Born in Vancouver to an immigrant family, Adriane Carr has spent most of life living and working in Vancouver. At the age of 12, she had the life-changing experience of a four-month performance tour around the world as the youngest member of the Vancouver-based Elgar Choir. With her ARCT degree in piano, Carr paid her way through university by teaching piano. She earned her master's degree with distinction in urban geography from UBC in 1980 under Dr. David Ley and Dr. Walter Hardwick, writing her thesis on the role of citizen groups in shaping community spirit and urban development in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood.
Carr taught for 12 years at Vancouver's Langara College. She served on the Langara Faculty Association Board and helped achieve a no-loss-of-jobs contract during the challenging 1983 Socred-era government cuts to public services. Carr also chaired Langara’s Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, successfully arguing for reinstatement of the Women’s Studies Program, and helping launch the Environmental Studies program.
In 1989, she left teaching to join the executive team at the Wilderness Committee, a group founded by her husband, Paul George, helping it grow into one of Canada's largest membership-based conservation groups. For more than a decade, Carr headed up its grants and fundraising program, and edited or co-authored hundreds of Wilderness Committee educational newspapers, calendars, and other publications about endangered wilderness areas. Carr is particularly known for the key role she played from 1983-2000 in helping resolve the conflict over old-growth logging in Clayoquot Sound, having been asked by the Central Region Chiefs of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council to be the liaison between them and the major environment groups engaged in the issue, and successfully lobbying the federal government to support training of indigenous and non-indigenous youth in ecotourism jobs, and to establish a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in Clayoquot Sound.
Carr also founded the Wilderness Committee’s International WILD Campaign, launched at a 1990 conference held in Hawaii that brought together over 150 activists, scientists, and indigenous peoples from 26 countries. A follow-up WILD conference held in Brazil is credited with helping establish protection for Brazil’s Mata Atlantica (Atlantic Rainforest) in the lead-up to the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro. Carr also served on CIDA’s (Canadian International Development Agency) Environment and Sustainable Development Program and the Government of Canada’s Biodiversity Convention Implementation Committee.
In 1983, Carr co-founded the Green Party of BC, North America’s first Green Party, serving as the party’s first spokesperson. From 2000 to 2006, Carr served again as the BC Green Party’s leader, becoming North America’s first Green Party leader to be included in a televised leaders’ debate (2001 BC election). In 2006, Carr became Deputy Leader to Leader Elizabeth May, of the Green Party of Canada. For several years starting in 2009, she also co-chaired the Canadian Women Voters' Congress non-partisan Women's Campaign School.
In 2011, Carr was elected as Vancouver’s first Green Party City Councillor, winning her seat by just 90 votes. In 2014 and 2018, she was re-elected at the top of the polls. Now in her third term, she chairs the city’s Policy and Strategic Priorities Committee, is a Council liaison to the city’s Urban Indigenous Peoples’ Advisory Committee as well as to the Civic Asset Naming Committee, a Council representative on the city’s UNDRIP Task Force, a Council representative on the joint Council-Vancouver School Board and the city’s representative on Metro Vancouver Zero Emissions Innovation Center. Carr is also a director on the board of Metro Vancouver, chairs Metro Vancouver’s Climate Action Committee, and sits on Metro Vancouver’s Finance Committee.
Councillor Carr has two adult children, two young grandchildren, and lives in Vancouver's West End with her husband, Paul George. She loves to garden and share food with family and friends.
Contact Councillor Carr