Sydenham District City Councillor Conny Glenn has been elected the next mayor of Kingston, defeating incumbent Bryan Paterson.
According to unofficial results provided by the City of Kingston on the night of Oct. 26, Glenn collected 43.25 per cent of the vote, compared to Paterson’s 41.17 per cent. Vanessa Mensah earned 14.06 per cent, while Grant Bedard accounted for 1.5 per cent.
In total, Glenn won by a margin of 793 votes, receiving 16,451 to Paterson’s 15,658.
In an email sent to The Journal, the City wrote that the official results will be posted on Oct. 27.
Glenn and her supporters watched the votes trickle in from the Kingston Yacht Club. Teary-eyed, she spoke to those in attendance following the announcement.
“The issues aren’t easy, but that doesn’t mean that we give up, that doesn’t mean that we don’t try to find solutions, that doesn’t mean that we shrug it off, because that’s too much of what has happened. I understand that people get tired, and that’s why we needed a new mandate. We needed change,” Glenn said in her victory speech.
After thanking her opponents for a “tough race,” Glenn turned to her priorities now that she’s been elected a four-year term.
“One of the things I heard throughout the city was how people felt left out, how different districts felt that they weren’t part of the city,” Glenn said. “One of my main priorities is to bring this city together. We have incredible people with incredible ideas, incredible talent, and we can fix the issues in front of us. We can make change happen, and we can do this together.”
Glenn’s victory marks the approaching end of Paterson’s stretch as mayor, a position he assumed in 2014 and has held ever since. He was re-elected twice, once in 2018 and once in 2022.
In an interview with The Journal following the announcement, Glenn described herself as “excited, ecstatic, and overwhelmed by the support.”
“The first thing I’m going to do is start to reach out to my colleagues,” she said. “So that’s job one. We’ve got the budget, we got all those big things, so this team has to work together.”
In an interview with The Journal, Mensah reflected on Glenn’s victory from her election party at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Kingston.
“[The voters] chose change, that change wasn’t me, and that’s okay. I’m glad that they chose the change that they wanted to have,” Mensah said. “I wish [Glenn] all the best, and I just trust that she will continue to champion the people’s voice.”
Paterson’s campaign team told The Journal he would be at City Hall on election night. However, Paterson didn’t attend, and his team couldn’t be reached for comment before publication.
Glenn’s term will begin on Nov. 15 when the new council is sworn into office.
— With files from Emmet Paradis and Lola Hustins
Tags
2026 municipal elections, Bryan Paterson, Conny Glenn, Kingston Mayor, mayor
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