Hey,

It started off as a bit of a joke.

First we called it BUMS - the Bottoms Up Majority. Damn, that was fun. The idea of moving from protest to creating a new political party, drafting our first crack at a platform, going from theory to action . . . it had everybody around here inspired . . . we had caught one of those delicious big ideas you can hang a whole issue around, that keeps you up at night brainstorming and tinkering . . . and before too long, our cheeky little party started gaining steam.

When we came to thinking about actually going for it, BUMS didn’t sound right anymore. We wanted something you could take seriously, something you could see on a lawn sign and instantly understand what the party was all about . . . So we thought, well, the Conservatives, the Liberals, Republicans, Democrats . . . they all named themselves after the political philosophy driving their platform . . . what was ours?

We kicked it around until eventually we landed on SYSTEMIC CHANGE. That was what we knew the world needed to survive the 21st century. That combination of words didn’t require any reading between the lines. You had all the establishment parties, and then this one whose DNA is about throwing all of that aside. So we became the SYSTEM CHANGE PARTY and started using our old culture jamming anti-logo the Blackspot as our insignia. Felt pretty good . . . until it didn’t.

Maybe it was just how often we said Systemic Change or System Change to each other that made us sour on it, at first we couldn’t tell. But once we reopened the brainstorms and started talking it out, it became clear that what this name was lacking was any punch, mojo, or mystique. It was just a piece of white bread with some margarine on it. Who’d go for that? Would we go for that? Actually, nah.

So we kept brainstorming, kept diving deeper into what it was we really stood for and searching for the best way to articulate it. We wrote easily a dozen different drafts of a platform but none of them felt quite right. We knew we were onto something, but every time we tried to push it forward we hit a wall.

Then one day we came across this magic little book called PIRATE CARE, and those two words just snared our imaginations. It had the magic, it had this lovely combination of swashbuckling fight and soulful, compassionate sweetness. The only thing that gave us pause was there had been a lot of pirate parties who came before us . . . but hey, none of them were PIRATE CARE parties, right?

We cooked up another platform, had a shitload of fun talking like pirates to each other, and best of all, we were zeroing in on the spirit of the party.

But after a while the muse was whispering again. Pirate Care meant a lot to us, but would anyone else get it? Probably not.

So we headed back to the brainstorm room for a few weeks. Those weeks turned to months.

By spring, we decided maybe that blackspot in our logo said everything itself. The Blackspot Party. Yeah, that had a mythic touch to it, some zap, even a whiff of magic. “Okay, Blackspot, that’s it,” Kalle said, “and if I try to change it again, you can leap over the table and choke me out.”

But then in the dog days of summer 2026, as we’d been sweating it on yet another draft of the platform, a spectre of doubt swooped in. Someone asked, “Doesn’t Blackspot sound a tad negative?” and there was a sinking feeling in the room. Nobody really wanted to admit that before, but we’d all felt it. Damn. Okay, then. We want to get this right, so Blackspot has to go.

We dove back into the well, meditating on this ethos of systemic change and pirate care, and then we had one of those eureka moments that feel like walking into a telephone pole. All the big systemic heaves we need, every solution to our world’s spiral into a long dark age, they aren’t national. They’re global. They require us to think in a way the establishment doesn’t even consider: we are many countries and cultures, but fundamentally, we are one world. Ah-ha! That’s it. ONE WORLD.

Everybody loved that. And nobody choked out our ed in chief.

Then today, after feeling like it was all set in stone, the muse popped by to visit and yanked the rug out from under us. The ideas might require global reform, but naming a national party ONE WORLD is just sort of confusing . . . and not only that, a one world government carries all kinds of baggage . . . in fact, it reeks of exactly the sort of globalism we stand against . . . the longer we thought about it, the harder this was to deny.

So Kalle pinches his brow and asks: “What if it was just . . . The One?”

We are ONE.

Well, that’s different. That’s good. It’s got the ethos, the magic, and the clarity all there in 6 letters and 2 words.

The One.

That’s our name and we’re sticking to it.

We’re in the process of getting our paperwork together to establish The One Party of Canada. We need 250 signatures, a couple of party officers, and there’s still plenty of work to do. But our platform is nearly finished, and we’re already conjuring TV spots and media campaigns that will shock the shit out of the Libs, Cons, and NDP when they come out.

If you’re into that sorta trouble, we’d love to have you on as a founding member.

- Team AB