Adam Olsen can feel every inch of tension and ounce of anticipation that is being shared by the two candidates separated by just nine votes in Courtenay-Comox.
He’s been there.
The newly elected Green Party MLA for Saanich North and the Islands recalls only too well the agonizing two weeks between election night 2013 — when he was locked in a tight three-way battle with the NDP’s Gary Holman and Liberal Stephen Roberts — and the final count that gave Holman the riding.
But as agonizing as the two weeks were for him, Olsen says that when he looks back, he knows it helped shape his 2017 campaign and made him the man he is.
“We hung on for two weeks, and it was tough,” says Olsen, still basking in the glow of a solid win this time around.
“I re-committed in a way that I wasn’t able to commit in 2013, and I really went to work,” he says, noting he took on the role of interim B.C. Green Party leader from 2013 to 2015 and worked on local and provincial issues for the good of the community and his own profile. “Sometimes what seems like a loss is the best possible outcome. It drove me forward.
“The fact we came so close was really a motivating factor to learn from the first campaign and do those things better.”
Clearly he learned something. Tuesday night, Olsen was declared the winner with 41.7 per cent of the vote. Holman managed 30.3 per cent and Roberts 26.9.
Olsen says he’s still getting used to the idea of sitting as an MLA, but in truth, politics is in his blood.
In 2005, his mother, Sylvia, who worked on his campaign, sought the NDP nomination in the federal riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands, and his sister Joni has been on the Tsartlip First Nation council for 10 years.
Olsen, now 41, got involved in politics fairly young. He says growing up on the Tsartlip reserve, there was really no choice.
“It’s a very political place. My engagement in politics was because of where I grew up, what I experienced, saw and understood,” he says.
In his 20s, he volunteered on a federal Liberal campaign, and in a later campaign, he canvassed for a federal Green candidate.
Then came a knock on the door in 2008 that led him to work on Central Saanich’s official community plan. That experience led to him running for a council seat, which he won in 2008.
Olsen was re-elected in 2011, but resigned in 2013 to run provincially.
“I was always interested in government, but [work on the OCP] got me involved with governance,” he says, adding he took to it quickly.
“I love interacting with other people, that’s what’s fascinating to me about politics — the personal interactions with people from my community,” he says. “That’s what fascinated me at first, and it’s still the primary driver. I loved the election process because I got to meet so many cool and interesting people with great stories.”
Olsen lives with his wife, Emily, and children Silas, 9, and Ella, 4, on the same property where he was raised on the Tsartlip reserve.
He is a partner in the family business, Salish Fusion Knitwear, which produces and sells clothing and other knitted items with Coast Salish design themes.
He says his First Nations heritage doesn’t change his approach to politics, but it does offer him a different perspective.
“This [riding, the peninsula and islands] is all WSANEC territory and for thousands of years it has operated as a unit — a social, cultural, economic and ecological unit,” he says.
“I’m excited about the opportunity to represent Saanich North and the Islands. There is so much opportunity to connect these communities together.
“I think I come to this job from the perspective of bringing the various parts of this territory together. That’s exciting for me.”
As for the day-to-day job, Olsen knows he will have to set aside his activist nature — he was a key organizer of a protest against the establishment of a LNG facility on Saanich Inlet — in order to represent the broader community.
Olsen says his personal feelings about the facility won’t change.
“But I do have to accept the fact I have a new role,” he says. “I’m an elected member of the legislature and I have to act in the interests of our riding and in the interests of the people of British Columbia. I take that seriously.”
Olsen says until the election has been settled — after the Courtenay-Comox recount is finished and absentee ballots are counted — he won’t be able to say what the Green Party’s role will look like.
But there is one thing he is sure of: The party is here to stay. “We have arrived, the B.C. Green Party has arrived,” he says. “That requires us to do excellent work on behalf of British Columbians.”
