Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Conservatives take Whistler, Pemberton ridings

Weston, Strahl easy winners as Conservatives form another minority government

Sea to Sky country voted blue in this week with a Conservative winning in both West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country and Chilliwack Fraser Canyon.

John Weston won comfortably over the Liberal’s Ian Sutherland, the Green’s Blair Wilson, and NDP Bill Forst in Whistler’s riding, while incumbent Chuck Strahl soundly defeated the NDP’s Helen Kormendy, and Green’s Barbara Lebeau in the riding that includes Pemberton.

“I’m delighted,” said Weston as he got ready to celebrate at his West Vancouver constituency office Tuesday night. “I had a great team behind me and there was three and a half years of hard work.”

Results were strong from all over Weston’s riding, the largest in Canada, with a population of 130,000.

“I have made an effort to get to know and to be at home in each community in the riding and I hope my work will be borne out with effective service for every community so that I can take those voices to Ottawa and make sure they feel effectively represented,” said Weston.

“It is such an honour to be the Member of Parliament for Canada’s Olympic riding.

“We had a great team in the Sea to Sky corridor and my family loves being in the corridor.”

Weston, a lawyer, was raised in British Columbia and educated at Osgoode Hall Law School and Harvard. He is multilingual, and speaks fluent English, Mandarin and French.

In   2006 Weston lost by just 1,000 votes to then Liberal Blair Wilson, who ran this time for the Green Party.

Wilson was turfed by the Liberals for not informing the party during the nomination-vetting process about financial and legal difficulties. He was eventually cleared of all serious charges but continued to sit as an independent. He announced last month he would run for the Green party in this election.

Weston received 44.7 per cent of the vote. The Liberal’s Ian Sutherland got 26.6 per cent, Green’s Blair Wilson 14.4, and the NDP’s Bill Forst received 14.3 per cent.

Approximately 60,013 of 94,144 eligible voters turned out to cast a ballot.

Across Canada this election marked the lowest voter turnout in history with only 59.1 per cent of eligible people voting.