Pete Fry, the son of Liberal MP Hedy Fry handidly won Vancouver Mayor by more than 20k votes thanks to other left wing candidates dropping out in favour of Fry and even canvassed for him. Ken Sim was a "moderate" but noticably shifted right in this election that did him but it was mostly the left wing coalition that voted Fry in so they didn't split the vote.

This is a lesson to next week's voting where left voters should vote whether their candidate realistically has a chance of winning then to vote for them but if they are nowhere close to having a chance to win then to vote for the best one who does have a chance. Island Conservatives Brennan Day and Anna Kindy for example could have gone another way if the voting wasn't split

Crazy how people are just okay with this. Name calling in politics teaches everyone that bullying is okay. It's not okay. Can we normalize calling this out?

Thank you Cllr Loughton for your service the past four years, it did not go unnoticed, you were a great asset to this city.

I would love to know what made 1000 people who voted for Dell and Caradonna decide not to also vote for Thompson and Loughton. I am very glad that Dave Thompson (who is a great councillor and active on this sub) squeaked by, but if half of these voters had chosen Dave and Krista as well, Krista Loughton would be #8 and we would not have a raging transphobe on council right now. Sad to see.

Yes, I'm posting late (it's 3:45 AM as I'm starting to compose this), because I can't sleep and also my partner and I spent a few hours late this evening into the wee hours of the morning removing all of my election signs; I'm missing 10 of them, so if you see any of my signs somewhere, please let me know!

Firstly, a message from me:

Last night's results weren't what I had hoped for, but I want to thank everyone who believed in my campaign: volunteers, supporters and endorsers, my partner, and those who voted for me. The conversations I had with you about safer and more inclusive schools, learning supports, funding for public education, and a transparent and accessible SD61 School Board didn't end last night. I'll keep showing up for students and families, and I hope you will too. Thank you, Victoria. Thank you to the 6,393 people who voted for me! And thank you to u/awkwardkestrel who keeps saying nice things about me! I'n happy to hear I'm rad!

I want to congratulate Maiya and Ann on their successful campaigns, and I want to say thank you to the other candidates: Tanner, Evan, Angela, James M., and Ken. Despite campaigning against one another, we were cordial with one another.

I also want to congratulate the other successful candidates for the SD61 Board of Education. Here are your nine School Trustees:

Trevor Barry and Tracy Humphreys (Saanich)

Maiya Beech and Ann Whiteaker (Victoria)

Andrea Mears (Oak Bay)

Andrew Gage (Esquimalt)

Alexandra Bomphray (Highlands / View Royal)

John Rice (Songhees Nation)

Chésa Abma-Slade (Esquimalt Nation)

Lastly, please pay attention to school districts and their boards of education (school boards). SD61 had a budget last year around $330 million, your public tax dollars, and there were a lot of political issues with the Board and the province that made the news. How we voted for the Board this time also changed! Despite all of that, I came across people on the campaign trail who said to me, "I don't vote for school board." Despite the 31,281 ballots cast in Victoria (a voter turnout of 41.44%) even fewer of those ballots voted for a school trustee candidate!

Anyway, I've talked and cried a lot tonight. Attached are a photo of me placing a campaign sign and a dog tax, a photo of Maple. Thank you, r/VictoriaBC !

- James Le, unsuccessful candidate (first runner-up) for SD61 School Trustee in the Victoria electoral area in 2026

My takeaway from the recent municipal election is that local politicians will most likely win if they cater to the older demographics. This goes for most levels of government, but even more so for municipal. A "young" leaning platform/campaign can get a lot of hype, but young people just won't show up for you in the end.

18-24 (the age bracket where the elections really matter) show up to vote around 55%, while every bracket from there is 60% up. That 55% of younger voters is actually really bad because of Canada's inverted population pyramid. So 55% of 18-24's is actually far less than 55% age 55-64's.

So if you are a young person living in a municipality with a lot of progressive older people, than good for you. If you are a young person with a bunch of conservative NIMBY's, well you are SOL because they are going to pull the ladder up from under you.

this thing has saved me from pissing myself countless times

Slates work.

Going into next municipal election, progressives, housing advocates, and left-leaning supporters need to pool their resources and run as political parties or slates.

I know it sucks, but gone are the days of independent municipal councils.

We’ve just had many NIMBY slates get into government, because the candidates worked together and used their resources to get out their voting base.

Also, Millennials & Gen-Z, we need to step it up when it comes to voting. We’re the biggest voting blocs, and still we don’t show up to vote. Our parents/grandparents generations are showing up in droves, which is why we got the result that we did tonight.

We have no shortage of people with opinions about what’s happening in our communities.

Housing affordability, development, traffic, infrastructure, public safety, property taxes, the list goes on.

And yet, when the opportunity comes to elect the people who will actually help make decisions about them, so many don’t participate.

Municipal elections are arguably the most important election to vote in because those results will directly affect your neighbourhood.

C’mon people. Do better.

—

Edit to add:

So far, the percentage of eligible voters who didn’t vote is 67% in Langford, 60% in Sooke, 68% in Colwood, 67% in Sidney, and 78% in Duncan.

It's deeply embarrassing that this many people in Vic have decided naked bigotry is not an issue for them.

Welp, enjoy having another time-wasting culture warrior on Council.

I was happy to lose Kim. Replacing her with the right-wing version is dumb as hell.

I'm one of the game's authors and a local, so I look forward to joining in myself. Sign up! The Black Company Roleplaying Game is a tabletop game of soldiers & sorcery based on the dark fantasy novels by Glen Cook.

With 26/29 polls reported so far it seems pretty clear that unfortunately Rishi Sharma and Save Our Saanich will be running the city for the next four years until they probably (hopefully) crash and burn since none of them understand much beyond kicking the can down the road.

As someone who has lived in Saanich for over 12 years I've come to really enjoy the convenience of the city's location and very much would like to actually own a home here. However even with a good income, no dependents, and a six figure inheritance in savings solely for using as a down payment I hardly see much of anything here pop up that I can afford that feels like an improvement over my often cramped rental accommodations.

I truly don't see a future in any reasonable time frame to be staying in this city where there will be meaningful improvements to the planning, design and what's being built or my ability to afford to actually settle down here.

I felt like I voted for a good selection of progressives and quality candidates if like to see and a few who I thought would be decent enough but also good alternatives to the SoS crowd. Only a single one of them has been elected.

Not that I am completely surprised, before any smart asses chime in I am well aware that reddit does not represent the majority of those who actually get out to vote and that the older generations have always been strong in getting out and voting.

On another note I was really hoping to just see a whole or at least mostly rejection of slates in Municipal elections as regardless of why they're running I don't think it's healthy to have political party groups in municipal elections.

I present to you, on voting day, my last map. 5 municipalities instead of 13. Thanks for all the fun comments everyone!

*Update: I didn’t realize that when I posted this Saanich had the exact opposite response. Voters there do NOT support the idea.*

Does this mean we could likely see a vote on amalgamation in the near future?

I didn’t realize there was this much support. This next vote would likely be much simpler, I suppose, if it is only the two municipalities instead of many.

Repost to clarify I found these and did not lose them,

Found on the 6a bus coming from downtown around 12:05am, if they are yours I’d love to get them back to you!

I'm curious why our elections have such low voter turnout. It's frustrating to think how those who can't be bothered could completely change an outcome.

If you didn't vote, why not?

Yesterday I watched a group of about 20 people at albert head lagoon get confronted for releasing balloons for a "memorial service". They claimed they were biodegradable so it was fine, and got angry and aggressive with the person who confronted them.

This is still littering. Biodegradable doesn't mean anything when a bird, fish, or sea mammal can easily eat that balloon by accident, choke on it, and die. There is also a protected bird sanctuary less then 5km away on the other side of the beach.

They got extremely aggressive with someone that confronted them. With the men in the group shouting threats, getting in their faces, shoving them, and calling them a lot of nasty words like "Re****ed liberal"

If you were in that group, you should be ashamed. Your behavuour was disgusting and when confronted with littering at the beach you chose to be hostile and use threats of violence to try and get your way.

Lastly, this is VICTORIA. Using liberal as an insult makes you look really really stupid. Conservative bigotry has no place here and your loud mouth spouting off made me go out and vote NDP.

Today I voted twice

It was even legal!

Early voting for the provincial election in the same place as the municipal election

Be sure to vote... It's kinda important

Its been here all day, its been entertaining to see the crows try to start a territory beef and then chicken out.

Hey Victoria! A brief respite from politics.

I’m a local developer and I’ve been working on an iPhone app called Slackwater for checking tides and currents.

I made it with this area in mind, I couldn’t find an app that was useful, mostly free, and beautiful. But I’d love to hear from others who spend time on the water or along the coast. If you give it a try, I’m curious how it fits into what you do and what would make it more useful.

Feedback on anything confusing or missing would be amazing. It’s easy to get used to your own app and miss things that are obvious to someone opening it for the first time.

Here’s the link: https://slackwater.xyz/

It’s iOS only right now, android is coming before the end of the year. Canadian tide stations need to be downloaded, it’s annoying but required by the government licensing. US and worldwide stations are included offline by default. It’s all open source too.

I’m working on the 2nd release right now so I could include any feedback you have.

Happy to answer questions here, and thanks to anyone who takes a look!

We went for a walk through Goldstream Park the other day and just loved the sight of the falling leaves and all the colors!

Later we drove from broadmead to Mt Doug and again there were pops of yellow leaves along the drive.

What are your fav places or even streets / drives for getting your hit of Fall colors? 🙂