The road to Cathedral Park runs through Boundary-Similkameen’s rematch: Donegal Wilson or Roly Russell on backcountry access

In August 2023 the Crater Creek wildfire burned most of Cathedral Park, the alpine wilderness southwest of Keremeos. It damaged the park’s 16-kilometre service road and two backcountry campgrounds, and it destroyed the bridge over the Ashnola River, the one that carries vehicles into the core of the park.¹

Twenty months later the bridge was still out. On 8 April 2025, in the budget estimates for the Ministry of Environment and Parks, Donegal Wilson, the newly elected MLA for Boundary-Similkameen, asked the minister about “the bridge that was essential for accessing the park’s core areas and the lodge’s staging facilities.” “This originally was a promise in spring of 2024,” she said, and the lodge in the park was losing its business for “a second season.”² Tamara Davidson, the Minister of Environment and Parks, promised a vehicle bridge, paid for in her budget, and said “compensation is not being contemplated at this time.”²

The park partly reopened that June. On 19 June 2026 the Province announced that the Ashnola River bridge had been replaced and the park was fully open again, at a total restoration cost of about $6.5 million, most of it federal disaster money.¹

That bridge is the race in Boundary-Similkameen in miniature. This is a riding of ranches, orchards, mills and parks, from Princeton and Keremeos to Oliver, Osoyoos and Grand Forks, and the way in matters. Two people who have both held the seat are asking for it again: Donegal Wilson, the Conservative MLA since 2024, and Roly Russell, the BC NDP MLA from 2020 to 2024.³

Donegal Wilson

Conservative Party of BC candidate; MLA for Boundary-Similkameen since 2024

Roots

Raised on a cattle ranch in the Otter Valley near Tulameen; lives in Keremeos, where she and her husband own a small-engine business

Before office

Executive director of the BC Snowmobile Federation for more than a decade

In her words

“My job has been to listen, show up, do the work and ensure Victoria’s decisions reflect rural BC.”

Portrait: Conservative Party of BC

Roly Russell

BC NDP candidate; MLA for Boundary-Similkameen 2020–2024

Roots

Born in the Boundary; farms near Grand Forks; PhD in ecology

Before office

Chair of the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary through the 2018 floods

In his words

“But rural BC is losing its voice. I’m ready to fight for that voice.”

Portrait: BC NDP

Where Donegal Wilson and Roly Russell stand, in their own words.

Before the argument, the comparison. Black Press put the same questions to every candidate in the riding this month, and both answered.⁴⁵ The rows below quote them, or the record, as published.

01 Donegal Wilson has spent her time in opposition asking ministers about the roads into the backcountry.

Wilson was raised on a cattle ranch in the Otter Valley near Tulameen and lives in Keremeos. Before politics she spent more than a decade as executive director of the BC Snowmobile Federation, and her party’s page says her opposition portfolio covered “access to the backcountry.”⁷

The bridge was one of several questions. The same afternoon in April 2025 she told the minister that volunteer clubs were being asked to put down a $10,000 deposit, invest $50,000 in a bridge and carry a road’s liability, and asked: “Is there going to be funding in the budget for access trails to parks, rec sites and trails?” The next evening she put it to the Minister of Forests, Ravi Parmar: “just about every access to a park or recreation site in the province does involve a forestry road to get there.”²⁶

In March 2026, in the forests estimates, she brought it home. Behind Tulameen the year before, she said, “it was almost five days before we were able to rebuild the road to get the equipment on the fire.” Then she asked why the Province tears out a road it could simply sign:

Donegal Wilson, MLA for Boundary-SimilkameenMinistry of Forests estimates, Hansard, 12 March 2026

“Just put up a sign: “Use at your own risk from here.” Then the next time we go in and we literally re-slope, replant, take out all the bridges.”

“Why can’t high-value recreation infrastructure just use the “Use at your own risk?” Why do we have to take it out?”

Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, Hansard, Issue 141, Committee of Supply.⁸

In the same exchange she reminded the minister that “In Keremeos, for instance, the Ashnola Road is actually maintained by highways on dirt up to 16 kilometres.” and that many owners cannot tell which kind of road they live on. A month later, debating a forestry bill, she described the view up the valley: “You can go up the Ashnola Valley right now, into the Cathedral Park — dead standing timber from fire all up the valley.”⁸⁹

Our count of the whole parliament found that 19 of her 450 speaking turns used at least one of thirteen access terms, and ten were about the roads; we set that record out in full in October.¹⁰ We cannot say her questions built the Ashnola bridge. The ministry had its contract and its fish window, and the money was mostly federal. What the record shows is an MLA who kept asking.

02 On the Kettle Valley Rail Trail, Donegal Wilson took the riding’s case to the floor of the House, and the Province has not reversed course.

The Kettle Valley Rail Trail runs past Princeton, Coalmont and Tulameen, and the section near Princeton has been closed since the floods of 2021. On 24 February 2026 Wilson gave the House a member’s statement on it:

She proposed making the trail “the province’s first lineal provincial park,” so that local groups could raise money and collect user fees for it.¹¹ In June the Province agreed to consider three of the four repairs the regional district had asked for, and it is still decommissioning a 17-kilometre segment near Brookmere.¹² We have covered the trail’s own story separately. In our view, pressing a decision that has not yet moved is still the job, and she has done it in writing and on the floor of the House.

03 Roly Russell farms near Grand Forks, led the rural file for the government, and has a record worth stating fairly.

Russell was born in the Boundary, has a PhD in ecology and farms near Grand Forks. He says “he got into politics in 2012 because he wanted better support for BC’s farmers.” He chaired the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary through the 2018 floods, and his campaign says he helped coordinate the recovery there and again after the atmospheric rivers of 2021.⁵¹³

As MLA he was parliamentary secretary for rural development. The province expanded its rural retention incentive to health-care workers in Oliver, Osoyoos and Okanagan Falls in 2024, and it gave the Village of Midway $165,000 for economic diversification after the Vaagen mill closed; his campaign says he helped bring both. He also says he helped deliver B.C.’s new emergency act and the expansion of rural broadband.³⁵

He has shown independence, too. “I’ve publicly opposed my own party’s proposal to allow processing of non-BC food on ALR land.” he told Black Press, and he has said himself that in his first term he spent more time doing the work than telling people about it.⁵³

04 On the roads into the backcountry, the public record belongs to Donegal Wilson.

In his four years in the House, by our count, Russell took 135 speaking turns, and none used any of the thirteen access terms.¹⁰ In fairness, he sat on the government side, where questioning ministers in estimates is not the job, and much of a government member’s work happens away from the floor.

But his 2026 campaign does not take up the question either. His campaign page speaks to costs, agriculture, health care and the rural economy, and his answers to Black Press name broadband, emergency management and a fuel-price cap, not the roads.¹³⁵ We found no 2026 statement from him on forest service roads, the Ashnola, Cathedral Park or the rail trail.¹⁴

In our view, that is the difference on the issue that defines this riding. Russell has a real rural record on farming, floods and services. Wilson has the record on access: the bridge, the roads behind it and the trail, put to the ministers by name.

05 Donegal Wilson left the Conservatives in September and was back within the month, and she has said why.

On 2 September 2026 Wilson left the Conservative caucus to sit as an Independent, citing a loss of confidence in the then leader, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, and concern about hires who had expressed sympathy for Alberta separatism.¹⁵ On 14 September she joined Peter Milobar’s new party. “I was leaving a caucus, not my principles, and that has not changed,” she said, and of the Conservatives: “I am not interested in rebuilding an old, failed party.”¹⁶³ After Findlay resigned, Wilson returned to the Conservatives under the new leader, Lorne Doerkson.³

Voters are entitled to weigh that. Her own account is that she left over the direction of the party, not her views, and this month she told Black Press: “I’m thankful to be back with the Conservative Party, and I’m here to stay.”⁴ In our view, an MLA who walked out over separatist sympathies in her leader’s office drew a line many rural voters would draw too, and nothing in those three weeks changed her record on the roads.

06 Boundary-Similkameen leans Conservative, and 1,438 votes decided it last time.

338Canada, which turns the published polls into a projection for every riding, rates Boundary-Similkameen “CPBC leaning.” Its update of 16 October puts the Conservatives at 52% and the BC NDP at 44%, each with a margin of eight points either way, and OneBC at 5%.¹⁷

Boundary-Similkameen, projected vote

338Canada, update of 16 October 2026. Bars show the projection; the thin lines show its margin either way.¹⁷

Donegal Wilson, Conservative

52%

Roly Russell, BC NDP

44%

Keith Pomeroy, OneBC

5%

0%35%70%

Keith Pomeroy is the third name on the ballot, for OneBC.³ The margins overlap, which is why this is a forecast and not a result. 338Canada’s simulations gave the Conservatives an 89% chance of winning the seat on 16 October, and the BC NDP 11%.¹⁷

In 2024 Wilson won with 11,935 votes to Russell’s 10,497, a margin of 1,438. If 720 of her voters had chosen Russell instead, the seat would have changed hands. Turnout was 62.7% of 39,371 registered voters.¹⁸

In our view, on the question that defines Boundary-Similkameen, Donegal Wilson has the better case, and she has earned a second term.

07 The bridge over the Ashnola is back. On 24 October, Boundary-Similkameen decides who speaks for the roads beyond it.

Advance voting runs from 16 to 21 October, and Final Voting Day is 24 October. Elections BC’s Where to Vote app lists every voting place in the riding.¹⁹

The fire took the bridge into Cathedral Park in August 2023. It took almost three years, $6.5 million and a contract that waited for the fish window to put it back.¹ Along the way one MLA stood up in estimates and asked when, and then asked about the roads, the deposits, the signs and the trail. Russell has a record of his own, and he deserves credit for it. In our view, when the next road is slated to close or the next bridge goes out, Boundary-Similkameen will want the MLA who has already shown she will ask.²

The road to Cathedral Park is open again. In our view, Donegal Wilson is the one to keep asking about the roads beyond it.