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Richard
Walton Elected |
When Janice Harris was elected Mayor a year ago I was beginning to suspect that riders were becoming a political force on the North Shore. I'm sure of it now. All three of the mayoralty candidates the community supported were elected and four of the six councillors on the trail-friendly slate also won their seats.
But before we get too proud of ourselves we really need to give credit where it's due; to former councillor Ernie Crist. Without Ernie stirring the pot, calling us barbarians and generally spreading disinformation, it would have been impossible to mobilize riders like we were able to this time around. On Saturday I spent some time on the phone reminding riders to vote and asking them to remind their friends to vote. Every single person I spoke had either voted already or were getting ready to exercise their franchise. The threat of trail closures and an outright ban on mountain biking on Fromme as proposed by then-councillor Crist scared riders enough to get them to the polls. Thanks for that - we couldn't have done it without you.
Of the three North Shore municipalities, North Van District was the most important for riders and our slate did extremely well. Richard Walton received over 44% of the votes and he won by a very significant margin of 2400 votes. With four councillors we supported occupying the top four positions in terms of votes cast, the future of mountain biking on the Shore is looking brighter than it has for some time.
Pam Goldsmith-Jones unseated incumbent Ron Wood in West Van and Darrel Mussatto did the same to Barbara Sharp in North Van City. Both Goldsmith-Jones and Mussatto have been supportive of mountain biking and in particular of the North Shore Mountain Bike Festival and Conference.
Now I'm hopeful we can return to our regular programming and not have to worry about politics for some time. Fingers crossed.
Mayor-Elect Richard Walton giving his acceptance speech.
