Pete Fry, the two-term city councillor who presented himself as the main counterpart to incumbent Ken Sim and his administration, has defeated Sim in a commanding victory to become Vancouver’s next mayor.
Fry, who emerged on the campaign trail as a unified voice for progressive candidates when he was judged the likeliest to beat Sim, led his Vancouver Greens to an overwhelming victory in Saturday’s municipal election.
“Thank you for putting your trust in me and my team here. We’re not going to let you down,” Fry told a room of screaming supporters during his election speech. “We love this city a lot and we’re here to work for this city and fight for the city.
“Yeah we have some problems, but what city doesn’t have problems? The reality is how we face those problems and how we face this together. We have a great team, we have some great ideas, and we’re going to dive right in.”
Fry built an early lead that only kept growing. With 80 per cent of polls reporting, Fry led Sim by some 23,000 votes.
Colleen Hardwick of TEAM was projected to finish third while Kareem Allam of the Vancouver Liberals was on track for a fourth-place finish, ahead of Vote Vancouver’s Rebecca Bligh in fifth.
The Green Party leader was met with chants of “Fry, Fry!” when he got up on stage at the party’s election night headquarters, and the room erupted when he announced Sim had called him to concede.
“Ken was very gracious in offering his assistance on making sure I steward the city well and he’s there to help, and I really appreciate that offer and it will help with the transition,” said Fry.
In his concession speech, Sim told his supporters that being elected to the office of mayor was the “highlight of my life.”
“When I’m on my deathbed, I’ll look back at this time and it’s probably the most meaningful thing I’ve been involved with.”
Fry’s win was one of many projected victories for the Greens on the night.
The party was on track to elect at least two city councillors in Annette Reilly and Stephanie Smith. Another Green candidate, Camil Dumont, was also slated to win a seat on city council, while Bridget Burns was in a tight race for the 10th and final seat.
At that same time, all three of the party’s Park Board commissioners were on pace for victory: Tom Digby, Spencer van Vloten, and Breanne Smart.
If all those wins hold, it would represent the entirety of the Greens’ slate of candidates.
“The results are still coming in, so there’s a lot to still process,” said Fry, surrounded by his team on stage. The mayor-elect went on to thank several members from the party.
Other candidates projected to win a seat on council were COPE’s Sean Orr, Chloe Leslie, Devyani Singh and Solomon Yi-Kieran, as well as OneCity’s Lucy Maloney.
Sim’s ABC Vancouver was on track to elect at least one councillor, Mike Klassen, but no Park Board commissioners.
“Obviously tonight voters wanted to go in a different direction,” said Sim. “Not just in the mayor’s office, but with council, Park and School Board as well. I think it’s important we acknowledge that.”
Fry and the Greens ran on promises of affordable homes and transportation; sustainable growth and building green; and community safety.
On crime and public safety – a key issue in the election – the Greens promised to create a team of outreach workers tasked with handling non-emergency calls for the city’s homeless or anyone suffering from addiction, and fund crisis intervention and de-escalation programs.
The Greens also committed to providing “safe and appropriate places” for the city’s homeless to gather and access support and health care, where drug use would be permitted. Fry has said this would prevent people from being “completely untethered or lost on our streets.”
“So the key is for us to find somewhere better for them to go and say, ‘you know what, you can’t do this here in the doorway of this person’s business, but you can go over there, which is a more appropriate space,’” Fry told CityNews in an interview this week.
The Green leader has said the non-binding plebiscite question that asked Vancouverites if they wanted to strengthen the city’s health bylaw to ban open-air hard drug use – like fentanyl, methamphetamine and heroin – in public spaces was a “very bad idea.”
Other campaign promises from the Greens include using city land for affordable housing; completing the major bikeway network; renewing the Vancouver Aquatic Centre; and introducing ranked ballot voting for mayoral races instead of first-past-the-post.
Fry emerged as the unified voice of progressive candidates when Stephanie Allen of COPE quit the mayoral race followed by OneCity’s William Azaroff – a decision made to unite behind one candidate. Fry said Vancouver voters saw him as the “natural antidote” to Sim after his four years in office. He’s described himself as “the only consistent opposition” to Sim on council in that time.
Fry, who came to Canada from Ireland as a child, was first elected to city council in 2018 after receiving the second-highest vote count. He was narrowly re-elected to a second term in 2022.
Those successes followed election defeats in 2014 in the Vancouver municipal election, and 2016 in a B.C. provincial byelection in Vancouver-Mount Pleasant during which Fry was a member of the Green Party of British Columbia.
Prior to serving on council, Fry worked as a graphic designer and communications consultant.
