KENORA — Since Kenora, Keewatin and Jaffray Melick amalgamated in 2000 to form the City of Kenora as it is today, there has never been a mayoral acclamation — until now.
That’s according to records of the municipality and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.
Mayor Andrew Poirier has been mayor since 2022, when he won the race against two other candidates. On Aug. 26, 2026, he was acclaimed as head of council for the next four years.
“I built up a campaign to run on because I did expect to have competition, whether it was one person or several, so I was actually quite surprised myself finding out that I was acclaimed,” he said.
In the region, six other municipalities have had acclaimed mayors or reeves in the 2026 municipal election: Alberton, Chapple, Ear Falls, Emo, Lake of the Woods and Sioux Narrows-Nestor Falls.
One theory as to why fewer candidates have been running for office is online abuse and negativity.
Poirier served on city council from 2003 to 2009, and again from 2018 to 2022, he said.
Looking forward, much of his plans for the upcoming term are a continuation of the issues he has begun to chip away at this past term, with improving the safety of the downtown core at the top of his mind.
“We still have issues in our downtown core; we are further along in that process but is it where we want it to be? Absolutely not,” said Poirier.
The city has a community safety and wellbeing plan, as well as a member of staff who is solely dedicated to the role now, something that Poirier said was lacking before.
“We’ve also brought in a lot of stakeholders and other agencies to help us tackle some of these very complex issues,” he said, and added that the city needs to continue to advocate for treatment centres and all types of housing.
Poirier also said they will continue to work with different levels of government to address the infrastructure deficit.
“We can’t do it ourselves; this is absolutely impossible for a community our size with our tax base and our user fee base without inflicting major pain on residents, and we can’t do that.
If we work on the housing file, which will spur on commercial investment, which will spur on water and wastewater, adding users to our system, all those things will help reduce the burden on annual increases in those areas, and we need to do that,” he said.
“We are starting to do that, we are beginning to see some positive effects in those areas, but we have to continue on.”
Another priority over the next four years identified by the mayor is continuing to build relationships with surrounding First Nation communities, which he said they’ve made positive strides on.
While there will be no mayor to vote for in the election, Kenora has 13 candidates running for the six council seats.
“Hopefully we have a council that wants to work together and do good things for the community and not get bogged down in areas that we have no jurisdiction over.
“That’s a concern that I have, just reading some of the profiles and some of the comments that people are making … they’re going to find out very quickly what areas they can deal with and what our responsibilities are, and what the responsibilities of other levels of government are.”
Poirier spoke about Kenora’s comprehensive development program that the new council will take beginning next week.
Overall, he said he’s looking forward to a fresh council and is ready to dive into the budget with them right away.
There are “an awful lot of issues to grapple with,” he said, “but there’s some good things that are happening and hopefully we can continue on that path.”
