The morning after leading the B.C. Green Party to a historic three-seat breakthrough on Vancouver Island, Andrew Weaver took time to plant his vegetable garden before facing the daily onslaught of media interviews and strategy sessions.
For many politicians, putting in the beans, zucchinis and tomatoes would have been a nice reprieve from weeks of hectic campaigning. For Weaver, a self-described introvert, it was a necessity.
“Still, to this day, I like to have my time where I’m away from people,” he says.
As a kid, he shied from big groups, needing time to himself to regroup and gather his thoughts. The idea of getting involved in student government or politics of any kind never entered his mind.
“Are you kidding? No. I was involved in the chess team and the rugby team,” he says. “I never, ever thought I would do this. Never in a million years.”
For one thing, politics entailed speaking in public and that prospect filled Weaver with dread as a young man.
“The very first time I stood up to deliver a presentation was in grad school in Vancouver in front of a crowd,” he recalls. “I was so nervous — sooo nervous — that my mouth became totally dry and I couldn’t actually finish it.
“That first experience was devastating because I would be so nervous I’d lose sleep for every talk I did for years.”
He was, he says, a “basket of nerves” for a week before his first teaching gig at the University of B.C., though he eventually settled in and managed to get through the introductory math course.
“It was really tough for me to do that, to stand in front of people, and I dreaded it. But I forced myself to do it, because I had to do it, and eventually you overcome these things.”
Today, he rarely gets anxious speaking before large crowds, which is a good thing, because they’ve been growing in size along with the Green Party’s popularity.
The one exception, he says, was the night of the televised election debate with Liberal Leader Christy Clark and NDP Leader John Horgan. “I was so nervous, I thought I was going to pass out,” Weaver says.
In that case, it wasn’t the idea of speaking before a crowd that worried him; it was the unseen crowd of people behind him, all of whom had put their careers on hold to run as candidates for the Green Party.
“A lot of it was dependent on my ability to succeed,” he says.
It’s been that way ever since Weaver, 55, pulled off a surprise win in the 2013 election, knocking off Liberal cabinet minister Ida Chong in Oak Bay-Gordon Head to become the first sitting Green MLA in the B.C. legislature.
Even Weaver didn’t like his chances heading into that election. He ran, he says, as a matter of principle.
A well-regarded climatologist at the University of Victoria, he had been telling his students for years about the need to elect politicians who would protect the environment for future generations. If the students complained that there were no officials like that, he would challenge them to run themselves or work on a campaign.
So when Jane Sterk, then leader of the B.C. Green Party, approached Weaver several times about standing for election, he finally relented.
“The fourth time she asked me, I kind of did some self-reflection. I said, ‘OK, out of principle, I’m giving these lectures. I really need to practise what I preach,’ ” he says. “I didn’t think I was going to get elected.”
He got more optimistic part-way through the 2013 campaign when the lawns in Oak Bay began looking bit greener than usual.
“I guess when I figured we had a chance is when we had something like 1,500 lawn-sign requests,” he says.
The father of two grown children attributes his popularity in the riding to having lived and worked there for so many years. He graduated from Oak Bay High School, coached soccer in Saanich, teaches at the University of Victoria, lives in Gordon Head.
He doesn’t mention it, but it probably doesn’t hurt that he also was part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. vice-president Al Gore.
Sterk says Weaver was the ideal candidate at the time, given his international reputation as a climate scientist, profile in the community and centrist views that shattered the image of Greens as “fringe candidates.”
He’s also, she says, just a regular guy and devoted family man.
“He plays paintball,” she says. “He seems like he’s engaged in dealing with you and dealing with issues. He’s thoughtful. He likes to have fun.
“And I think he’s certainly motivating; if you look at his campaign team over in Oak Bay-Gordon Head and his legislative staff, they’re young people … and he really inspires them.”
Ed Wiebe, who has known Weaver for years, first as a student and later as an employee and colleague, describes him as passionate and encouraging.
“When he was our supervisor of this research group, which had maybe as many as 25 people at its peak, he really cared a lot about everybody’s well-being or that they had the support they need,” he says.
“But he also really lets people — or he let us, anyway — work on our own, figure out things on our own. He wasn’t always standing over us, supervising directly, but he was always around to help.”
Wiebe says Weaver perhaps owes his political success to the fact people respond to his passion and the scientific rigour that he brings to issues.
“Obviously, I worked with him closely, so maybe I’m too biased, but I really like the evidence-based approach that they’ve been using,” Wiebe says.
Weaver, who became the Green Party leader in 2015, insists that he’s driven by policy, not politics, and with the Greens poised to hold the balance of power in a minority government, he’s hoping for a chance to put some of those policies in place in the days and weeks to come.
The final results of the election could change, of course, with absentee ballots still to arrive and the final vote count set to begin May 22. But, however it plays out, the Green Party leader and his two new MLAs stand to play an enlarged role in any future government.
All of which could make it tricky finding a moment for himself, let alone enough time to harvest that crop of beans and tomatoes a few months from now.
ANDREW WEAVER
B.C. Green Party leader
Education: Bachelor of science degree in mathematics and physics from the University of Victoria, a certificate of advanced studies in mathematics from Cambridge University and a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of British Columbia.
Previous Employment: Canada Research Chair in climate modelling and analysis in the school of earth and ocean sciences at the University of Victoria. Lead author in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th scientific assessments.
Honours: Killam Research Fellowship, a Guggenheim fellowship, the Royal Society of Canada Miroslaw Romanowski Medal, and the A.G. Huntsman Award for Excellence in Marine Science.
Source: B.C. Green Party
