B.C. Municipal Election: 5 take-aways after a tough night for incumbent mayors

Votes have been counted and most of the 3,479 candidates who ran for municipal office across B.C. in the municipal election know their fate.

Here is a look at five of the interesting things to emerge from the election:

Vancouver’s Ken Sim and Surrey’s Brenda Locke were both turfed as mayors in Saturday’s municipal election.

Sim was defeated by the Vancouver Green party’s Pete Fry, while Locke was beaten by Doug McCallum. This will be the third time that the 82-year-old McCallum has been mayor of Surrey, while Fry will be Canada’s first Green mayor.

These results were unusual, as statistically incumbent mayors get re-elected.

Hugh Chan, a political analyst studying at the University of B.C., said that Fry won by over 22,000 votes, while McCallum’s comeback from last election’s loss to Locke was stunning.

“No matter what, you have to think that voters are angry,” Chan said. “And they may turn their anger on the provincial government next Saturday as well.”

Fry said that his political campaign was positive, with no attack ads, and it worked.

The election saw Sim’s ABC Vancouver party wiped out on the park board and the school board, while McCallum’s Safe Surrey Coalition has a solid majority on city council with six seats.

It wasn’t only B.C.’s two largest cities that saw incumbent mayors take a fall.

West Vancouver’s Mark Sager, New Westminster’s Patrick Johnstone, Township of Langley’s Eric Woodward, City of Langley’s Nathan Pachal, Port Moody’s Meghan Lahti, Maple Ridge’s Dan Ruimy, Prince George’s Simon Yu and Delta’s George Harvie, among others, were all ousted.

“Across British Columbia, it looks like a huge anti-incumbent wave,” Chan said.

One of the biggest winners among Metro Vancouver municipalities was incumbent Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West, who captured almost 90 per cent of the vote.

This will be West’s third term as mayor, after being first elected in 2008 and running unopposed in 2022. Before being mayor, West was a three-term city councillor.

A big loser was incumbent and two-term Delta Mayor George Harvie, who was running against a former council ally in Dylan Kruger and newcomer Melissa Granum.

The race appeared to be between the feuding Harvie and Kruger, but on the night Granum started strong and never looked back, winning with 49 per cent of the vote compared with Kruger at 28 per cent and Harvie with 23 per cent.

In her victory speech, Granum said she wanted to see more harmony and co-operation on city council.

Another big loser was controversial incumbent Kamloops Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson, who came in fourth place.

Rob Howard will be the mayor-elect of Richmond after defeating Alexa Loo and Kash Heed.

Howard was backed by Malcolm Brodie, the outgoing mayor who served the city for 25 years, which likely helped secure his victory.

However, not one of the five candidates for city council that ran under Howard’s Richmond Forward banner were elected to the eight-seat body.

Instead, the elected councillors belong to the Advance Richmond, RITE Richmond, Common Sense and Richmond United parties.

In Canada, a mayor gets one vote, like a councillor. So while Howard will lead the city, he will need to get councillors from different parties to back him.

The McMynn family has been a force in the small community of Midway on the B.C./Washington state border in the West Kootenay region since the late 1800s.

When the Village of Midway was created in 1967 James McMynn became mayor, a position he held until retirement in 2005.

Marguerite Rotvold became mayor that year and served until 2008, after which Randy Kappes took over before leaving partway through his second term in 2016.

James McMynn’s son Doug became mayor in a byelection that year, and in 2018 was unseated by Martin Fromme. Doug McMynn defeated Fromme in 2022 and, on Saturday night, with 181 votes, did it again.

That means a McMynn has been mayor of Midway for 44 of the past 59 years.

Meanwhile, in the Village of Lytton, the two mayoral candidates, Denise O’Connor and Jennifer Thoss, were both tied at 45 votes. This will likely trigger a judicial recount handled by the provincial court.