The Daily Courier

The Okanagan Valley has had its share of weird elections over the past 50 years.

- By Okanagan Weekend Staff

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. 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.

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.

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). 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.”

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.

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.”

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.

To comment on this, or any other article which appears, please email: letters@ok.bc.ca.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Canada