As part of a look back at 2025 and look ahead to 2026, we’re talking with some key West Kootenay newsmakers, including Trail mayor Colleen Jones.
What were the highlights of 2025 for you and for the city?
It was such a big year for us. We had so many positive things happen for our community, starting off with the opening of the Lower Columbia Community Health Centre, which is one-of-a-kind in our region. I know a lot of work and time and energy went into that and to actually have the doors open for primary care and mental health services in our area was a really huge win for us.
In the spring, we honored Sister Norma for Citizen of the Year, which I thought was a tremendous show of community spirit and what volunteerism means to our community.
Moving on to the Association of Kootenay Boundary Local Government, we passed a very strong resolution asking for funding, support for housing, mental health and addiction services. And that resolution was made regionally with the City of Castlegar and City of Nelson. We went in on that together and it was received very well at the Association of Kootenai Boundary Local Government and then again at the provincial level at the UBCM.
So really putting it out there that we need these services for our community, especially the most vulnerable population. We also had the ability at UBCM to talk about our policing resources and how we need to get back up to our police compliments because our community is not feeling safe or secure on the streets right now. So really good conversations down there and those conversations are continuing.
I think one of the biggest things is how important the demolition of 900 Spokane Street and 901 Helena was. We know that’s going to make a really big difference in the revitalization of our downtown community. We’re really hoping that we can provide some new storefronts, maybe some housing. The possibilities are endless, but we’re really looking forward to working on that space.
Another thing that came out of the downtown revitalization project was we had the ability to hire a city planner and climate action manager. This is the first time we’ve had a planner in the City of Trail for almost over 20 years. And it is definitely needed. We have a lot of projects on the grow. And we’re going to need someone that can work in-house that has some planning expertise and be able to help move the city along.
I also want to talk about the exciting news of the Unicorn Child Care Centre opening up. Thank you to Teck for donating that land to us. This is a project that we have been working on since I was [a councillor] and now we see it shovels in the ground. We’re ready to go and it’s going to make a real difference for people who need child care in Trail.
I don’t think we often get recognized for the work that we did around the homeless population. When the community comes forward with their concerns, we took each of those concerns very seriously. We want our downtown community to feel safe. We want the people coming downtown to go shopping to feel welcome. We want people to be able to come down and enjoy our facilities.
So when we did have a complaint or an issue, we worked really hard to resolve it. I think that shows in our downtown area right now. We have a few individuals still on our streets, and some of them we aren’t going to be able to house unless we get some help and support from Interior Health. But I think we can honestly say that it does feel safer and more welcoming. I think our council has been very respectful, very collaborative. We’ve worked hard on issues and worked very well as a team along with staff.
What are you looking forward to most in 2026?
We have a lot of events coming into our community. We’re starting off with the BC Winter Games, co-hosting them in February with Rossland. So that’s going to be a really busy time, with over 1,800 athletes coming into our communities. We also have two major hockey tournaments, one being the under-18 female hockey tournament that we have not seen in Trail before, so that’s going to be exciting.
We have the opportunity to have the Kootenay Boundary local government convention in Trail in April, and that’s bringing in 160 delegates with family and friends from the east and West Kootenays for almost four days. And of course, Silver City Days is always a huge event for our community.
We’re celebrating the 125-year anniversary for the City of Trail. And then we have provincial and Canadian ball tournaments that will be coming into Trail as well. So a really exciting year for our community and surrounding area. It’s just going to be a good time to welcome everybody to our community, show off our town, and all the facilities and everything we have to offer. Trail always comes out 100 per cent with community spirit for events like this. So it’s going to be another really good year. The first six months are going to be super busy.
What do you foresee as the biggest challenges for 2026? What do you think council will have to put the most energy into?
We’ve done a lot of pre-planning already, but keeping up with the organizing and making sure that we’ve got everything prioritized, We have done a lot of work on our arena already. Our baseball diamonds are looking amazing. So we’ve been pre-planning and looking towards 2026.
One of the biggest challenges is to make sure that everything goes off as planned and just being ready to support all the projects we’ve got going on and being aware of how much energy and time and everything that this is all going to take. But we’re organized. We’re ready.
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