Pete Fry is Vancouver’s next mayor.

Fry won the municipal election Saturday, defeating incumbent Ken Sim and six other challengers vying to lead British Columbia’s largest city.

He celebrated with supporters at a campaign party in Vancouver and held a lead throughout the night.

Fry embraced his mother, longtime Liberal MP Hedy Fry, and thanked his supporters and fellow candidates in a speech.

“We love this city a lot, and we’re here to work for the city, to fight for the city,” he said.

Fry leads the municipal Green Party and was first elected as a city councillor in 2018.

Preliminary results show he received about 90,000 votes while SIM received about 63,000.

He won a mayoral race that highlighted quality-of-life issues and focused on housing, transportation, and the economy.

Ultimately, Fry bested incumbent mayor Sim, whose re-election platform emphasized affordability and public safety and included a promise of a zero per cent property tax increase.

He frequently clashed with Sim and his more right-leaning ABC councillors during council meetings and has acknowledged benefiting from the narrowing of the progressive field after several other candidates withdrew from the race.

Fry said Vancouverites elected him as the city’s first Green mayor because the party prioritizes values-based policy over partisan issues, adding that he would take an idealistic approach to governance.

“The values that we bring are about respect for the earth, participatory democracy, working together, non-violence, being supportive, being nice. And I think that’s really where we can shine,” he told reporters on Saturday.

He said investments in housing are a key ask for the federal government, and that he will ask the province to support community safety, including help dealing with street disorder.

Fry said he would dive in and set partisan politics aside.

“At the end of the day, we’re going to have a council that’s working for Vancouver.”

With Sim’s ABC Vancouver likely reduced to one councillor, alongside a single OneCity candidate, Fry said, “I think we’re going to be able to make it work.”

“My priority is to get folks who are working for the betterment of Vancouver. Not their political interests, not their partisan interests, but they want to get stuff done for Vancouverites. That’s where we’re going to make a difference.”

The ballot also included two plebiscite questions brought forward by Sim.

One asks voters if they’re in favour of the city “strengthening its laws to forbid open-air hard drug use in public spaces,” which is already illegal in B.C., while the other asks if the city should ask the province to convert portions of the old St. Paul’s hospital into a “secure medical facility” with 100-plus involuntary care beds.

The results of the plebiscite questions won’t be known until Oct. 21.

Fry’s victory in Vancouver was one of hundreds of local elections across the province on Saturday.

In Surrey, Doug McCallum beat incumbent Brenda Locke in the mayoral race.

McCallum served three terms as mayor but lost to Locke in 2022.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2026.