20 Signs You're A Russian Torontonian
Pass the vodka.
October 26, 2015, 09:51 AM
September 24, 2021, 10:16 AM
Don't have an account?
By continuing, you agree to our Terms & Conditions
Please check your e-mail to reset your password.


We use cookies to personalize content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyze our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners who may combine it with other information that you’ve provided to them or that they’ve collected from your use of their services. Learn More
Some incumbent candidates have taken a beating in British Columbia's municipal elections.
Voters on Saturday evicted the mayors of Vancouver and Surrey, the province's two biggest cities.
Here's a look at some of the results.
BIG TURNOUT IN VANCOUVER, FRY WINS
Pete Fry will be Vancouver's first Green mayor, after a resounding win over incumbent Ken Sim.
It's a big turnaround for businessman Sim, just four years after he swept to power when his ABC Party claimed a majority on council with seven out of 10 seats.
ABC has now been reduced to one seat, secured by Mike Klassen, while a mix of progressives from the Greens, the Coalition of Progressive Electors, and OneCity Vancouver take nine seats.
Turnout surged to more than 209,000, up 36 per cent from 2022.
The preliminary tally shows Fry won more than 98,000 votes, far ahead of Sim on 67,000, with Colleen Hardwick a distant third with about 18,000 votes.
Sim's former chief of staff, Kareem Allam, received about 10,500 votes.
MCCALLUM BACK IN SURREY AGAIN … AGAIN
Doug McCallum is back for his third separate stint in the Surrey mayor's office, which he first occupied 30 years ago.
Preliminary results show he received about 32 per cent of the vote to comfortably defeat incumbent Brenda Locke, who had 23 per cent.

McCallum was bested by Locke four years ago, and the pair have clashed repeatedly over Surrey's switch to a municipal police force from the RCMP, a move McCallum supported and Locke fiercely opposed.
McCallum, 82, first sat as mayor from 1996 to 2005, then again from 2018 to 2022.
VOTERS BACK AMALGAMATION OF VICTORIA, SAANICH
Voters in Victoria and Saanich have supported amalgamation by about a two-thirds majority in a non-binding ballot.
Mayor Marianne Alto was meanwhile re-elected in Victoria, with about 44 per cent of the vote, defeating Bruce McGuigan on about 34 per cent.
The ballot question of whether to combine Victoria and Saanich into a single municipality received 62 per cent support in Victoria and 68 per cent support in the District of Saanich, where Rishi Sharma is forecast to win the mayoralty.
KAMLOOPS MAYOR'S TUMULTUOUS TENURE ENDS
Incumbent mayor of Kamloops Reid Hamer-Jackson has been soundly defeated, finishing fourth with just 12 per cent of the vote after a turmoil-filled tenure.
The new mayor will be Mike O'Reilly, a former councillor, who won 44 per cent of the vote, according to preliminary results.
Hamer-Jackson was stripped by council of his position as the city's official spokesman in 2024, amid protracted conflict with council and city staff.
PRINCE GEORGE GETS NEW MAYOR AFTER TIGHT RACE
Simon Yu has been defeated in his bid to retain the mayoralty in Prince George, in a tight three-way contest.
Preliminary tallies show Yu was defeated by Garth Frizzell, a longtime councillor, who won 28 per cent of the vote, compared to 24 per cent for Yu and 23 per cent for Kyle Sampson.
RICHMOND GETS FIRST NEW MAYOR IN 25 YEARS
Richmond is getting its first new mayor in a quarter century, with Rob Howard gaining a narrow win over former Olympian Alexa Loo.
Howard, a former provincial legislator, received almost 20,000 votes to defeat Loo by fewer than 900.
Malcolm Brodie had held the mayoralty since 2001, but decided not to run again.
BRAD WEST GETS 90 PER CENT OF PORT COQUITLAM'S VOTES
One of B.C.'s most prominent and popular mayors has been re-elected with a massive share of the vote.

Port Coquitlam's Brad West received about 90 per cent of the vote to retain the office he first won in 2018.
He says he's "deeply humbled and grateful" in a message on social media.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2026.
By Canadian Press Staff | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Progressives have swept municipal elections in Vancouver, with Pete Fry chosen as the city's first Green mayor after a massive turnout.
Fry will be working with an overwhelmingly progressive council, with Greens and candidates from the Coalition of Progressive Electors, or COPE, each taking four seats out of 10, and OneCity Vancouver claiming a ninth seat for the left-of-centre camp.
The business-friendly ABC Party was decimated, with Ken Sim ousted from the mayor's office and only one councillor elected.
That's a stark turnaround from 2022, when ABC won seven seats on council.
While no single party will have a majority on the new council, the progressive parties have already demonstrated an ability to work together, with COPE's Stephanie Allen and OneCity's William Azaroff ending their mayoral campaigns to give Fry a better chance.
Preliminary results show Fry won handsomely with more than 98,000 votes, about 31,000 ahead of Sim, while the turnout of 209,000 was up 36 per cent compared to four years ago.
Fry hugged his mother, Liberal MP Hedy Fry, at his campaign's party in downtown Vancouver, telling his supporters the Greens would "fight for the city."
Green and COPE candidates won all seven commissioners' seats on the Park Board, while Green, COPE, and OneCity candidates won all nine school trustee positions.

COPE's Sean Orr, a socialist council incumbent who is suing Sim for defamation after the mayor falsely accused him of handing out illegal drugs, was the top vote-getter on council with more than 83,000 votes.
He celebrated by sharing a meme on social media showing him staring down Sim with laser eyes.
The inauguration for the successful candidates will be on Nov. 2.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2026.
Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
The giants that Diane Poulin used to live among are all dead, but she's hoping to protect the ones still left in Winnipeg.
“I had five mature elm trees right in front of my house that leaned over the street and formed a beautiful canopy, and they're all gone now,” she says.
In her backyard was the biggest of the bunch.
"He was like the grandfather of the neighbourhood … his canopy filled our backyard, and he’s gone."
The city’s trees are under threat from disease, pests and climate change, but there's limits on how much can be done to push back against these forces of nature.
So, Poulin and other advocates at Trees Please Winnipeg are also pushing to hold back another threat — property owners.
The group wants Winnipeg to put a bylaw in place to control the cutting of trees on private property, since there's currently little stopping owners from cutting down as many trees, however big, as they please.
Advocates like Poulin say protecting the urban canopy is crucial because of the many benefits trees bring to all residents, such as providing shade in heat waves, cleaning the air, controlling rainwater and beautifying the city.
With more than 80 per cent of the city’s trees on private property, there needs to be a way to preserve those trees, too, she says.
To ramp up pressure, Trees Winnipeg has pushed candidates in the municipal election to sign a pledge that includes a commitment to enact a bylaw that would control the removal of all tress more than 15 centimetres in diameter.
Many cities across Canada already have some form of private tree bylaw, which generally still allow cutting trees for development or when they're unhealthy, but not when someone just doesn't want to rake leaves anymore.
Surrey, B.C., passed protections in 2006, while cities such as Ottawa, Vancouver and Toronto have since joined in. Edmonton has one in the works.
"We're really falling behind on that front," Poulin says.
About 75 per cent of candidates have signed on to the pledge, she says, though there are some notable gaps, including incumbent mayor Scott Gillingham.
At a recent campaign stop, he said he was proud of his record on trees, which saw the city boost funding and its replacement rate for trees. But he would only commit to council talking about a bylaw protecting trees on private property, not passing one.
"We have to take a look at what it is and what the nuances are, what the requirements would be, what the terms of any bylaw would be," he said.
The mayor and council have been made aware of how passionate many Winnipeggers are about trees. When city leaders tried to fill a financial gap this summer by cutting the forestry budget, there was enough of an outcry they backed down.
But going so far as to tell private property owners what they can do with their trees can also raise passions.
In Toronto, for example, such bylaws have led to frustrated homeowners who have been told they can't cut down their mature ginkgo trees, despite the trees starting to produce their noxious-smelling fruit.
Such a bylaw could have also made it challenging for Paul Taylor to clearcut his tree-covered lot in Winnipeg, which stood as something of an extension of the city’s Assiniboine forest.
Taylor says he did it over security concerns, as the trees hid his old family home from the street, leading to break-ins and vandalism, so he flattened the whole place.
The business owner says he’s still in favour of some kind of bylaw protecting trees, as long as it leaves room for genuine safety and liability situations, and has some kind of replanting requirement.
"I'm generally supportive of protecting Winnipeg's urban tree canopy, and I don't see that as being at odds with being a developer," he says.
Neighbours that were asked about the clearcut didn’t jump to support laws to prevent it.
Brian Paterson, who has lived next door for 67 years and enjoyed the view of the ancient oaks and other trees that grew there, says that within reason, people should be able to decide for themselves.
“Would I rather the trees be there? Yeah, but he has a right to whatever he wants to do with his property.”
Across the street, Bianca Johnson says she loves the idea of protecting trees, but worries about how far a law may go, and what kind of hassle someone might have to go through to deal with, say, a diseased tree.
“In general it sounds great, but details are always the important nitty-gritty bit,” Johnson says.
“There’s always the personal rights versus communal rights.”
While such bylaws do limit the personal, it’s not so different from many existing laws, said Erna Buffie, who published a book earlier this year on saving the urban canopy.
“I have to pull a permit if I want to do any kind of renovation on my property or in my house, but I can go ahead and cut down a tree that's 100 years old without any repercussions,” she says.
“There's something fundamentally wrong with that.”
She says the current lack of protections means, for example, that the owner of the Lemay Forest was within their rights to cut down the roughly 17,000 trees on the property. The forest, and the graves within it, were only saved when the province stepped in to expropriate it last year.
With the city’s trees still largely unprotected, Poulin at Trees Please has also been working to add new ones.
She helped raise money to plant eight trees across from her house, even though she won't be around to see them grow to the grandeur of what they replaced.
"We do this for the next generation of Winnipeggers and kids and grandkids, who need to inherit a city that is livable for them."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2026.
By Ian Bickis | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.