizabeth explained, for many Canadians, she is known mainly as one of Ottawa’s ablest politicians. But to really understand her political life, you need to know that she is first and foremost an activist. Politics is the vehicle she saw she needed, to get to where we need to go now. The 24th of August, she remembered, “that was the anniversary of when I was first tear-gassed”. Elizabeth’s mother was working to quell the nuclear arms race and had gone with her 14-year-old daughter to support the election of the anti-war candidate, Eugene McCarthy, at the Democratic national convention. Eventually, her family moved to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where Elizabeth became heavily involved in efforts to prevent the spraying of the pesticide agent orange on local forests. Even thou…