Her inner circle of friends may have asked the toughest question of all of B.C. Green Party leadership hopeful Emily Lowan.
"Emily, don't you want to have fun in your 20s?" her friends queried as she made her political aspirations known.
Lowan, who turns 25 on Sept. 18, is having the greatest fun of her young life, hitting the hustings on a mini tour that included stops in Nelson, Kamloops, Kelowna, and at Armstrong's Memorial Park Tuesday, Sept. 2.
"In terms of what my experience has been like, I've been having a lot of fun," said Lowan prior to speaking to a gathering of close to 40 people at Memorial Park. "This has felt like the time of my life in a lot of ways.
"I really wrestled with the decision (to run for leader). I tried to get a lot of other people to run, and just got a lot of fingers pointing back at me. So here we are, and I think this is, like, I felt the call."
Lowan is from Victoria. She graduated from Claremont Secondary School, then the University of Victoria, where she studied political science, environmental studies, and economics.
She is a climate activist and an employee of Climate Action Network Canada, which is a group that hopes to stop fossil-fuel expansion and promotes renewable energy. Lowan is currently on-leave from her job where she was the network's fossil fuel supply campaigns lead, guiding coalitions in B.C. across environmental and First Nations groups against the LNG Pipeline Expansion.
Lowan also worked federally with coalitions on policy and a pollution cap.
She is running for the Green Party provincial leadership against Jonathan Kerr, a 44-year-old doctor from Comox, and Adam Bremner-Akins, 23, a political science student. She and her two counterparts are competing to replace Sonia Furstenau as B.C. Green leader.
Furstenau lost her seat in the October 2024 provincial election, and the Greens barely held on to party status, winning only two seats.
The political bug for Lowan kind of came about as a result of whimsy, and a glimpse into life south of the Canadian border.
At Claremont, she entered the Institute for Global Solutions program on a fluke with the promise of a cross-Canada rail trip.
"I just wanted to get out of Victoria, and it was transformative," said Lowan. "They took us on a train odyssey, to go all the way to Parliament Hill (Ottawa), and while we were on that train trip, Donald Trump was elected.
"And I remember it was sort of the first time I felt like my future was being stolen for me, and I quickly, sort of spiralled into despair. Then I had this conversation with my peers about what we could do."
What Lowan and her peers did was develop a program to shuttle all eligible high school voters out to the polls in the next provincial election. That's when she caught the activism bug, seeing herself as part of the world and doing her part for change, rather than being an observer.
Lowan has caught the eye of young adults in the province, as well as that of a former North Okanagan Shuswap political hopeful.
Jacqui Gingras from Vernon ran federally in the 2015 election for the NDP (lost to Conservative Mel Arnold) but joined the Green Party just a few weeks ago. She is a campaign volunteer for Lowan.
"Emily has revitalized the Green Party membership by building the youth membership from 100 to more than 1,800 in only five weeks," said Gingras, a university professor currently on sabbatical. "Emily is a principled young leader who has accomplished so much already...She is exactly who we need for B.C. at just the right time."
While being rather uncomfortable with "having my face splashed around everywhere," and having prominent members of the B.C. Conservative Party, she said, "speculate where I live," the foray into provincial politics has been a blast.
"I'm happy that I'm the only candidate that's received that kind of attention from the B.C. Conservatives, I'm glad I'm being viewed as a threat by people that are deeply invested," said Lowan.
"When I started out, I didn't know how big this was going to get, and it's totally blown past every expectation that I had when I began.
"I thought, you know, maybe it would grow past the circle of climate activists that I knew and their friends. But we've brought in thousands to the party. Voters, non-voters, some young Conservatives that voted Conservative for the first time in the last election. I just really resonate with my message of building power against billionaires in the corporate class of B.C."
Lowan took questions from the crowd as she explained her platform.
Green Party members in B.C. will vote for the new leader from Sept. 13 to 23. The result is to be announced Sept. 24.
