It is often said that politics in Canada is done differently in the east than in the west.

Perhaps nowhere does it quite as differently as British Columbia, the province that has dedicated itself to stunning reversals in fortune for every political party to ever run here.

An Angus Reid poll released this week (margin of error 3.5 per cent, etc.) shows that not only are the NDP polling well ahead of the BC Liberals, but NDP leader Adrian Dix is now the preferred pick for premier, for the first time ever beating rival Christy Clark.

The NDP has 42 per cent support, the Liberals 28, and the BC Conseratives, raised like Lazarus, are at 19 per cent, according to the poll.

If you want to shock someone, get yourself a time machine, go back five years, and tell your own past self that by 2012, Gordon Campbell would have been exiled to London in disgrace, the Liberals would be in free fall, and a party that hadn’t been a factor since the 1950s would be positioned as a possible third party and major spoiler.

The Liberals were on top of the world five years ago. The Olympics were around the corner, the economy was booming, and it seemed nothing could bring down Premier Campbell.

Those who have read B.C. history closely – or lived through it – would be less surprised. This is the province that threw out the old Liberals and Conservatives in the mid-20th century and replaced them with Social Credit and the NDP. And which then turned on the Socreds and exterminated them as a party. And then, a decade after that, reduced the NDP to a rump of two members in the legislature.

We are not kind to those who have disappointed us, failed us, led us into hard economic times, or lied to us.

This is why no one should be too surprised if the NDP rides to victory next year. Or if the Conservatives do. Or if the Liberals stage a comeback and cling to power.

It’s British Columbia. Anything is possible.

– M.C.