Garden River First Nation election results

Garden River Chief Lyle Sayers is returning for another term after elections on Wednesday.

At ten minutes before 1 a.m. tonight the doors to the Garden River Community Centre flew open and about a half dozen people dashed out to cars idling on the road and in the parking lot to tell people waiting for news that Sayers (shown) was returned by 21 votes.

Sayers won 323 votes as Chief while his only challenger, Dennis Jones, won 302 votes.

Jones also ran for and was elected as one of the 12-member Band Council.

After the nearly five-hour count, Electoral Officer Vaughn Johnston declared that Jones had tied Sherry (Barry) Payment at 174 votes for the last seat on Council.

As per election procedure, Johnston put a ballot from each candidate in a box and did a blind draw to choose one.

It was for Jones.

Returning to seats on Council are Terry James Belleau with 280 votes and Cindy Belleau-Jones with 265 votes.

New to the Council table this term is Darwin Belleau who won 240 votes.

Also returning are Craig Sayers with 239 votes, Peter Jones with 228 votes, Leslie Zack-Caraballo with 223 votes and Blaine Belleau with 214 votes.

Also among the new-comers are James Nick Solomon who won 211 votes and Steven A. Nolan who won 195 votes.

Della Perreault returns with 190 votes.

Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig President Darrell Boissioneau takes a new seat on Council with 181 votes and, as mentioned before, Dennis Jones takes a seat at the Council table as a new Councillor with 174 votes.

Over 600 voters means the 2009 election in Garden River saw about 40 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.

That translates to roughly half the on-reserve population of eligible voters.