The Current's 2023 Newsmaker Of The Year

📷 Ts’elxwéyeqw Tribe/ttml.ca

Earlier this month, we asked Current readers to help us pick a Newsmaker of the Year.

We sought to identify one person who played a central role in 2023’s year of news. And although the process was informal—and though none of our readers posited his name—we think we have found just such a person.

First, though, your suggestions:

• Abbotsford Mayor Ross Siemens

• Mission Mayor Paul Horn

• Us! (Thanks! We think?)

• Wilma’s Transition House (which just endured a fire)

• The unsung heroes of local communities

• Chilliwack school trustee Carin Bondar

• Mission Coun. Ken Herar

• Agra Bros. (the Chilliwack based development company)

• Lytton Mayor Denise O’Connor

• Abbotsford MLA Bruce Banman

• Kim Wood (a peer support worker at Chilliwack’s hospital)

• Rhona Jacobsen, a Mission woman and prolific volunteer who just died at the age of 103

• Brian McKinney (Hope’s tourism and Rambo expert)

Almost all suggestions alluded to someone who made a particular contribution in a certain area or organizational role. But our Newsmaker of the Year has been heavily involved in two of the year’s most prominent ongoing news events.

Squiala First Nation Chief David Jimmie is the president of the Stó:lō Nation Chiefs’ Council, making him perhaps the region’s most prominent local Indigenous leader. Jimmie was front and centre in September when a Stó:lō team revealed the number of children known to have died at St. Mary’s Indian Residential School and three other government- and church-run facilities in the region. Jimmie spoke with not just passion and heartbreak, but also with authority and clarity on a topic that demands it.

Last year, Jimmie earned the BC Achievement Foundation’s Award of Distinction for Lifetime Achievement. He also sits on multiple local boards.

In addition to his various public roles, Jimmie is also the owner/operator of a construction company that is currently building hundreds of homes on Ch'íyáqtel First Nation land on the south of Promontory Road.

That project is one of several massive developments on First Nation land in the Chilliwack area and driving tremendous growth in the area south of Highway 1. Beyond its tangible impact on the growth of Chilliwack, the Base 10 project is a reflection of how Indigenous communities are taking a prominent role in the drive to build thousands of new homes to meet incredible demand. (Other examples include developments near Fraser River Heritage Park in Mission, on the old MSA Hospital site in Abbotsford, and the Cedarbrook development near the base of Chilliwack Mountain.)

You can read a 2018 profile of Jimmie here:

We weren’t able to get a hold of him on short notice, but you can watch an extended interview with Jimmie below: