Brampton’s 2018 elections will be one for the history books, with more twists and turns than a roller coaster. The final results came in around midnight on October 22. Here’s a look at your (un)official 2018 city council.

The new roster

Patrick Brown was able to narrowly defeat Linda Jeffrey to clinch the city’s top job. Brown won with 44% of the vote, while Jeffrey got about 40%, which is a difference of about 4,000 votes.

In Ward 1/5 Rowena Santos easily clenched victory as city councillor with 41% of the vote. There were 10 other candidates and they all split votes among themselves, with Joe Pimentel grabbing about 15%.

Meanwhile, Paul Vicente won with a pretty decent margin of 43% of the vote, His closest competition was Mario Russo with 31%. Russo was endorsed by outgoing councillor Elaine Moore and ran an active campaign but it wasn’t enough to take the seat.

In ward 2/6 incumbent Doug Whillans maintained the status quo by keeping his seat with 28% of the vote. Whillans was the only incumbent that received less than 30% of the vote to win back his seat.

Incumbent Regional Councillor Michael Palleschi won his seat back with 35.5% of the vote. Trailing behind him was first-time candidate Gurpreet Bains with 28.9%.

In ward 3/4 incumbent Jeff Bowman won with a sizable 52% of the vote. His closest competition was Harpreet Hansra with 22%.

For the Regional Councillor seat, it was expected to be a close race between Martin Medeiros and John Sanderson — Prabjot Grewal was also growing a sizable support base. Medeiros came out the victor with 38% of the vote, while Sanderson had 31% and Grewal had a respectable 20% for a first-timer.

Ward 7/8 had no incumbent for city councillor so the race was anyone’s to win and it was the closest race of all. Charmaine Williams won with 25% of the vote, winning over Martin Singh with just 683 votes.

On the regional side, Pat Fortini won his seat back with a big 52% of the vote. Bruce Marshall trailed him with a respectable 22%.

In ward 9/10 Harikrat Singh won what was previously Gurpreet Dhllon’s seat with a 42% of the vote.

Gurpreet Dhillon who left his city council seat for a regional seat won with a landslide 55% of the vote, which is the biggest margin of anyone on council, and with over 14,000 votes Dhillon got more votes than any other councillor received.

New Faces

This latest council has a bunch of new faces. For one thing, none of them have been councillors for more than 4 years, and only five will have sat at the council table before: Jeff Bowman, Martin Medeiros, Michael Palleschi, Doug Whillans and Pat Fortini.

Half of city council is completely new: Patrick Brown, Rowena Santos, Paul Vicente, Charmaine Williams and Harkirat Singh are all fresh faces and will bring their own unique ideas and flair to Brampton City Council.

More Visible Minorities

This is a council of firsts for Brampton. For the first time ever Brampton has a black woman — Charmaine Williams — on council, as well as a Filipino woman, Rowena Santos. It’s also the first time Brampton has had two turban-wearing Sikhs on Council: Gurpreet Dhillon who was the only visible minority on council prior to 2018, and Harkirat Singh.

Fewer Women

The scales were evened out in some ways, but not completely. While women have historically had less of a presence on city council, last time around there were three women — Linda Jeffrey, Elaine Moore, and Gael Miles. This time around there are only two women on council.