Jane Sterk, BC Green Leader announces August 24th as her last day

I am sad to see Jane Sterk step down as leader of the BC Green party, but it also makes a lot of sense for the party.  It is really not viable for any political party with MLAs or MPs not to have the leader be an elected representative.  With Jane's lose in May and Andrew Weaver's win, he became the functional leadership of the BC Greens and she had to step aside.

I like Jane a lot because she is smart, thoughtful and has even less time for fools than I do.   I also like that she tells the truth as she see it.  Jane is someone that does it her way when she is right because doing the right is so much more important that doing what is expedient.  At the same time she is not someone that makes unilateral dumb decisions against advice    Jane would have made an excellent MLA and it BC's loss that she did not win.

I know that she ruffled feathers in the Green world, but Greens needed it    The BC Greens have had way too many fools involved over the last 30 years and someone had to take on the task of getting rid of the worst of the fringe element.  Jane made the BC Greens grow up and become a serious political organization.

I first met Jane in 2004 when she ran for the Federal Green Party in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca.  I was impressed with her and stayed in touch.   She took campaigning seriously and in November 2005 won a seat on Esquimalt Council - actually she topped the polls.

I was excited to see her decide to run for the leadership of the BC Greens  in 2007.   I tried to warn in round about ways that I suspected building the party up to where it needed to be was a Sisyphean task in my opinion.  Thankfully she did not pay attention to me and she took on the leadership of the party.

I have a very good idea of the task she had to take on.  The very fact that the BC Greens managed to elect an MLA in 2013, came close to winning second seat and came second in two more ridings is a testament to the hard and often thankless work Jane did in building the BC Greens as a serious political force when she had less than no resources.

I happy to have Jane a friend and know I will see her for years to come.  

ps 

Jane, let me take you out for a good dinner and celebrate your triumph.