Jane Sterk: leader of the Green Party of BC

Last Updated: Monday, April 6, 2009 | 1:40 PM PT

CBC News

As new leader of the Green Party of BC, Jane Sterk faces at least two significant challenges going into the 2009 election.

The first challenge is that while several Green candidates have won seats in municipal elections in British Columbia and Ontario, a Green party candidate has never won a seat in any provincial or federal election in Canada.

The second challenge is Sterk's own low profile in B.C. politics. Although Sterk is a former Esquimalt township councillor, and has run previously in provincial and federal elections, she remains largely unknown outside her own riding on southern Vancouver Island.

Sterk won the leadership of the Green Party of BC in 2007 after the former high-profile leader, Adrian Carr, stepped down to become deputy leader of the Green Party of Canada.

Sterk first joined the Green Party in 2001 after retiring to the southern Vancouver Island community of Esquimalt in 1997 after a career in counselling and computer retailing in Alberta.

It was a sailing trip to Mexico that year that opened Sterk's eyes to how pollution and rapid development were causing environmental and social damage to the coastline, motivating her to join the Green Party with its focus on environmental issues, she said.

First campaign for the Greens

Sterk's first campaign for the Greens was the 2004 federal election when she ran in the riding of Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, placing fourth with just over nine per cent of the vote, giving her just over 5,000 votes, the fifth highest number of Green votes out of 308 Canadian ridings.

Sterk then turned her attention to provincial politics and ran for the B.C. Green party in the May 2005 provincial election in the riding of Esquimalt-Metchosin.

But faced with a resurgent NDP under their new leader Carole James, the Greens' support fell to nine per cent of the overall vote and Sterk placed third in her riding with just over 10 per cent of the vote as the party failed to win a seat.

But electoral success was not far off. Later that year she ran in the municipal election, this time topping the polls and winning a seat on the Esquimalt town council, where she served until 2008.

Then in October 2007 at the B.C. Greens' annual meeting in Victoria, Sterk defeated five other candidates and took over the party's leadership from Carr.

In her most recent campaign she ran in the October 2008 provincial byelection in Vancouver-Fairview, but came in a distant third with just over seven per cent of the vote.

Councillor, business owner and MBA professor

Sterk was born in 1947 in Edmonton, where she lived most of her adult life. In 1967 she married her husband John, a lawyer with whom she eventually had two sons.

She obtained a master's in education and later worked as a public school teacher. She also earned a PhD in counselling psychology from the University of Alberta and worked as a psychologist in private and public practice.

Then in 1983 at the age of 36, she and a colleague opened a computer retail business in Alberta, Softwarehouse West, which prospered and eventually grew to 60 employees.

In 1997, she and her husband retired to Vancouver Island with the intention of learning to sail in preparation for a trip around the world.

But after two abortive attempts, which took them as far as Cape Flattery, Wash., and then Mexico, she turned her attention to politics instead.

Sterk is currently an adjunct professor at University Canada West where she teaches MBA courses in business, environment and organizational behaviour.