Ever since Ryan Kahro turned 18, she’s voted for the Green Party of Ontario (GPO).
“My parents gave me the kind of lowdown on what all the parties were, what my choices would be. Right away Green stood out to me as something that aligned with what I thought was important,” Kahro said in an interview at her home in rural Guelph/Eramosa.
The now 41-year-old stay-at-home mother of three young children will have her name on the provincial ballot as the Green Party candidate for Wellington-Halton Hills, representing the party she’s long supported.
Kahro is country at heart, being born in Acton but moving all around the riding and nearby rural areas as she grew up. Her parents had a hobby farm in Caledon but Kahro and her siblings' usual summer jobs were farming the neighbour’s land, cutting grass or taking care of horses.
“We had a lot of freedom to learn some skills, so you’re allowed to swing a hammer or try to build something that would ultimately fall over, but you got to try right?” Kahro said of what it was like to grow up rural. “I remember good neighbours, good community feel, people checking in on each other and bringing over food if it was a hard time. I love that kind of country community feel.”
In her 20s, she eventually made her way to big cities, first in Toronto where she said she felt like a complete “country bumpkin” and later a bit more permanently in Guelph. It was there where she got to vote for the first GPO MPP to be elected to Queen’s Park, Mike Schreiner, in 2018.
She said that was a special moment to see all the support for the GPO and cited Schreiner as a big inspiration.
“Such a nice guy, good guy, using his voice and doing his best. He’s a good person to stand up with,” Kahro said.
Kahro is back living rurally again in Guelph/Eramosa, giving her children an upbringing similar to what she has with lots of hobby pets including a dog, two cats, four chickens, a gecko and two ponies.
She doesn’t believe her children quite grasp what their mom is doing but noted her youngest is proudly telling strangers their family is “Green.”
Her children are a big motivator on why Kahro said she’s running. As a parent she said she started thinking about what values she wants to instill in them to grow into healthy adults.
“I want them to be able to know they can use their voice and I want them to be able to have the skills they need to essentially clean up this mess that they’re being left,” Kahro said. “Then I was like ‘well why leave it for them to clean up, maybe I should just clean it up right now?’”
Like a lot of GPO candidates, Kahro said the environment is top of mind for her even beyond the realm of politics.
Kahro shares her birthday with Earth Day – April 22. She said a lot of her early and special memories have formed around her birthday and events related to improving the environment.
“Every time it was my birthday, I remember my aunt would take me to an Earth Day festival or a cleanup,” Kahro said. “I loved it, it felt special, everyone was doing something together that made a difference. I love seeing a ditch after you’ve cleaned it. You have an immediate result of what you just did.”
It’s not just a healthy world Kahro is into but being a healthy person too. She said in her occasional spare time she’s often exercising, practicing yoga, meditation or training for a triathlon.
“Healthy, fill up your cup stuff to participate and enjoy life fully with kids and friends and family,” Kahro said.
She reflected and pointed out a cycle relating to environmental education taught to children like herself from a young age, starting simply with the three r's: reduce, reuse, recycle, and how the adults might have hoped this generation might be the one’s to solve environmental problems.
“I was the young people, now I’m 40. It’s me, it’s us,” Kahro said. “It’s been a priority for the last 20 to 30 years to bring education and awareness to those young people and now those young people are me, our adults, here to step into the roles and create change.”
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