When my husband and I lived in Victoria, political disagreement amongst peers was rare.
On the island, I could count on one hand the people I knew who were conservative in their political views. One of my friends in university loved Dostoevsky and Ayn Rand and she believed that exams were designed to weed out the incapable and that was OK.
Mostly, my conservative circle of friends was quite small and the majority of my peers fell somewhere between centre-left and communist (some of whom lived in co-ops and had home-sharing community living arrangements).
When everyone agrees with everyone else, it equates to really boring conversations at parties.
Victoria-socialist: "The government needs to put more money into social programs."
The rest of the party in unison: "We agree!"
Other Victoria-socialist: "No one should own guns except for the police."
The rest of the party in unison: "We agree!"
And so on and so forth; a bunch of people in a room being snobby and convinced of their own righteousness.
In Prince George, in the heart of B.C. Liberal territory, the political agreements tend to fall more along the centre-right or far-right spectrum with the majority of voters.In a similar situation, the boring party conversation goes a little like this:
Prince George-conservative: "I hate the NDP."
The rest of the party in unison: "So do we!"
Prince George-conservative: "Governments are designed to take money from hard-working Canadians.Less government is the answer, not more government!"
The rest of the party in unison: "We agree!"
And so on and so forth, until the socialists come and wreck the party with their bleeding-heart liberal ways.
I am kidding, of course.No political opinion can be pared down without sounding snarky and I'm paring down both sides of the argument cheekily.
My own hope is that whomever is in power in Victoria uses this opportunity to work with the other side to find the things that we agree on.Let's focus on the similarities between the parties and the people rather than focusing so much on how wrong the "other side" is.
At our core, we are all British Columbians and for the most part, we believe in education, health care and a strong economy and not at the expense of the environment, in varying degrees.
Some of our best friends are conservative and we have the most interesting conversations about our political beliefs and all of us learn more about the other side when we do have these conversations.
It is certainly more interesting than a bunch of people in a room all agreeing with each other. Find someone who disagrees with you and then listen to what they have to say.
It's easier to work together if you actually know where the other person stands.
