A roundup of trivia following the close on Friday of nominations for local government elections in 17 local municipalities, four school districts, and two regional districts (plus a bit of a third):
Seats available: 146
Total candidates: 236, including two candidates counted twice because they are running for multiple positions. (More on that below.) This is down from 255 in 2022.
Mayoral candidates: 34
Council candidates: 132
School trustee candidates: 40
Regional director candidates: 30
Women running for mayor: 12
Fewest candidates: Montrose, Salmo, Silverton, and Warfield, where the mayor and four councillors were each elected by acclamation.
Other mayoral acclamations: New Denver and Nakusp.
Most mayoral candidates: Trail, with four; Nelson, Castlegar, and Midway, with three each.
Most council candidates: Nelson, with 14; Creston, Grand Forks, and Rossland with 12 each.
Most combined mayor and council candidates: Nelson, with 17.
Most female candidates overall: Creston, with eight; Rossland with seven.
Highest percentage of female candidates: Creston, with eight out of 14 (57 per cent); Fruitvale with four out of seven (57 per cent), Kaslo with six out of 11 (54 per cent).
Fewest female candidates overall: Montrose, Silverton, and Warfield, with one each. Each will be acclaimed.
All-female mayoral races: Rossland, where incumbent councillor Lisa Kwiatkowski is running against former councillor Janice Nightingale; and Kaslo, where incumbent Suzan Hewat is running against incumbent councillor Erika Bird. These are the fourth and fifth such races in West Kootenay history. Nelson looked poised to have its first all-female race, but a male candidate entered at the last moment.
Most candidates in a regional district race: RDCK Areas E, G, and H, with three each.
Most candidates in a school board race: Grand Forks, with four (two to be elected).
Running in two places:
Susan Chew and Tina Knooihuizen are each seeking multiple positions.
Chew, an incumbent school trustee for Salmo/Taghum/Blewett is seeking re-election and also running for director of RDCK Area G (Salmo Valley). Knooihuizen is an incumbent Nakusp village councillor who is also running for director of RDCK Area K (Arrow Lakes).
Other people have run for multiple positions before.
Gord Zaitsoff ran for both mayor of Castlegar and Area J director in 2014 but lost both races. He is running for Area J director only this time.
In 2018, Aiden McLaren-Caux ran for both Nakusp village council and school trustee. He was elected to council, but not to school board. This time he’s running for council only.
In 2022, incumbent RDCK Area D director Danna O’Donnell ran for re-election plus mayor of Grand Forks. She lost both races.
Paul Peterson, who was director of RDCK Area K (Arrow Lakes) from 2002-22, served simultaneously as a school trustee for one term.
Running in a different place:
• Former Castlegar mayor Kirk Duff is running for mayor of Grand Forks. If successful, he would become the first person to serve as mayor of two West Kootenay-Boundary municipalities. A few have tried before, but without success.
• Grand Forks resident Donald Pharand is running for mayor of Castlegar to highlight the risks posed to Columbia River communities by landslides near Revelstoke. Pharand ran provincially for the Green Party in 2005.
• Former RDCK Area E director Ramona Faust is running for mayor of Nelson.
• Incumbent Greenwood councillor C.J. Rhodes, who is running for mayor, previously spent 14 years on Osoyoos council.
• Former Grand Forks councillor Cathy Korolek is running for Powell River council. She was unsuccessful in a previous bid in Powell River in 2022.
Municipal employees turned candidates:
• Slocan mayoral candidate Eunice Ludlow was the village’s administrator from 2004 to 2008.
• Creston council hopeful Ferd Schmidt used to be the town’s director of infrastructure services.
• Grand Forks council candidate Justin Dinsdale is the city’s former manager of capital projects.
Longest serving:
• Mike Walsh, who has been acclaimed for another term as mayor of Montrose, served in the role from 1996 to 2005 and again since 2018. He will soon pass Lorne Haas to become the village’s longest serving mayor.
• At just shy of 12 years, Suzan Hewat is the longest consecutively serving mayor of Kaslo. But Fred Archer still holds the record for longest serving overall at 12 years and five months. If Hewat is re-elected, she will tie Archer’s mark after six months.
• The Regional District of Central Kootenay board is losing a lot of institutional memory all at once.
Andy Davidoff, who has represented rural Castlegar since 2011, is retiring. So is Walter Popoff, who has represented the Slocan Valley since 2008.
But both are practically newcomers compared to Hans Cunningham, who is the longest-serving politician in the region’s history: he has been Salmo Valley director for just shy of 40 years straight. He was also the RDCK’s longest-serving chair, at 11½ years.
The longest serving RDCK director who is seeking re-election is Garry Jackman, who joined the board in 2008.
• In the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary, chair and Christina Lake director Grace McGregor is retiring after serving continuously since 2005. Beaver Valley director Ali Grieve, who has been acclaimed to another term, also joined the board that year.
Family ties:
• Denise Dumas, who is running for mayor of Creston, is the daughter of former mayor Ron Toyota, who served from 2008-22. She is also the granddaughter of Tak Toyota, who served on council in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
• Castlegar mayor Maria McFaddin isn’t running for re-election. But her husband James is running for RDKB Area B director.
• Katie Strong, who is running for Slocan council, is the daughter of Jamie Ingram, who is running for mayor.
• Darcy Lindsay, who is also running for Slocan council, is outgoing mayor Jessica Lunn’s nephew.
• Paul Butler, who is running for re-election to Trail council, is the grandson of Isabel Butler, who served on Kaslo council from 1974-77 and then became the first woman to serve as mayor there in 1978-79. Paul is also the nephew of Chris D’Arcy, who was the NDP MLA for Rossland-Trail from 1972-91 and subsequently ran for mayor of Castlegar.
Youth movement: It’s not clear who the youngest candidate is this time. But in 2022, Maya Provencal topped the polls in Rossland at age 23. She’s seeking re-election.
The data above takes into account Castlegar, Creston, Fruitvale, Grand Forks, Greenwood, Kaslo, Midway, Montrose, Nakusp, Nelson, New Denver, Rossland, Salmo, Silverton, Slocan, Trail, Warfield, the Regional District of Central Kootenay, the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary, the portion of West Kootenay that is in the Regional District of Columbia Shuswap, the Kootenay-Columbia school district, the Kootenay Lake school district, the Boundary school district, and the Arrow Lakes school district.
This story has been updated to reflect the fact that two Grand Forks council candidates and two RDCK Area I candidates have withdrawn their names.
