Rod Crowe is the new mayor of Chase, defeating incumbent Rick Berrigan and three other candidates in Saturday’s civic election.
Crowe had 256 votes, finishing just ahead of David Lepsoe, who finished with 245 votes. Berrigan finished last with 193 votes.
Incumbents Ali Maki and Steven Scott, along with newcomers Fred Torbohm and Alison Lauzon, were elected to council.
Candidates
Mayor:
Rick Berrigan (incumbent)
Rod Crowe
Harry Danyluk
Beverly Iglesias
David Lepsoe
Council:
R.J. Dunn
Alison Lauzon
Ali Maki (incumbent)
Steven Scott (incumbent)
Fred Torbohm
Jon Walker
Stuart Wozniak
Boundary
Located on the southern end of Little Shuswap Lake, Chase is a village in the B.C. Interior that’s just under 60 kilometres east of Kamloops.
Population (2016)
2,286
History
The Secwepmc people inhabited the Chase area for millennia before European fur traders arrived in the late 1700s.
The first fur trading post was set up in Kamloops in 1812, and settlers started claiming land before the first reserves were established in 1861.
First among non-Indigenous inhabitants was Whitfield Chase, a man from New York who headed for the region amid the Cariboo gold rush.
He was a farmer who settled in the Shuswap Prairie in 1865. Chase died before the village that took his name started to develop on a townsite situated on land that an American logging company had bought from his son in 1907.
For much of its history, logging has been Chase’s central economic driver. A mill was set up on 70 acres that were purchased from the Chase family — the facility came to be known as the Adams River Lumber Company.
The mill would come to be known as the third-biggest in B.C., and it had the highest stack in the province before it closed in 1925.
Later mills would pop up in Chase right up to 2005.
Median total income of couple economic families with children (2015)/B.C. median
$93,952/$111,736
Political representation
Federal
Mel Arnold (Conservative)
Provincial
Todd Stone (BC Liberals)