By Michelle Gamage, The Tyee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

As an atmospheric river settled over much of the Lower Mainland, the lights flickered off at six polling stations in Kamloops, Langley and some Gulf Islands. Water coursed down streets in Deep Cove and West Vancouver, and cars were submerged in Burnaby.

It was a fittingly dramatic end to the strangest and nastiest election in recent B.C. history. The campaign was marked with warnings about extremism, communism and climate change denial, leading to a uniquely polarizing election campaign.

At The Tyee, we braved the rain to head out to the parties’ headquarters and watch the results arrive. This is the first year electronic tabulators were used to count votes, meaning results — like the weather — flooded in.

The Tyee’s health reporter, Michelle Gamage, headed to the Rocky Mountaineer Station to report on the Conservatives. Christopher Cheung reported from the NDP headquarters at the Marriott Pinnacle in downtown Vancouver. Zoë Yunker was with the Greens, across the Salish Sea at Delta Hotels Victoria Ocean Pointe Resort. And Jen St. Denis tried — and failed — to get into BC United’s watch party at the Sutton Place Hotel in Vancouver.

By 10:30 p.m., the winner of the election hadn’t yet been called. Here’s what the atmosphere inside the watch parties was like.

The BC NDP

It was a tense night as BC NDP supporters watched their party see-saw back and forth from first place with the most seats.

Still, it was a celebratory atmosphere at the Marriott Pinnacle hotel in downtown Vancouver, with many former cabinet ministers defending their seats and first-time candidates winning theirs.

Comedian Charles Demers brought some laughs, with jokes about how it was a “big night in Chip Wilson’s life.” The Lululemon founder entered the election spotlight when he erected multiple signs in front of his house decrying the BC NDP as “communist.”

The collapse of BC United and rise of the BC Conservatives led the BC NDP to appeal to right-leaning voters who might not have considered the party in the past.

BC NDP Leader David Eby promised involuntary care for those dealing with concurrent brain injuries, mental illness and substance use disorders and said he would scrap the consumer carbon tax if the federal government no longer required the province to keep it.

The tone of the election — with the BC Conservatives documented spouting sexist slurs, anti-Muslim comments, residential school denialism, vaccine hesitancy and jokes about white nationalism — led the BC NDP to devote much of their campaign messaging to attacking a chaotic party attempting to win their first election.

“We’ve had to talk about what people who could be ministers have said on the record,” Spencer Chandra Herbert, who was re-elected in Vancouver-West End, told The Tyee. “They’ve been homophobic things, they’ve been racist things, they’ve been sexist things, conspiracy-driven things.”

“I want to keep moving in a positive direction,” Chandra Herbert added. “But you’ve got to stand up to hatred, because otherwise, it grows.”

After 11 p.m., Eby emerged to give a speech.

“We knew that every vote would matter, and that has certainly been the case,” he said, to some laughs in the room.

“It looks like we’re going to have to wait just a little bit longer,” he added. “We do know that there is a clear majority for progressive values. Take a lot of comfort from that.”

Eby said there was a lot that he and Conservative Party of BC Leader John Rustad disagreed on.

“[However,] I will absolutely acknowledge that he spoke to the frustrations of a lot of British Columbians, frustrations about the cost of daily life, frustrations about crime and public safety. And we can agree on these things.”

Eby also shared that he spoke with BC Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau, hinting at a BC NDP-Green coalition should they muster enough seats to form a majority.

“She ran a strong and principled campaign, and I’m grateful for that. There are many values that we share in common with the Green Party. I am committed to working with them.”

The BC Conservatives

Incumbent MLA and party leader John Rustad won his seat in Nechako Lakes, with over double the votes of NDP candidate Murphy Abraham and 12 times the votes of Green candidate Douglas Gook. Rustad has held this seat since he first took office in 2005 as a BC Liberal MLA.

On election night, a well-dressed crowd of a few hundred calmly sipped wine and nibbled on edamame as the results started to roll in. The energy swelled as Conservative seats were quickly declared, with folks roaring “Let’s go!” at every victory.

The snacks switched to Lay’s Classic chips and Chicago mix popcorn as the nail-biter dragged on.

Candidates and Conservative wins were cheered boisterously and booing and jeering was kept to a minimum, even when it was announced that Green leader Furstenau lost her seat in Victoria-Beacon Hill. However, when Furstenau mentioned during her concession speech that the Conservatives don’t believe in climate change, one man yelled, “Fuck you.”

Whatever the final result, tonight was a win for the BC Conservatives. The party’s last premier was Simon Fraser Tolmie, who held the office from 1928 until 1933.

Under Christy Clark’s BC Liberal government, Rustad served as Aboriginal relations minister and the minister of forests. He was booted out of the party’s caucus in August 2022 after retweeting climate skeptic Patrick Moore.

Rustad has since said climate change “is not a crisis.”

In February 2023 Rustad joined the Conservatives, becoming the party’s only elected member.

At the time Rustad highlighted personal freedoms, good jobs and a lower cost of living as some of his top priorities.

The Conservatives focused their election campaign on public safety, affordability, resource extraction, involuntary care, “economic reconciliation” and “common sense.” But they did not release a proper, costed platform until well after advanced voting had commenced; it projected a $6.5-billion deficit in each of the next two years.

Rustad took to the stage before Eby, as it became clear the election results wouldn’t be finalized Saturday night.

“When I was first asked to consider taking on the leadership of the Conservative party,” Rustad said, “I said, wait a second here, this party is at two per cent in the polls. It hasn’t elect anybody in almost 50 years. It hasn’t formed a government in almost 100 years.”

But as he hit the road and started talking to people, Rustad said, momentum began building.

“We now have the strongest Conservative party that this province has seen in 100 years,” he said.

“We can envision a province that can bring hope and prosperity for people across the province. That is what we’ve been trying to do as the party,” he said.

The BC Greens

The energy of the packed crowd at the BC Green election party started out high, as roasted artichoke tarts and other snacks made their way around the room.

But everything changed as it became clear that leader Sonia Furstenau had lost her bid for Victoria-Beacon Hill. An audible gasp escaped from the crowd as it happened.

Furstenau’s bid for the NDP stronghold was always expected to be an uphill climb. She’d decided to run in the longtime NDP riding after the boundaries of her previous riding, Cowichan Valley, were redrawn.

She faced popular incumbent MLA Grace Lore, NDP minister of children and family development, who, at the time of reporting, had won the riding with 47 per cent of the vote.

“It’s not just my voice I lost tonight,” Furstenau said, opening her concession speech.

“But I’m so proud of the campaign that we ran,” she said.

The night’s events mean that neither of the existing Green MLAs will return to the legislature. Adam Olsen, MLA for Saanich North and the Islands, withdrew from the race this summer, citing his physical and mental health.

But the Greens did keep two seats in the election and may end up holding the balance of power in the legislature.

Rob Botterell, a Pender Island-based retired lawyer who has represented First Nations and local governments, will take Olsen’s seat in Saanich North and the Islands.

Jeremy Valeriote, an environmental engineer, was also projected to win a seat, in West Vancouver-Sea to Sky, having lost by a mere 60 votes in the 2020 election.

As the votes came in, Ross Reid, Green candidate for Mid Island-Pacific Rim, reflected on Furstenau’s loss. “She’s such a powerful force,” he said.

“I’m really sad and fearful of a future in that building without her able to use her words and speak as well as she has in order to make things better for the people of B.C.,” he said.

Throughout the campaign, the Greens frequently acknowledged they wouldn’t win government but argued that their candidates play an outsize role keeping governments in check on policy issues like climate. They also pointed to their three-year confidence and supply agreement with the NDP as a prime example.

The BC Green Party began out of frustration with the NDP’s environmental record — specifically, for failing to protect old-growth forest in the Stein Valley. When it was launched in 1983, it was the first Green party in North America.

This year, the BC Greens’ platform committed to launching a “well-being framework” to replace GDP as the government’s main metric of success with a broader host of social and environmental values. It promised to support pilot programs on a four-day workweek and to make major investments in social safety nets, including roughly doubling income and disability assistance. Among their environmental policies, the Greens commit to prioritizing ecosystem health and biodiversity, ending permitting for new fracking wells and phasing out oil and gas production.

As Furstenau concluded her address to the crowd, she talked through tears.

“I will not stop standing up for this party, for the future of this movement,” she said. “Because it’s needed.”

BC United

Before the writ was dropped on Sept. 21, BC United — formerly the BC Liberals — were set to battle it out with the BC Conservatives. MLAs and leader Kevin Falcon repeatedly and harshly criticized the Conservatives for their strange and extreme views, even bringing a tinfoil hat to a press conference as a prop.

But the BC Conservatives were rising in the polls and attracting more donors than BC United. So, on Aug. 28, Falcon announced he was folding up BC United’s campaign. Despite his previous criticisms, he urged supporters to back the BC Conservatives and focus on defeating the BC NDP.

Some former BC United supporters felt betrayed by Falcon’s decision to exit the campaign, which left little choice for voters who wanted a more centrist choice.

BC United surprised political watchers — and several former candidates — when the party announced it would hold its own election watch party in a downtown Vancouver hotel. In an email sent to supporters, the party said former BC Liberal premier Gordon Campbell would be in attendance.

Karin Kirkpatrick, a former BC United candidate who decided to run as an Independent in West Vancouver-Capilano, questioned the wisdom of spending money on an election watch party. Posting to X, she said “tens of thousands of dollars” are still owed to candidates and volunteers who paid for election expenses with their own money and haven’t been reimbursed yet.

“Another example of problematic spending priorities and completely missing the point that they are celebrating the destruction of a long-standing political party,” she said. “There is nothing to celebrate here.”

The Tyee attempted to go to BC United’s election watch party at the Sutton Place Hotel’s Versailles Salon, but we were told it was a private party and media were not allowed in.

“There are plenty of other parties to go to tonight,” a staffer informed our reporter.

Top image credit: John Rustad took to the stage in front of a well-dressed, energetic crowd to celebrate his party’s success in gaining more than 40 seats on election night. – Michelle Gamage, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

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