Last updated: November 2, 2026, 7:45 p.m. ET. All seventeen municipalities have now certified or formally declared their results, and two of the three school-board seats that were open at publication are now settled. One seat remains uncalled — the Bluewater trustee seat for Saugeen Shores and Arran-Elderslie — and one turnout figure is still unpublished. See the note below.

The ballots are counted. Across the 17 municipalities of Bruce and Grey, voters have chosen 17 mayors, 17 deputy mayors, more than 60 councillors and a slate of school board trustees to a four-year term that begins November 15.

The results are now clerk-certified, with one exception. Every one of the region’s seventeen municipalities has published a certificate or declaration of results, and this article uses the certified numbers wherever they exist. What remains open is not a municipal count but a single school-board one: the Bluewater trustee seat covering Saugeen Shores and Arran-Elderslie still cannot be called, because Arran-Elderslie has published no trustee count. Both other school-board races have closed — the Bruce-Grey Catholic seat when the board named Francis-Joseph Gross its trustee, and the French-public Conseil scolaire Viamonde seat, which the City of Barrie’s clerk certified on November 2, returning Eric Lapointe. Southgate’s school-board rows also remain in its unofficial table. Certification has already changed one outcome in this election. Every race still being counted, and every change made to this article after publication, is logged in the updates section at the end.

The list of names is not the story. The margins are.

Four head-of-council races were decided by fewer than 160 votes. One school board seat was decided, reversed and re-decided during certification. Another mayoral race was won with 32.9 per cent of the vote. And eleven of the region’s most senior municipal jobs — four mayorships and seven deputy mayorships — were filled without a single ballot being cast at all.

That last number is the one the campaign never really addressed. It is also the number that will shape the next four years.

The vote was decided in the margins

Start with how close it got. In South Bruce, Mark Goetz is mayor by 63 votes out of 2,375 cast. In The Blue Mountains, Marni Moreau is mayor by 85. In Southgate, Jason Rice beat Brian Milne by 146. And in Hanover, Warren Dickert unseated incumbent mayor Sue Paterson by 156 — the only mayoral defeat in either county.

In South Bruce Peninsula the mayoralty itself went on a plurality: Jay Kirkland won with 1,769 votes, or 32.9 per cent, in a four-way race that split the rest almost evenly. Bill Klingenberg finished 220 behind him.

And then there is the race that did not survive the count.

On the evening of October 26, unofficial results showed Angela Forder leading Scott Cowley by 84 votes in the race for the Bluewater District School Board trustee seat covering Meaford and The Blue Mountains. During certification the following day, the Clerk of The Blue Mountains identified an error in the number of votes initially reported to Meaford. The Meaford clerk re-certified the seat: Scott Cowley, 3,881 to 3,685.

Two weeks of campaigning, an 84-vote lead and a headline, reversed in a day — because a participating municipality’s count was wrong. It is worth remembering that when reading any election-night number, including the ones in this article.

The seats nobody voted for

Eleven head-of-council or deputy seats were filled by acclamation:

• Mayors acclaimed (4): Kevin Eccles, West Grey; Sue Carleton, Georgian Bluffs; Steve Hammell, Arran-Elderslie; Chris Peabody, Brockton.
• Deputy mayors acclaimed (7): Scott Greig, Owen Sound; Robert Uhrig, Meaford; Barbara Dobreen, Southgate; Grant Pringle, Georgian Bluffs; Jennifer Shaw, Arran-Elderslie; Rory Cavanagh, Kincardine; Jim Hanna, Huron-Kinloss.

In Georgian Bluffs and Arran-Elderslie, both the mayor and the deputy mayor were returned without a vote. Arran-Elderslie went further: the Arran Ward councillor was acclaimed too, leaving only four of its nine council seats actually contested.

Add the council and school board acclamations and the picture sharpens. Both Kincardine ward seats in Wards 1 and 3 were filled unopposed. Both Mildmay-Carrick seats in South Bruce were acclaimed. On the Bluewater board, five of nine trustees were acclaimed. On the Bruce-Grey Catholic board, four of six.

That is a structural fact of two-tier politics in this region: nomination papers, not ballots, decide a meaningful share of who governs. It also speaks directly to the turnout story.

Turnout, where clerks have published it:

West Grey is now the only municipality in either county without a published turnout figure. Hanover’s 35.5 per cent — 2,624 of 7,390 eligible electors, published by the town clerk on the town’s official results page — was added after publication, as were Southgate’s 26.6 per cent and Arran-Elderslie’s 34.0 per cent, both released after the first draft.

Two comparisons stand out. Southgate, at 26.6 per cent, was the lowest-turnout municipality in either county — 2,181 of 8,211 electors, down from 27.19 per cent in 2022 — and Georgian Bluffs, at 31.7 per cent, was the second lowest; it also acclaimed both its mayor and deputy mayor. Meaford, at 44.9 per cent, was up almost eight points from 36.77 per cent in 2022, on the strength of a genuinely competitive three-way race over an open mayoralty. The municipality with the most contested head-of-council race turned out the most improved vote.

Owen Sound held flat. With 7,276 ballots cast from 18,691 eligible electors, the city’s turnout was 39 per cent — the same rate it recorded in 2022, but on an electorate that had grown by 2,731 voters. In raw terms, 1,046 more Owen Sounders voted than four years ago. They cast 93 per cent of their ballots online and 7 per cent by telephone, and 80 declined their ballots outright.

Across the province, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario put turnout at 37 per cent, up from 32.9 per cent in 2022 — so the region’s mixed picture is roughly the provincial one, with turnout rising sharply in a few municipalities and holding flat in others.

Owen Sound: continuity, by nearly eleven points

The city’s mayoralty was the marquee race: an open seat, six candidates, and an office that now carries strong-mayor powers under provincial law — authority over the budget and some staffing decisions that no previous Owen Sound mayor has held.

Richard Thomas is the city’s next mayor with 3,522 votes, 49.9 per cent. Carol Merton, who gave up her council seat to run, finished second with 2,763 (39.1 per cent). Andrii Zvorygin took 421, Mike Seiler 142, Jodi King 138 and Ray Botten 76.

The council result tilts further toward continuity. All three incumbents who sought re-election — Melanie Middlebro’, Brock Hamley and Suneet Kukreja — were returned, and Middlebro’ topped the poll with 4,235 votes. Of the seven councillors-elect, only three are new to council; two of the four familiar faces, Thomas and former deputy mayor Brian O’Leary, are returning from previous terms.

Owen Sound council, certified:

Scott Greig was the only candidate for deputy mayor and returns to the office by acclamation. The new council’s inaugural meeting is November 16 at 5:30 p.m. in Council Chambers at City Hall.

The question hanging over that result is the one The Owen Sound Current put plainly the morning after: with turnout flat at 39 per cent and a council that looks a lot like the last one, is this a mandate for continuity, or a sign that the change the campaign kept promising never showed up on the ballot? Richard Thomas inherits the first strong-mayor budget Owen Sound has ever had. That will answer it faster than any post-election analysis.

The contested races that mattered

Hanover produced the only mayoral upset. Warren Dickert unseated Sue Paterson 1,362 to 1,206 — a 156-vote change of leadership in a town that had a mayor on the ballot.

Meaford was the clearest ballot question in either county. Shirley Keaveney succeeds the retiring Ross Kentner with 51.7 per cent, beating Justin Perks (2,342) and Caryn Colman, whose campaign to stop the pumped-storage proposal ended before voting began but whose name stayed on the ballot and drew 115 votes. Keaveney has been the most explicit candidate in the region on water capacity as an economic asset: she has said Meaford uses only about 7 per cent of its water capacity and could support a data centre. Perks ran a more cautious line on large industrial water demand.

Kincardine elected Barb Fisher with 42.7 per cent in a three-way race, beating Kenneth Craig (37.4 per cent) and Bill Stewart (20.0 per cent).

Saugeen Shores stays with Luke Charbonneau, who took 50.5 per cent outright against Brian Putman. The town also elected Diane Huber as deputy mayor (4,793) and Bud Halpin as vice-deputy mayor (4,733) — the only municipality here with a vice-deputy office.

The Blue Mountains elected Marni Moreau and Rachel Gilliland, both new to council, to the mayor’s and deputy mayor’s chairs. Their margin in the mayor’s race was 85 votes, and the new pair arrive with data-centre policy already framed as a live local question — Moreau campaigned on a moratorium.

Grey Highlands returned Paul McQueen as mayor with 44.5 per cent and elected Joel Loughead as deputy mayor. Its council includes Dave Meslin, whose position on data centres is the most categorical in the region: “I will oppose any applications for a data centre in Grey Highlands. Our farmland is precious… My answer is a big NO.”

Northern Bruce Peninsula re-elected Milt McIver over Brad Gesinghaus, 59.8 to 40.2, and returned Rod Anderson as deputy mayor. The map that ran through the peninsula — incumbent continuity versus a challenge from outside council — went to the incumbents.

Brockton acclaimed Chris Peabody as mayor but contested everything else: Tim Elphick took the deputy mayor’s chair with 73.8 per cent over fellow councillor Kym Hutcheon. Incumbent councillor Mike Crawford finished seventh and lost his seat.

Huron-Kinloss gave Don Murray the most decisive mayoral mandate in the region — 70.5 per cent over Shawn Plante.

Chatsworth, the only municipality voting by mail, elected Shawn Greig mayor with 64.3 per cent and Diana Rae deputy mayor by 99 votes, with mail ballots still being counted as the rest of the region reported.

Southgate elected Jason Rice over Brian Milne by 146, with five new councillors alongside Barbara Dobreen, acclaimed as deputy mayor.

Arran-Elderslie released percentages rather than vote counts for its four contested ward races; each of the four winners took a majority of the votes cast in their own ward.

What the winners said they’d do

During the campaign, Bayshore Broadcasting put the same questionnaire to every candidate in 16 municipalities. Of the 119 officials elected across Bruce and Grey, 83 answered it — including 81 on the question of artificial intelligence data centres, which appeared on every single questionnaire.

That answer set is now the most direct read we have on what the incoming councils have already committed to.

On data centres, the elected class is more sceptical than the province. The answers range from outright refusal to cautious frameworks, with very few unconditional supporters:

• Grey Highlands elected an unqualified opponent (Dave Meslin) and a council that otherwise wants policy in place before any application arrives.
• The Blue Mountains elected a mayor who supports a moratorium and a deputy mayor who frames it as an environmental and infrastructure protection question. Councillor George McLeod’s entire answer was: “We should ban them.”
• Hanover elected a mayor, Warren Dickert, who wants the town “educated” on impacts first, and a councillor, Daniel Parrish, who wants an immediate stance against siting one near populated areas.
• West Grey returned a mayor, Kevin Eccles, who is conditionally open — “if they are free enterprise ventures, then the municipality should be free of cost burden” — alongside councillors who want zoning strengthened so they cannot be built.
• Southgate elected Jason Rice, who said plainly: “I would not be interested in supporting these centres. The economical impact would be too great for our resources (ie water use).”
• Huron-Kinloss mayor Don Murray is the most explicitly neutral of the new mayors: “I don’t believe we should be automatically for or against a data centre before we know exactly what is being proposed.” His councillor Tracy Irwin reports the opposite from the doorstep: “I am hearing from our residents that AI data centre development is a non-starter for Huron-Kinloss.”
• Brockton is the outlier in the other direction — its incoming council includes two members, Mitch Clark and Gregory McLean, who have already moved on the file, with McLean bringing forward a motion supporting Kincardine’s submission to the province’s Data Centre Playbook.

Where the councils will collide with the province is on water and power. Almost every answer, for and against, identifies the same two constraints — electricity supply and water for cooling — and the same remedy, which is planning policy written before an application lands rather than after.

The other five clusters held steady. Among the elected officials who answered the “No. 1 issue” question, the mentions break down like this:

Read that against what candidates said before the vote and the ranking is stable: infrastructure, housing, growth and taxes, in that order, with housing and infrastructure inseparable in these towns. What changed is not the priorities but the arithmetic. The incoming councils inherit the same problems with, in eleven cases, no electoral mandate to act on any of them.

What happens next

The term begins November 15. The first business of every new council is procedural — declarations of office, a code of conduct, committee assignments — and it happens at inaugural meetings through late November. Confirmed so far:

The first real test is the budget. Owen Sound’s 2027 budget is the first to be drafted under strong-mayor powers, which give the mayor authority to propose the budget and, if council amends it, to veto amendments subject to an override vote. Every other municipality will set its 2027 levy the ordinary way. Given that taxes and spending showed up in 38 of the incoming officials’ answers about their municipality’s single biggest problem, the first budget cycle will say more about these councils than their inaugural speeches.

Watch the lame duck window. Outgoing councils hold office until November 15, and decisions taken between now and then cannot be revisited by the new council. That is a short window this year, but it is the one period in the four-year cycle where accountability runs downhill.

One school-board seat is still open, and it is the same one. The Bluewater trustee seat covering Saugeen Shores and Arran-Elderslie cannot be called: Saugeen Shores certified Julia Bates ahead of Katie Lutz 3,748 to 3,171, but its own results page marks that count “Pending Official Results from Arran-Elderslie” — and Arran-Elderslie has published no trustee count at all, its certificate covering council only. The French-public Conseil scolaire Viamonde seat, covering Bruce, Grey, Simcoe and Dufferin, closed on November 2, when the City of Barrie’s clerk — the designated clerk for the race — certified it: Eric Lapointe, the incumbent, was returned with 683 votes to Rachael Golem’s 551, a margin of 132. The Bruce-Grey Catholic seat covering Grey Highlands, Hanover, West Grey and Southgate was settled when the Bruce-Grey Catholic District School Board named Francis-Joseph Gross as its trustee for that area in announcing its 2026–2030 board. The count was Gross 434, Marin 283 — a reversal of the election-night result, which had Marin ahead by thirteen. And in Owen Sound, eleven candidates have been certified for eight River District board seats, sending that race to a November 9 vote.

Where a municipal clerk has certified a result, this article uses the certified number; where a race was still being counted or had not been released at the time of writing, that is stated. Corrections and tips: the feedback link below reaches the editor.

Updates

This article is revised as clerks certify results. Every change is logged here, newest first.

• November 2, 2026, 7:45 p.m. — The Conseil scolaire Viamonde seat is certified, and one school-board seat is left. The City of Barrie’s clerk — the designated clerk for the French-public seat covering Bruce, Grey, Simcoe and Dufferin — signed and posted the seat’s certified results on November 2, on a results page that until now carried “TBD” for both French-language board races. That row now reads Eric Lapointe 683, Rachael Golem 551: a margin of 132, and a second term for Lapointe, the incumbent, who first took the seat in 2022 with 709 votes to Saveira Caruso’s 298. It resolves the second of the two school-board seats that were open when this article was published, and leaves one: the Bluewater trustee seat for Saugeen Shores and Arran-Elderslie, which still cannot be called because Arran-Elderslie publishes no trustee count. Nothing else changed in this update — all seventeen municipalities remain certified or formally declared, West Grey is still the only municipality without a published turnout figure, and Southgate’s school-board rows remain in its unofficial table. (For anyone following the count closely: the City of Barrie now lists vote totals for both French-language races but still leaves their percentage column as “TBD”.)

• October 31, 2026, 2:20 p.m. — Georgian Bluffs has certified, and the Bruce-Grey Catholic seat is settled. The township’s Form EL28 Declaration of Election Results — one for council and one for school board, signed by Clerk Carly Craig and dated October 27 — is linked from its election page as “Official Election Results”, which makes all seventeen municipalities certified or formally declared. The declaration’s certified turnout is 3,546 of 11,176 electors, 31.7 per cent (the township’s earlier release said 3,544 of 11,177; the certified figure is used in the table above). Separately, the Bruce-Grey Catholic District School Board has announced its 2026–2030 trustees and named Francis-Joseph Gross as the trustee for Grey Highlands/Hanover/West Grey/Southgate, resolving the seat that the election-night count had put in Jessica Marin’s column by thirteen votes. Still open: the Bluewater trustee seat for Saugeen Shores/Arran-Elderslie — Arran-Elderslie’s certificate covers council only, and Saugeen Shores’ page says its count is pending Arran-Elderslie’s official results — and the Conseil scolaire Viamonde seat, which the City of Barrie has not certified. West Grey remains the only municipality without a published turnout figure. (The summary line at the top of this article was corrected a few minutes after posting to read two school-board seats remain uncalled — Bluewater Saugeen Shores/Arran-Elderslie and Conseil scolaire Viamonde — matching the count in the text. No figures changed.)

• October 29, 2026, 7:55 p.m. — Hanover’s turnout is now published. The town clerk’s official 2026 election results page carries a turnout table: 2,624 of 7,390 eligible electors voted — 35.5 per cent — alongside the Form EL32 declaration of elected candidates and the Form EL08 certificate of election results. Hanover is added to the turnout table above. That leaves West Grey as the only municipality in either county without a published turnout figure. No race outcome, margin, council seat or school-board position changed in this update, and the three school-board seats below remain uncalled.

• October 29, 2026, 1:45 p.m. — Source link fix only, no figures changed. West Grey has restructured its municipal website, and its 2026 results page moved (the old address now returns a 404). The source link at the foot of this item points to the new page. West Grey’s published numbers are unchanged on it: the same council results, and the same Bruce-Grey Catholic figures (Gross 434 / Marin 283). No race outcome, margin or turnout figure in this article has been altered, and the three school-board seats below remain uncalled.

• October 28, 2026, 11:30 a.m. — Four more municipalities have now certified: Chatsworth (Form EL-34, Certification of Election Results, dated October 27), Huron-Kinloss (“the official results … have been certified by the Clerk”), South Bruce (signed Certificate of Election Results dated October 27, recording 2,417 of 4,838 electors — 50%) and The Blue Mountains (“Certified Results for 2026 Election Now Available”). That takes the certified total to 14 of the 17 municipalities. Georgian Bluffs’ council results remain unofficial, Southgate’s school-board rows remain in its unofficial table, and no race outcome changed in this update.

• October 28, 2026, 10:00 a.m. — Published with unofficial results. Clerk-certified or officially declared at publication: Owen Sound, Kincardine, Meaford, Northern Bruce Peninsula, South Bruce Peninsula, Hanover, Brockton, Arran-Elderslie, West Grey (council and the acclaimed Bluewater seat) and Grey Highlands; Southgate has declared its council results official, with its school-board rows still shown as unofficial. Unofficial only: Chatsworth, Georgian Bluffs, Huron-Kinloss and South Bruce. Still uncalled: the Bluewater trustee seat for Saugeen Shores/Arran-Elderslie (no Arran-Elderslie trustee count published) and the Conseil scolaire Viamonde seat (Barrie lists it as pending). The Bruce-Grey Catholic seat for Grey Highlands/Hanover/Southgate/West Grey is reported at Gross 434 / Marin 283 on the designated clerk’s figures, pending the board’s certified list. Turnout had not been published for Hanover or West Grey. These figures will be updated as clerks certify.

• October 27, 2026 — The Bluewater trustee seat for Meaford/The Blue Mountains was certified to Scott Cowley (3,881) over Angela Forder (3,685), reversing the election-night result, after The Blue Mountains identified an error in the votes it reported to Meaford. This article uses the certified figure throughout.