It’s official. Tumbler Ridge has a new town council.
The town (along with municipalities across the province, except for Chetwynd; more on that later) went to the polls on Saturday, October 17, and picked three new councillors and three old councillors to form Tumbler Ridge’s council for the next four years.
Chris Norbury—who has sat on council the last two terms—returns for a third, getting 430 votes, which means 86 percent of everyone who voted cast a vote for him.
Also returning is Nicole Noksana—who got 356 votes, or 71.2 percent of the popular vote—and Ron Hofman, who got 270 votes, or 54 percent.
Those three were the only returning council members to be running again. Both Roxanne Gulick and Kieth Bertrand chose not to return, while the sixth seat has been vacant since earlier this year when Luane Dusseault resigned for personal reasons.
The only person with no formal council experience to be elected was Shelly Quist (224 votes, 44.8 percent). Former mayor Don McPherson—who ran against Darryl Krakowka in the previous election and lost—has 18 years on council previously, four as mayor. He got 299 votes (59.8 percent). Finally, Sydney Doonan (377 votes, 75.4 percent) sat on town council a number of years ago as the school representative/teen councillor.
Now. If you’re doing the math, you’ll notice that between the six councillors, they got 391.2 percent of the overall vote. Which seems mad, but each person who voted could vote for up to six councillors, so the numbers add up to well over the 501 people who voted.
There were 1,943 estimated eligible voters in Tumbler Ridge, meaning only 25.78 percent of the population voted. That’s well below the provincial average of 32.8 percent and down from the 31.88 percent that voted in 2022.
Over the past three general elections, there has been a steady downward trend in municipal elector participation province wide. In 2022, Covid worries meant that only 29.2 percent of the provincial population turned out to vote. In 2018, 35.7 percent of the population voted and in 2014, 33.3 percent.
The six councillors join Mayor Darryl Krakowka to form the 2026–2030 Tumbler Ridge Council. Krakowka ran unopposed this election and was acclaimed.
In Chetwynd, there were only six candidates for council and one for mayor meaning every one who ran was acclaimed, even Trisha MacTavish and Darren Shankel, who ran for the two school trustee positions, were unopposed, meaning there was no vote in Chetwynd.
In Tumbler Ridge, there were three candidates for school trustee, with Ron Hofman (144 votes, 28.7 percent) and Sherry Beringer (155 votes, 30.9 percent) losing out to incumbent Roxanne Gulick (198 votes, 39.5 percent). She joins MacTavish and Shankel, Dawson Creek’s Christina Wards and Deanna Sudnik, and rural reps Kevin Kurjata and Chad Anderson on the school board.
The first meeting of the new council (and the swearing in ceremony) will be November 2.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
