Detour via the 201: Penticton-Summerland weighs Tracy St. Claire and Tina Lee on its road out when Highway 97 closes

By 10 August 2026, Highway 97 was closed through Summerland. The Bald Range wildfire had pushed toward the highway, and Hugh Murdoch, a BC Wildfire Service incident commander, described what crews had faced at the corner of the fire closest to it: “I would describe it as an organized flame front moving in lighter fuels.”¹

Highway 97 is the only highway between Penticton and Kelowna. On 13 August the province reopened it from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and for the other twelve hours it sent drivers somewhere else. Its advisory read: “Overnight detour routes outside of opening hours for passenger vehicles and essential travel remain open through Okanagan Falls at the 201 Forest Service Road to Highway 33 between Penticton and Kelowna.” Before setting out, drivers were to “ensure the vehicle has a full tank of fuel before departing” and “carry plenty of drinking water, snacks and food.”²

The 201 is a forest service road, more than 100 km of dirt between Penticton and the Kelowna side of the hills. The province described the detour as a route for essential passenger-vehicle travel, not built to normal highway standards.³⁴ A year earlier the Ministry of Forests had put it more plainly: “It is not part of the provincial highway system.”⁵

On 17 October, Tracy St. Claire, the Conservative candidate in Penticton-Summerland, made the 201 her pledge. Tina Lee, the BC NDP candidate, made hers the same day: a second urgent care centre for Penticton. Both are serious answers to real needs. This is a piece about the road, and about which of them, in our view, Penticton-Summerland should send to Victoria.⁶⁷

Tracy St. Claire

Conservative Party of BC candidate, Penticton-Summerland

Work

Executive director, South Okanagan Similkameen Division of Family Practice

Before

Okanagan Skaha school trustee, vice-chair and finance chair

Her pledge

Secure funding to upgrade the 201 Forest Service Road

Portrait: Conservative Party of BC

Tina Lee

BC NDP candidate, Penticton-Summerland

Work

Okanagan College Board of Governors; former City of Penticton executive

Before

Human rights work abroad; Ministry of Forests communications; outreach for MP Richard Cannings

Her pledge

A second urgent and primary care centre for Penticton

Portrait: BC NDP

Where Tracy St. Claire and Tina Lee stand, in their own words and records.

Before the argument, the comparison. Both candidates made their main local pledge on the same day, 17 October, and both have long records in Penticton.⁶⁷

01 Highway 97 is Penticton-Summerland’s only highway north, and it keeps closing.

In January 2025, after an emergency closed the William R. Bennett Bridge, Penticton’s mayor and council wrote to Mike Farnworth, the minister of transportation and transit. “Highway 97 has been blocked off multiple times in the past 10 years by mudslides, fires, traffic accidents and major rockslides,” they wrote. When the bridge closed, “Many were forced to take Highway 33 adding upwards of 3 hours to their journey, while others were forced to cancel long awaited medical appointments.”¹³

• August 2023A landslide closed Highway 97 north of Summerland for three weeks, and the province mapped a 42.8-km unpaved detour on the Okanagan Falls FSR 201.¹⁴¹⁵
• January 2025The William R. Bennett Bridge closed in an emergency, and the city wrote to the minister.¹³
• July 2025The Drought Hill wildfire closed Highway 97 again. “This isn’t a one-off – it’s a pattern,” said Julius Bloomfield, then the mayor of Penticton.¹⁵
• August 2026The Bald Range wildfire closed it through Summerland, and the overnight detour ran on the 201.²

The map makes the point the city kept making. When the highway closes, the drive to Kelowna’s hospital, airport and university runs east into the hills on a dirt resource road, maintained in sections by industrial permit holders.⁵

02 Penticton asked the province to fix the 201. The province said it had no plans to pave it.

The city’s letter asked for one thing: “We need a concrete provincial commitment to upgrade and maintain the 201 to a standard that ensures safe, year-round travel.”¹³ In July 2025 the mayor repeated it: “The 201 can no longer be treated as a forgotten forest road.”¹⁵

In August 2025 the Ministry of Transportation and Transit told the Penticton Herald that “there are no plans at present to pave FSR 201,” adding that “it would need significant provincial investment to be brought up to a paved two-lane road suitable for all types of traffic.” It said it was putting its money into keeping existing corridors safe.¹⁵

Those were the calls in an ordinary spring. In August 2026, with the highway shut for a wildfire, the same road was the province’s overnight route for passenger vehicles.² We found no provincial announcement since then that changes the ministry’s answer.⁸

03 Tracy St. Claire ran the doctors’ emergency response during the fire, and has pledged to secure funding for the 201.

St. Claire grew up in Penticton and raised her two daughters there. For 14 years she has worked with the South Okanagan Similkameen Division of Family Practice, the regional body for family doctors and nurse practitioners, the last nine as its executive director. During the Bald Range fire, her party biography says, she served “as Incident Commander for the Division’s emergency response, coordinating primary care services during the evacuation of Summerland.”⁹

Her release says the road “201 FSR remains narrow, dirt-paved, and unnecessarily dangerous,” and commits her to “secure funding to upgrade the 201 Forest Service Road near Penticton, establishing a safer and more reliable secondary route connecting the South and Central Okanagan.”⁶

In fairness, the release names no dollar figure and no date, and the idea is not new: Conservative MPs and MLAs called for paving the 201 in August 2025, and Amelia Boultbee, then the Conservative MLA for Penticton-Summerland, said that day: “I get many, many emails a day asking what’s going to be done about it.”¹⁵ What St. Claire adds is a local candidate who has staked her campaign on it, and who was running a piece of the emergency response the last time the highway closed.

04 Tina Lee is running on urgent care and housing, and she pushed for affordable student housing at the Penticton campus.

Tina Lee has worked as a human rights advocate around the world, and Penticton is home: she is raising her two children there. She has been an executive with the City of Penticton, worked in communications and engagement for the Ministry of Forests, and worked in outreach for NDP MP Richard Cannings. On the Okanagan College Board of Governors, her campaign says, she helped deliver “leading the charge towards 101 units of affordable student housing announced this spring for the Penticton campus.”¹⁰¹²

That is a real promise, and her party argues that Conservative spending plans would put such investments at risk.⁷ We searched her campaign site, her party’s releases and the local coverage we could read for anything she has said about the 201 or about a second route out of the valley, and found nothing. Castanet, the Okanagan news site, blocked our automated reads, so we could not check its coverage.⁸

In our view, that silence matters more in this riding than it would elsewhere. Lee is running to join the government whose ministries said, a year before the Bald Range fire, that the 201 was not part of the highway system and that there were no plans to pave it.

05 The seat changed parties without an election, and 317 votes decided it last time.

Amelia Boultbee won Penticton-Summerland for the Conservatives in 2024, beating Tina Lee by 317 votes. She left the Conservative caucus in October 2025, citing the party’s then-leader John Rustad, sat as an Independent, and crossed the floor to the BC NDP on 3 July 2026. When the election was called she stepped aside, and the local NDP acclaimed Lee.^11161718

338Canada, which turns published polls into a projection for every riding, rates Penticton-Summerland “CPBC leaning.” Its update of 16 October puts the Conservatives at 47% and the BC NDP at 41%, each with a margin of seven points either way.¹⁹

Penticton-Summerland, projected vote

338Canada, update of 16 October 2026. Bars show the projection; the thin lines show its margin either way.¹⁹

Tracy St. Claire, Conservative

47%

Tina Lee, BC NDP

41%

Bradley Bartsch, BC Green

8%

Warren Hamm, OneBC

4%

0%30%60%

Bradley Bartsch, the BC Green candidate, is projected at 8%, and Warren Hamm, the OneBC candidate, at 4%. 338Canada’s simulations give the Conservatives an 84% chance of winning the seat if the election were held on the day of its update. That is a forecast, not a result, and the seat was decided by 317 votes two years ago.¹⁹

In our view, Tracy St. Claire has the better case: a specific, local commitment on the riding’s most exposed piece of infrastructure, from a candidate who has spent 14 years building primary care in it.

06 The next time Highway 97 closes, the advisory will send Penticton and Summerland up the 201 again.

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.²⁰

In August the province told drivers to fill the tank, pack water and food, and take a dirt forest road over the hills to Kelowna. Tina Lee is offering Penticton a second urgent care centre, and that is worth having. Tracy St. Claire is offering to fix the road the province sends people down when the highway burns. In our view, the candidate who has made that road her fight is the one Penticton-Summerland should send to Victoria.²⁶

Fill the tank. Pack water. Take the 201. In our view, Tracy St. Claire is the candidate who means to change that.