The Okanagan Valley has had its share of weird elections over the past 50 years. Ten strange election moments
The race has begun. Municipal elections in British Columbia will be held Saturday, Oct. 20.
In recognition of this important date, we’ve looked through our archives and found 10 of the strangest municipal election moments which have occurred in the Okanagan over the past 50 years.
CLAP FOR THE WOLFMAN
Penticton voters had never seen anything like it.
In 2008, Benny Wolfe, who admitted to living in his car at Okanagan Lake during the summer months, ran for mayor of the city. He spent less than $100 on his campaign. Wearing a suit and hat from Value Village, he participated against four other mayoral candidates in an all-candidates forum presented by the Chamber of Commerce.
On development, Wolfe said he would take all developers and “put them on a Greyhound bus and send them to Kelowna.”
He believed bars should remain open nightly until 4 a.m.
He collected 96 votes. A second run for mayor in 2011 was aborted after he was found guilty of a sex crime and sentenced to several months in jail.
He was later listed by Kelowna RCMP as a missing person but eventually resurfaced in Hope, where he sang “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” at a town council meeting.
PATTY HANSON
Patty Hanson, who represents the EllisonJoe Rich rural area east of Kelowna on the Central Okanagan Regional District, has had a tumultuous career as a local politician.
In 2012, the board forced her to write a letter of apology for calling for the resignation of the board chairman and the region’s planning director. She had said they were improperly frustrating the development of Kelowna Mountain, a controversial residential and resort proposal.
Hanson was acclaimed in the November 2014 election, and again ran afoul of her board colleagues. She was accused of leaking secrets from an in-camera meeting, booted off some committees, and again ordered to make an apology.
By the fall of 2016, she’d missed five straight board meetings, a prolonged absence that according to provincial law might have been enough to be dismissed from office.
But Hanson said she was on stress leave, producing a note from her doctor. She said she’d been constantly bullied by her board colleagues.
Through her absences, Hanson has continued to draw her politician’s salary. In 2016, her pay was $20,284.
Hanson decided at the midnight hour not to seek re-election in the 2018 election.
DALE HAMMILL
The most contentious election in Kelowna’s history took three months to settle and was decided by judges, not voters.
Dale Hamill was a two-term incumbent facing a strong challenge in 1982 from John Hindle, a former mayor.
On election night, Hindle defeated Hammill by 79 votes. Hammill requested a recount, and it emerged that 50 votes that should have gone to him were mistakenly assigned to Hindle.
That should have resulted in the election of Hammill. But during the recount, a less stringent way of analyzing the paper ballots was used, and Hindle gained more than the 50 he lost.
Hindle wound up winning by 10 votes, an outcome that was certified in early 1983 by the B.C. Court of Appeal.
HOUSE CLEANING
If there’s a municipality that knows how to clean house, it’s the District of Summerland.
A campaign known as “Stop the Swap,” an agricultural land issue, proved to be a major factor in the outcome of the 2014 election.
Peter Waterman, the only member of the 2011-2014 council to vote against the controversial land matter, was elected mayor over four other challengers. There was only a 77-vote difference between he and runnerup Roch Fortin and 194 votes between he and fourth-place finisher Orv Robson.
Meanwhile, the three councillors who supported the swap all lost their spots on council — Robert Hacking (ninth place), Marty Van Alphen (10th) and Bruce Halliquist (12th), the latter who had been on council for more than 20 years.
Five of the six councillors elected that night were firmly opposed to the swap, including young farmer Erin Carlson, who led the “Stop the Swap” campaign.
THE NAME GAME
It’s hard to imagine now, but for many years Kelowna’s Westside was the largest unincorporated area in B.C.
There was no mayor, council, or civic administration to serve a region where the the population was approaching 30,000 people by 2007. Basic local services were provided by the Kelowna-based regional district.
The provincial government, tired of footing many of the bills for things like policing, finally insisted Westsiders either join the City of Kelowna or establish a new municipality.
In the spring of 2007, the incorporation option was favoured by the narrowest of margins, with 51 per cent supporting a new municipality against the 49 per cent who wanted to join Kelowna.
But the following autumn, many of the people who’d favoured amalgamation with the city across the lake got their revenge at the ballot box. By an equally narrow margin in a referendum on what to call their new municipality, the name West Kelowna prevailed over Westbank.
ONE-VOTE VICTORY
It’s true. Every vote counts. In the fall of 1978, Peter Klimuk, a Penticton lawyer, won the third and final aldermanic seat on Penticton City Council on a coin toss.
A three-day recount gave both he and Harry Fisher 2,001 votes.
Returning officer C.J. Sewell had the names of both men put in a box and conducted a draw. Klimuk’s name was pulled out and he was declared elected. The returning officer only votes in the event of a tie. Sewell, however, said the draw was held in the interests of total impartiality and to avoid any charges that he may have favoured one of the candidates.
On election night, Fisher was one vote ahead prior to the recounts. Others elected that night to council were Frank Oakes (2,972 votes) and Ted Udzenija (2,137).
SORRY, WRONG NUMBER
On election night in November 2007, David Knowles knew something was terribly wrong with his vote count. The initial return showed he had received just 115 votes from the Westside polling station at George Pringle school. “(That area) is my power base,” he recalled later. “It just glared right off the page at me.” Sure enough, a check of results showed Knowles actually received 1,115 votes at the polling station. The wrong number was said over the phone by the polling station supervisor to those in Kelowna overseeing the first municipal election in the newly-incorporated Westside community. The mistake was corrected three days after the election. Knowles was in and Mary Mandarino, who had initially won the sixth and final council seat, was out. “Fair is fair,” Mandarino said graciously. “It’s a process and people make mistakes. It wasn’t a life and death situation. It’s a vote, for goodness sakes.”
BOB THWAITE
Long before Netflix and even before cable television came to Peachland, the town helped fund a society that poached U.S. signals from a satellite.
In the late ‘70s, a $50 levy was assessed against each property to operate the Peachland Communications Society. But after he won election as a councillor in 1980, Harold Thwaite refused to pay the tax.
“The whole thing is illegal,” Thwaite said, which was certainly true according to federal communications laws then in effect. His defiant stance prompted an unsuccessful effort to remove him from office by the person who’d finished just below him in the election polls.
It was just one more colourful moment in a kaleidoscopic political career for Thwaite. Another one: as Peachland mayor, he once tried to get Queen Elizabeth to drape a ceremonial chain of office he’d made himself around his neck. But Thwaite had not been invited to the Royal reception, and was quickly hustled away by the RCMP.
VERNON’S YOUNGEST MAYOR
The rise and fall of the youngest mayor in Vernon’s history was completed in September 2006 when he was given a 12-month conditional sentence for breach of trust.
Sean Harvey was just 29 when elected in November 1999. He resigned in scandal halfway through his second term over misuse of his city-issued credit card.
In court, Harvey admitted fraudulently obtaining $13,800 in goods and services by using the credit card. He admitted handing in 90 receipts to the city that were for personal and non-city use.
Harvey’s father was a minister. In an interview with The Daily Courier shortly before his sentencing, he said he had wandered away from his faith “like most ministers” kids. Of the credit card scandal, he said, “I made a stupid mistake.”
YES FOR WES
All-candidate forums seldom determine the outcome of an election. Most who attend are decided voters.
One of the rare occasions when someone steals the show happened at The Penticton Herald-sponsored forum in 2011 when a 22-year-old Harvard graduate, Wes Hopkin, rose above the others on a long panel of council hopefuls.
A member of Sharon Lindstrom’s Pen-Hi debating team during high school, his oracle skills clearly showed as he lit into city hall on its lack of transparency.
In total, Hopkin only spent $1,460 on his campaign but finished fifth, easily winning a seat over several other household names including former mayor Mike Pearce and Chamber of Commerce president Jason Cox.
The fact that Hopkin did very little of what he promised is another issue.
Okanagan Top 10 is an opinion piece which appears weekly in The Okanagan Weekend.
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