I've been getting caught up on my news reading and came across this news article published prior to the by-election in London North Centre.  "No Tory `chivalry' as Greens' new leader seeks seat," the headline proclaims.  The article goes on to state:

... the Tories already have their preferred candidate — former London mayor Dianne Haskett — and the practice of allowing new party leaders to run unopposed in by-elections will not be extended to May, elected as Green Party leader in late August.

The Toronto Star touches on the theme again in the sidebar to this article.  So I thought there was a modest amount of irony involved when the by-election results came in and Elizabeth finished second, beating third-place Haskett by over 500 votes.

There are many lesson to be learned from the LNC race, and these articles illustrate two of them.  The first lesson is that we can't expect any favours (we didn't get any when we were excluded from the 2004 and 2006 leaders' debates, either).  But the second lesson is more interesting, and that lesson is that we don't need favours to win. 

I think our "natural" support level in much of the country would hover around the 25% that Elizabeth won, if and when we can put enough boots on the ground (I've built this assumption into my Green Party roadmap essay).  We saw the same thing here in Calgary when one of our candidates in the 2004 provincial election won 25% in the polls she personally canvassed.  We are still some time away from being able to run the type of campaign Elizabeth did in all 308 ridings, but any riding that does will be campaigning with a solid basis of support.  All of our ridings need to focus on recruiting members and volunteers so we can turn that support into votes on election day.