Wednesday September 4, 2024 | LANGFORD, BC [Updated September 5, 2024]
Local News by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
Long-time Langford Mayor Stew Young has been awarded a King Charles III Coronation Medal, in a ceremony held today at the Langford Legion.
The afternoon event was hosted by local NDP MLA Ravi Parmar and was attended by over 100 community leaders and guests.
After 30 years as the City of Langford mayor, Stew Young is a household name — known around Langford, across the realm of politics in Greater Victoria, and in the sports business sector.
Now 64, he has spent his entire adult life committed to the growth and expansion of Langford from that of a small rural western community beyond the Victoria/Saanich/Oak Bay core of the capital region to being a bustling fast-moving metropolis.
In some ways Young had built a town in ways that exceeded his grasp. The new housing developments (notably Westhills and Bear Mountain), recreational facilities expansion (notably Starlight Stadium, the Jordie Lunn Bike Park, and the local YM/YWCA) and his work to make Langford a ‘national sports capital’ attracted new residents whose collective expectations produced a ‘new’ sort of Langford.
Young families, working professionals and active seniors are a vibrant new mix for the town once called ‘Dogpatch’.
In some ways a victim of his own success, a surprise election result in October 2022 nearly obliterated Stew Young’s longstanding council (most of his councillors had been oft-reelected over the years).
But the legacy of his vision for a bright new city in the west shore of Greater Victoria lives on, growing in ways only made possible by Young’s commitment to putting a respectable vibrant city on the Vancouver Island map that now over 50,000 people call home.
===== PHOTOS:
- See more photos of the September 4, 2024 award ceremony.
- To request custom high-res photos please email to photos@islandsocialtrends.com .
===== RELATED:
- Four west shore recipients of the King Charles III coronation medal (September 4, 2024)
- Langford saga: former mayor and ‘defacto’ mayor (October 29, 2022)
- Post-secondary education expanding for students on the Westshore (August 3, 2022)
- Inaugural Langford humanitarian aid mission a success (July 4, 2022)
- Central Langford greenspace gets 1.35-acre boost (June 21, 2022)
- Mayor Stew Young on Langford’s approach to COVID-19 in stores and workplaces (April 22, 2020)
- Leadership by Stew Young guides Langford, west shore and beyond (April 8, 2020)
- New BC Government west shore office announced in Langford (November 13, 2019)
- Rugby economic spin-off is growing in Langford, say Powers & Young (May 14, 2019)
- West Shore Municipal & Trustee Election Results 2018 (October 20, 2018)
- NEWS SECTIONS: LANGFORD | VANCOUVER ISLAND
===== ABOUT THE WRITER:
Island Social Trends Editor Mary P Brooke has covered west shore politics through a socioeconomic lens since 2014 through the weekly West Shore Voice News (2014-2020) and the daily Island Social Trends (2020 to present).
Since 2020, Ms Brooke has been reporting alongside the BC Legislative Press Gallery since covering the COVID pandemic daily in 2020-2022.
In 2022, Ms Brooke ran for school trustee in the west shore zone of Sooke School District 62.
In 2023, Mary P Brooke was nominated for a Jack Webster Foundation journalism award to recognize her community commitment through journalism.
In 2024, Mary Brooke launched the Urban Food Resilience Initiatives Society based in Langford.