british columbia, you broke my heart tonight 💔

I am sad tonight. Deeply, painfully sad.

I watched the election results come in, and now David Eby has conceded. British Columbia is heading in a new direction, with a Conservative government projected to take power.

I keep thinking about our forests, our rivers, our salmon, our orcas, our coastline and the wildlife that cannot speak for itself.

I think about Indigenous rights, the environment, and the children who will inherit whatever we leave behind.

And I think about my ancestors.

I imagine them standing beside me, crying with me, wondering how we got here. People who lived closer to the land, who understood that we are not separate from nature, and that we cannot keep taking without consequences.

What have we done? What are we leaving behind?

I know people were frustrated. I know the cost of living is crushing families. I know people are worried about housing, health care and their futures. Those concerns are real, and they deserve answers.

But I also wonder how many voters understood exactly what they were voting for, what a provincial government controls, and what its decisions could mean for British Columbia.

A provincial election is not a federal election. The anger people felt toward Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberals was not the same thing as choosing a government here in B.C. Different governments. Different responsibilities. Different consequences.

Did everyone understand that?

I don't know. I cannot speak for every voter. But I wish more people would take the time to look beyond a party name, a slogan or a promise, and ask what the policies actually mean.

I wanted a stronger Green voice in this province. I wanted the environment to matter before another forest was destroyed, another river damaged, another species pushed closer to the edge.

I wanted us to remember that the economy depends on the natural world, too. We cannot eat a pipeline, breathe a data centre or replace an ancient forest with a cheque.

And now we have to wait and see what this new government actually does.

To everyone who voted Conservative: you have made your choice. I hope the government delivers what you wanted. I hope you hold it accountable when promises are broken. And I hope you will stand up when decisions threaten the things that make British Columbia worth protecting.

Because we will all live with the consequences.

Not just the people who voted tonight. Not just the people who are comfortable and secure. The consequences will reach people who are already struggling, people who have been pushed aside, and generations who had no say in this election.

Our children and grandchildren cannot stand at a polling station and ask us what the hell we were thinking.

They have to live with what we leave them.

Tonight, I feel grief. I feel worried for the future. I feel the weight of watching the same warnings repeat themselves while the natural world keeps paying the price.

Perhaps I am wrong about what will happen. I sincerely hope I am wrong. A new government has the opportunity to prove its critics wrong, and I will judge it by what it does.

But I cannot pretend I am not frightened by what could be lost.

My art has always been about water, wildlife, forests and the fragile connections between us. My mermaids, whales, otters, salmon and oceans are not just pretty pictures. They represent the living world we depend on, and the responsibility we have to protect it.

I will keep painting. I will keep writing. I will keep asking questions.

Because silence will not protect the salmon. Silence will not save the forests. And silence will not give future generations the healthy planet they deserve.

Tonight, I imagine my ancestors crying with me.

Tomorrow, the work continues.

We had a choice. Now we have a responsibility.

— Tina Winterlik, Zipolita

the loss of our humanity💔

What frightens me most is not simply who won an election. It is what this moment says about where we are heading as a society.

I see people struggling to survive, people without homes, people who have been forgotten, and a natural world that keeps asking us to pay attention. Yet we continue to argue, divide ourselves and put short-term interests ahead of the lives and future of others.

Where has our humanity gone?

If this is where we are now, what will things look like in another five, ten or twenty years?

I want to believe we can do better. I want to believe compassion still matters, that protecting the vulnerable is a shared responsibility, and that we can leave our children something better than the mess we inherited.

But tonight, that hope is difficult to hold on to.

A society should be judged not only by its wealth or its economic growth, but by how it treats those who have the least, how it protects the natural world, and whether it cares about people who have not yet been born.

If we lose our compassion, if we stop caring about one another and the planet that sustains us, what exactly are we gaining?

I am grieving more than an election result tonight.

I am grieving the possibility that we are losing something essential about what it means to be human.