Medicine Hat elects first female mayor, 5 female councillors

Medicine Hat's first female mayor elected in landslide Ina Sidhu reports on the election of Linnsie Clark as mayor of Medicine Hat and the selection of five other women to serve on council.

CALGARY — Medicine Hat has elected its first female mayor in a landslide victory over incumbent Ted Clugston.

Unofficial results show Linnsie Clark won with 13,151 votes, or 66 per cent of the total ballots cast.

That's in comparison to outgoing mayor Clugston, who unofficially received 4,639 votes or 23 per cent.

“At first I just couldn’t believe it, it felt surreal,” said Clark.

“It’s a wonderfully diverse council, there’s some incumbents and lots of new faces from all different kinds of backgrounds.”

Clark won't be the only new face at Medicine Hat City Council.

Of the eight councillors elected on Monday, only two are returning: Robert Dumanowski and Darren Hirsch.

Meanwhile, five of the six new councillors elected are women: Karen Ramona Robins, Allison Knodel, Alison Van Dyke, Cassi Hider and Shila Sharps.

Newcomer Andy McGrogan was also elected.

Five people joined the race for mayor in Medicine Hat and 33 people ran for city council.

REPRESENTATION MATTERS

Clark is making history along with Calgary’s newly elected mayor Jyoti Gondek who is also the first female mayor in Calgary’s history.

Edmonton now has eight women on council. Last term there were two women.

“It makes me really excited about the future of Alberta. It makes me really excited for a future for my own children. It makes me excited for a future of future generations of women running and winning,” said Sarah Elder-Chamanara, the founder of Madame Premier.

The boutique in Calgary’s Inglewood community promotes gender equality in politics.

Elder-Chamanara who opened the physical store in the summer is a former political staffer in B.C.

She said the results at the polls are welcome.

“Having more women and having more people of colour, having different conversations will mean that better decisions are going to be made.”

But even more diversity is still needed say experts in women and gender studies.

“White women don’t necessarily represent the interests of more diverse kinds of women in terms of like Black women, Indigenous women, women of colour,” said D.A. Dirks, department of humanities, Mount Royal University.

Dirks said it is positive to see more women in city hall but there still needs to be even greater representation to reflect the Black, Indigenous and LGBTQ communities.

“It’s more complicated than just saying, yay more women that will be good for everybody.”

“What does that mean in terms of the other political affiliations they bring, their other social identities, their other community commitments?” said Dirks.