Kelowna chamber celebrates 120th anniversary and hands out a whack of awards

When the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce was founded 120 years ago in 1906, the population of the one-year-old city was 600.

There was no road to Vancouver, no bridge over Okanagan Lake, no railway, no airport, no college nor university.

Kelowna's come a long way and the now 1,000-member Kelowna Chamber of Commerce has kept pace.

The organization was actually called the Kelowna Board of Trade when it was founded in 1906 and became the chamber in 1961.

Whatever the name, the group has been advocating for business in Kelowna ever since.

Thus, the chamber's 120th anniversary this year is turning into a year-long celebration.

The latest party was The President's Dinner this week to officially welcome 2026 president Patrick Bobyn, a partner at Pushor Mitchell Lawyers, and the new board of directors.

Kelowna Mayor Tom Dyas, a chamber past-president himself (2017 and 2018) sworn in Bobyn and his board.

At the dinner, at the Coast Capri Hotel, 18 awards were handed out:

- Volunteer of the year: George Marine of GMK Consulting, a long-time chamber ambassador and new director on the chamber board

- Marion Bremner director of the year: Curtis Tarapaski of Crosspace Construction, who travelled to the Canadian chamber conference in Halifax to present the Kelowna chamber's policy on dismantling interprovincial trade barriers

By the way, the late Marion Bremner was the Kelowna chamber's first female president in 1985.

- Chamber ambassador of the year: Dan Brown, a realtor with Royal LePage

- Chair gavel: departing chamber president Derek Gratz of UBC Okanagan

- Lifetime honorary chamber membership: 2024 chamber president Maryse Harvey of MH2 Advisory Services

- 120th anniversary medallions were presented to 13 chamber past presidents to atteneded the dinner -- Walter Gray (1981 and 1982), Paul Mitchell (1988), Frank Bechard (1990), Cathy Comben (1996), Steve Thomson (1998), David Rush (1999), Laura Thurnheer (2007), Karen Hawes (2011 and 2012), Curtis Darmohray (2014), Tom Dyas (2016 and 2017), Nikki Csek (2019), Pamela Pearson (2022) and Derek Gratz (2025)

The 114 chamber presidents over the 120 years has included presidents that went on to be mayors of Kelowna, MLAs, provincial cabinet ministers and two premiers of BC (W.A.C. Bennett and his son, Bill).

The first Kelowna chamber president was Daniel Wilbur Sutherland, who was a Kelwona pioneer, teacher, justice of the peach and owner of Kelowna Furniture Company.

He would also go on to be mayor of Kelowna for 16 years.

He's also the namesake of Sutherland Avenue, Sutherland Bay Park and the Sutherland Building at 339-347 Bernard Ave. that now houses Antico Pizza and Fjallraven outdoor clothing store.

"I am honoured to be following in the footsteps our our first board president, Daniel Wilbur Sutherland," said 2026 president Patrick Bobyn.

"He would be amazed to see Kelowna today and what the efforts of chamber presidents over the past 120 years have brought to the city."

At The President's Dinner, the first installment in the four-part documentary series celebrating the 120th anniversary called 'The Founding 50' was debuted.

You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/rJIyZehiRDA

Tatum Grundy, who works at the chamber, has spent countless hours as the 120th anniversary project lead combing through 12 decades of chamber meeting minutes and history to build display boards and write and shoot the four-part documentary, which overall is labelled 'The Board of the Orchard City'.