Post Election Coverage: What You Did Wrong

October 19th, 2026 – Sicamous, BC

We want to give a big shout out to all the great people who threw their hats into the race this autumn. It was an exceptionally elite class of candidates this year (yes, that is our mandatory pre-analysis pandering). The ballots are now officially complete and it is time for our hard-hitting post-election analysis. May the winners be showered with absolute praise, and may the losers be mocked and booed until our throats are sore. Actually, loser sounds a bit too harsh, so let’s just call them the candidates that did not win. Here is the newsroom breakdown of exactly what you did right, and what you did wrong.

The Candidates That Did Not Win:

Mike Day

Did you even have signs? To run a political campaign without a single piece of roadside corrugated plastic absolutely exudes confidence. Maybe a little too confident, one might think. You seemed relatively down to earth but, uh, you were also wearing a hat indoors at the all candidates forum. No, we do not actually think this is a massive crisis, but we are certain this move effectively lost you the immediate vote of all the local traditionalists who absolutely hate it when someone keeps a cap on inside. I guess if you are confident enough to navigate a campaign without signs, you are also confident enough to wear a hat indoors. What is people’s issue with wearing hats indoors, you ask? Well, we are all openly wondering what you are hiding under there. Thick, luscious locks? An oily, barren wasteland? What is going on under the brim, Mike, and do you want to get in on our upcoming trial run of Spartan Root Growth Activator? We are going to settle the regional debate once and for all: can we single handedly stop “The Editor’s” male pattern baldness?

Sheila Devost

During the public forum, you announced that you were either a senior or going to be a senior soon, we do not really remember the exact timeline. And then you went on to talk extensively about making improvements for seniors. It comes off as kinda self serving, but it was an amazing job at catching the senior vote, which remains our largest local voting block.

It looked like you were going to be the absolute runaway candidate with the senior crowd right up until all the candidates were handed the identical opportunity to butter up our longest-term residents down at The Manor, instantly rendering all your hard work at the forum completely irrelevant. After accidentally alienating anyone
not turning 65 in the next four consecutive years, we did not see a direct route to recovering your campaign momentum. In the end, you missed the mark by just 38 votes. If every single hockey player on the Sicamous Eagles was old enough and legally able to vote twice, you would have been right in there!

Ken Malin

Talk about being aggressively prepared. This guy started campaigning, what, was it last year? Local Business Awards, Local Legend Awards, and he was the very first candidate to have signs popping up around the town ditches. But Ken, you do not return our calls, and you do not return our emails. If you are not willing to freely speak with independent, blue-collar journalists, how are your residents supposed to believe you will make yourself available to them when real issues hit the ledger?

Ken is a remarkably well rehearsed public speaker. With the specific way he snatched the microphone at the forum, holding it directly 13/16th of an inch away from his mouth consistently, we could not help but notice he sounds exactly like Jimmy Stewart in “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Ken wants to live, and he wants to live in Sicamous as our councilor. But how long did you actually live inside the town before you decided you could “do it better” than we already have been doing it the entire time? Don’t fret, Ken. Several candidates proved this year that if at first you do not succeed, you simply try and try again. For your next campaign, just make sure you remember Sicamous Local News at the Local Legend Awards!

Malcolm Makayev (Incumbent)

Well, Malcolm definitely possessed the biggest signs. Very eye catching. Red, white, and red, absolutely beautiful. But with signs so aggressively large, it naturally led our investigative department to a critical question: what exactly are you compensating for, Malcolm? It could easily make a taxpayer wonder if you would be likely to waste municipal tax dollars on other extravagant things down the road. Some candidates did not even feel the need for basic signs, never mind high-capacity large ones.

The biggest issue with such massive posters is that it presents you as this larger than life corporate figure who is largely unapproachable to the working class. “Legs” said he was standing right next to you at the public meet-and-greet. He was feeling exceptionally shy but mustered up the courage to say a basic “hey”, hoping you would use the brief window to bring yourself back down to earth. His report back to the desk? “It was exactly like standing next to my own grandpa who could never remember my name.” Regardless of perspective and visual optics, we thank you for your years of service to the community. From what our scanners understand, you are the original founder and active president of the Eagle Valley Transportation Society, which remains a crucial transit service for residents of our community. Kudos!

Gregory Ogston

Greg claimed to be a solid local for 30-plus years. However, we happen to know for a fact that Greg lived down the highway in Malakwa. Not that there is anything wrong with that, we are just saying that maybe you would have functioned as a much better candidate for Director of Electoral Area E. We were at the forum for Director of Electoral Area E, and there did not seem to be a whole lot of heavy competition in that room. It is definitely something to think about for the next cycle. Furthermore, at the Legion meet-and-greet, everyone in the gallery agreed your company, Damm Good Eats, prepared some absolutely fantastic platters, but our food analysts
logged one glaring issue: you did not use D Dutchman Dairy’s fine variety of local cheeses, and some of the exotic fruits looked suspiciously foreign.

Kyre Dawn Smith

Time and time again, various people have tried to make municipal curbside garbage pickup a thing in Sicamous. And time and time again, the concept has failed. Your public endorsement of curbside pickup instantly lost you the vote of over half the local population. Our office recycles vigorously and only makes a trip to the regional dump every three months with proper waste management protocols. It costs us around $10 total. You would have to press pretty hard to convince us that we need to pay tax increases to be part of the solution for someone else’s garbage pile issues.

While we acknowledge that when you first move to Sicamous and find out there is no curbside collection, the natural human reaction is “that’s kinda weird,” you do end up getting completely used to it. Currently, most residents agree the independent solutions they have found are much more affordable, and we are right in the middle of an affordability crisis. We are just not ready for curbside pickup.

Greig Stephenson

Well, if it wasn’t ol’ John Wayne himself entering the room, though we suspect Greig is way more charismatic and a significantly better public speaker. Greig might not have been an active cattle wrangler, but he could have easily played one in a movie. Maybe our data is wrong, but our desk heard a rumor that Greig did not receive an initial invite to the private meet-and-greet session with the senior residents down at The Manor.

While Greig was eventually given the opportunity for a hasty make-up session, the damage to his campaign was already done. Greig was instantly perceived by the long-term voter block as out of the loop and unreliable. Late may be better than never, but late is absolutely not better than on time. Tough luck, Greig. You do not need every single senior in town to vote for your ticket, but you definitely need some of them!

Colleen Anderson (Incumbent Mayor)

Colleen comes off to the public gallery as an absolute pure professional: strong, assertive, intelligent, and highly capable. What is not to like? The catch is that Colleen has not liked a single one of our hard-hitting articles. She does not follow our media footprint on Instagram or Facebook. Do you even possess a sense of humor, Colleen? Do you even read? We are out here dropping genuine, high-velocity slapstick political parody bombs, and it is like you do not even know or want our social enterprise to exist!

That is all completely fine, Colleen. We maintain exceptionally thick skin at this desk and honestly, we know what is truly going on behind the scenes. You have simply outgrown the boundaries of municipal politics, and your constituents clearly recognized that fact. So what happens now? Well, from our perspective, David Williams is nothing but a provincial conservative place holder. We highly suggest you swoop into the party structure and provide the provincial team some real, strong leadership while giving the Shuswap proper representation on the provincial scale. David L. Williams’ 52.1% share of the ballot box in the 2024 election actually represents the closest a conservative-leaning candidate has come to the edge of losing this seat since the NDP last broke through in 1991. Just tell him that we said get out of your way.

John Flynn

John Flynn ran for councillor of Sicamous in 2022, but it didn’t work out. This time around, John stayed home and ran for Director of Electoral Area E. Now that the results have been released, it turns out our assumptions were correct: John lost. Still, he did a great job of representing the frustrations of residents. He really seemed to be on the attack, able to pull out anecdotal facts whenever necessary, plucking the strings of the angry and outraged. The only problem? A lot of us are kind of tired, John. We’ve been angry and outraged for a long time. Slightly more people want to put ideological differences behind us and make the hard decisions through a referendum. We’re trying to find common ground where we can all work together for common goals. We just have to figure out what those are.

Norman Nelson

Sheesh… At the candidates’ forum, Norman got asked a question and asked to hear it again. He then went over and read the question right off the card. After all that, he still needed a few minutes to find his notes because he couldn’t answer off the cuff. It was like watching a slow-motion car crash—by the end of it all, the audience had forgotten the question too. You lost right then, Norm.

We give you credit for sticking with it, but we can sum up Norm’s ideas in one run-on sentence: you have to build up the tax base, build houses so families can live here, create jobs for people to work, grow the film industry, etc. It was lots of “what” and no “how.” Most of the time, he just seemed to be agreeing with the other candidates. His best quality seemed to be how well he was dressed and his ability to agree with his advisories.

The Candidates That Didn’t Lose

Ian Baillie (Incumbent)

Ian had two kinds of signs: one red, white, and red, and the other red, white, and blue. We’re sure this isn’t indicative of anything, but we wanted to mention that we prefer the red, white, and red ones. We heard you live on the road just outside of town? We assume keeping this a secret was beneficial to you. You wouldn’t want residents to realize you’re only here extracting wealth from Sicamous to take it back home just outside the municipal boundary. Still, we’re going to let all that slide because you seem so pragmatic, and that is the quality we appreciate the most.

John Braun

John publicly announced his opposition to the “bear tax” (the Wildlife Attractant Bylaw). It was a good choice, considering residents recently stood united in strong opposition to the proposed bylaw. Hearing a very direct “NO” from a politician was quite refreshing.

You also received the longest question during the forum—one that took longer to read than the time they gave you to answer. But you did well. Most people zoned out halfway through it, Norm included. We were all very impressed that you only needed to hear it twice and didn’t need to go over and read it for yourself. We also want to note that John was the only candidate who used mobile campaign signs, which is a great representation of the unique innovation he will bring to council.

Ross Breitkreuz

Apparently people really like broccoli, and Ross has the winning “broccoli cut” to prove it. Ross was well-spoken and clean-cut. If you had taken the time to check out his website, you would totally understand why he is so comfortable speaking in front of crowds. While some may have found this impressive, for us it was not a selling point.

Ross mentioned working with our MLA, David Williams. At the time, we weren’t sure if working for our CPH (Conservative Place Holder) was a good thing, but apparently, residents agreed this was valuable, relevant experience that made Ross the right guy for the job. He also had that adorable video on Facebook showing him growing up “Sicamous-style,” yelling over the noise of the train.

Bob Evans (Incumbent)

Did you see Bob’s tiny signs? Talk about confidence; the only way he could exhibit more confidence is if he went with no signs at all, like Mike. People like Bob so much that members of his congregation are even being elected. How many votes does that give his congregation? Two? Three? His total support may have taken a small dip since the last election—we didn’t actually check—but he really did seem like a shoo-in for most residents we talked to. Something about a pastor with no strong business ties makes him incredibly trustworthy to local residents.

Leanne Hamilton

Leanne was the only candidate who felt it necessary to take the time to track down where our entire staff lived. That’s right, one by one, she came to every single Sicamous Local News staff member’s house alongside her husband, Dave. We have to admit, we felt pretty special. The only other person we know who walks around town that much is “Legs.” It’s exactly the kind of work ethic and determination residents want to see from candidates. She wanted it more than anyone else, and because of that, she got more votes than anyone else.

Siobhan Rich (Incumbent)

During the forums, Siobhan mentioned having referendums a few times. She talked about the success of the Wildlife Attractant Bylaw survey and did a really good job of presenting herself as someone willing to listen to the people. That’s pretty good. All around, she came off as willing to let the residents voice their input to make all the hard decisions for her—just what Sicamous wanted: a councillor whose vote is a reflection of the first and loudest to complain. Honestly, though, Siobhan’s dedication to the community is unquestioned by anyone. Her reputation for quality precedes her.

Gord Bushell (Incumbent)

We really weren’t certain Gord was making the right decision running for mayor. We weren’t of the opinion that Colleen was doing a bad job, but we also weren’t complaining about being given a choice to make. What we do know is that it’s very important to residents that our elected officials support local businesses. Now, there’s not a lot of opportunity to actually support the independent Sicamous Local News, which is what we assume is meant by supporting local business. But Gord, he did find the time to commend both “Legs” and “The Editor” for their innovation and creativity (not in those exact words, but we assumed that’s what he meant). He praised our entire team for creating what will soon be known as the greatest thing to ever happen to Sicamous. Or, at least, that’s what would have been the ideal reception for Sicamous Local News. We would also accept, “Yeah, it’s alright I guess.” In our imaginations, Gord achieved both of those sentiments simultaneously and won an election by an avalanche that could have very well been a toss-up.

Rhona Martin

Rhona has been the director of Electoral Area E for a whopping 36 years. We reckon she’s ready to retire, but so far, no one has come along that Rhona herself would be willing to vote for—sorry, Norm. It appears the most exhausting part of the job for Rhona is having to explain how the government works, because not a lot of us really understand it all too well. Funny thing: when we do find out how government decisions are made, we’re usually too preoccupied and angry to do anything more than write about it. We imagine that after 36 years in politics, Rhona has had her fair share of moments where she became preoccupied with anger in the face of government bureaucracy. At this point, Rhona’s career in politics has been so long she’s more of a civil servant than a politician, and we reckon she will keep doing the job until someone worth her vote comes along.

So What Now?

Well, council sessions resume in November and there will be some sort of swearing in ceremony that we will be sure to cover. In the mean time you should all be decorating your houses for Halloween. This year we have two awards we will be giving out.

#1. Largest Pumpkin Grown in the Recorded History of Sicamous Local News

#2. Best Decorated House(Halloween)

Closer to the 31st we will make a post online for nominations in the category of best decorated house. We will have a hand made trophy to award. FYI “Legs” house is not allowed to win. Good Luck to all entry’s happy election season and even Happier Halloween.

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