At 3 a.m., 40 Green supporters and local media greeted May in Kamloops. It was pitch black and cold. The rest of the train was fast asleep.
At 3 a.m., 40 Green supporters and local media greeted May in Kamloops. It was pitch black and cold. The rest of the train was fast asleep.
“When we left Vancouver we hadn’t known we’d have a whistle stop in Kamloops,” May told the crowd, who’d gathered on the quiet, darkened platform at 1:30. The stop was a last-minute add-on, she said—like one earlier in the evening, in Agassiz, B.C. “We didn’t know any of you were going to be here!”
How’d the Greens pull the crowd? “We plugged it as a pajama party,” explains Donovan Cavers, Green Party candidate for Kamloops-Thompson-Caribou, dressed, for the early-morning whistle stop, in a purple-and-blue striped dressing gown and pajamas. Like Cavers, a lot of young Greens were also dressed in PJs and blankets.
“I slept before and I’ll sleep after,” explained Jennifer Larsen, a local acupuncturist. She was there, she said, because she supported change, “especially when it comes to the environment.”
I caught a glimpse of May beforehand; she seemed a bit tired but came alive scrumming with local media, and stayed up chatting in the dining car until about 4:30 a.m.