| abstract | - About two months before the 1980 federal election, eleven candidates, mostly from ridings in the Atlantic provinces, issued a joint press release declaring that they were running on a common platform. It called for a transition to a non-nuclear, conserver society. Although they ran as independents, they unofficially used the name "Small Party" as part of their declaration of unity — a reference to the "small is beautiful" philosophy of E. F. Schumacher. This was the most substantial early attempt to answer the call for an ecologically-oriented Canadian political party. A key organizer was Elizabeth May. Three years later, North America's first Green Party was born in British Columbia, and later that same year the Ontario Greens were formed. The BC Greens ran Canada's first Green candidate. Later that year, the founding conference of the Canadian Greens was held at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. Close to 200 people from 55 communities attended, coming from every province except Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island. The birthing process was difficult, with deep divisions between those arguing for a national structure, and those in favour of a process that would build from the regions following the bioregional democracy structure. Trevor Hancock was the party's first registered leader. Party members chose a radically decentralized party structure, and for several years a kind of green anarchism prevailed. Eventually, an uneasy agreement was reached for a federation of regional parties, with strong support for building upwards from the bottom. The question arose: "Is the priority to redefine politics from the ground up, or to play the electoral game according to the present rules? Or both?" Many members saw the party as a way to protest Canada's political system, and not much more. Nonetheless it did run candidates.
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