Bob Mackin
The winds of change blew throughout the Lower Mainland on Oct. 17, including West Vancouver, where challenger Kirk LaPointe abruptly ended Mayor Mark Sager’s District hall comeback.
Former media executive, newspaper editor and North Shore News columnist LaPointe upset the former real estate lawyer by a 1,416-vote margin, winning in 13 of the 14 ballot boxes. Third-place Sharon Thompson was 2,705 votes behind LaPointe.
It was LaPointe’s second mayoral campaign. As NPA Vancouver leader in 2014, he was runner-against incumbent Gregor Robertson of Vision Vancouver. LaPointe moved in 2022 to West Vancouver and promised governance and finance reform at District hall.
“People accepted the fact that I had been a journalist writing about the community and writing about its issues very early on upon moving here, and I think that that counted for something,” LaPointe said. “I think they saw that I was a person that was seeking greater accountability and integrity in operations of the government, and that by virtue of the way I wrote and the arguments I made, that they could trust what it was that was going to be as a leader, but really I had to still build a plan.”
Part of that plan includes reform at Metro Vancouver. In the aftermath of the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant scandal, LaPointe joined the accountability charter launched by Daniel Fontaine, the New Westminster city councillor who upset incumbent Mayor Patrick Johnstone on Oct. 17.
LaPointe said he applied lessons from the 2014 campaign to his 2026 West Vancouver bid. He started earlier and talked to more people throughout the municipality to build a broad platform.
“It’s almost like a giant investigative journalism project or a large public opinion poll, so I feel like I’ve got that now as the foundation to start as a mayor,” LaPointe said.
He has more to learn and expects to make mistakes along the way, but “I think what people see is that I’m prepared to be much more transparent about things, be much more open as a mayor.”
Sager was on the defensive in the final weeks of the campaign for his involvement in a collapsed deal to sell empty condominiums at Westbank’s Sanctuary complex in Horseshoe Bay. Sager denied conflict of interest allegations.
Sager, mayor from 1990 to 1996, returned to power in 2022 by unseating Mary-Ann Booth. In 2024, the Law Society of B.C. suspended Sager for two years after he admitted conflict of interest while acting as an administrator of an estate.
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