The votes have been counted, the community has spoken, and the moment we’ve all been waiting for is here — the Best of Kelowna 2025 winners are officially here!

Each year, Best of Kelowna brings together the voices of our city to recognize the outstanding people, businesses, and organizations that make Kelowna such a vibrant place to live, work, and thrive.

With incredible engagement from the community and thousands of votes across hundreds of categories, this year’s results are a true reflection of local pride.

From the best local eateries and hair salons to fitness studios, tattoo artists, and community builders, this is your chance to see who took home Gold, Silver, and Bronze this year.

Explore the full list of winners now here.

Whether you’re celebrating a long-time local favourite or discovering a new gem in town, the winners list is your guide to the very best that Kelowna has to offer.

Best of Kelowna is more than just a contest — it’s a celebration of the heart and soul of our city. It’s about lifting up the businesses and individuals who go above and beyond for their customers, clients, and community every single day.

Your votes and voices have helped shine a spotlight on the stories and successes that deserve to be heard.

We also want to extend a massive thank you to Secure-Rite Mobile Storage — proudly celebrating 20 years in business and their fifth consecutive year sponsoring the Best Of program.

Their support helps make this community-driven initiative possible, and we’re proud to celebrate Kelowna alongside such a dedicated local partner.

To all the winners, nominees, and voters — thank you for making Best of Kelowna 2025 another unforgettable celebration of community spirit. Let’s continue to support, celebrate, and uplift one another year-round.

See all the winners here.

ROCHESTER — Billed as a coach’s halftime talk, Gov. Tim Walz lauded the vitality of Rochester and Mayo Clinic to hundreds of community leaders gathered for a luncheon to mark the 10-year milestone of the 20-year-long Destination Medical Center initiative.

“Everybody wants this,” as he gestured to the crowd and downtown Rochester. “I hear that everywhere I go, especially with governors, when I’m talking about what you have in Rochester. They’re always like, ‘Oh, I wish we had that.’ It’s an incredible engine … As goes Rochester, so goes Minnesota. And I would argue, as goes Minnesota, goes the Upper Midwest.”

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The celebratory luncheon was held at the downtown Hilton hotel in the Dr. John Noseworthy Hall, named after the former Mayo Clinic CEO who originally launched the DMC initiative. The 10-year anniversary marked by DMC ties back to April 2015, when the DMC Corp. adopted the official DMC Development Plan.

The retired Noseworthy took to the podium himself to cheer the economic development progress of the past decade and remember its history.

“The heart of the DMC story is acknowledging that for decades, Mayo Clinic has been a national treasury, and increasingly in the modern era, an international treasury. At its heart, DMC was and is a commitment to ensure that the infrastructure necessary to enable such future success is in place,” he said.

Dr. John Noseworthy, former CEO of Mayo Clinic, speaks during a Destination Medical Center 10-year milestone event Thursday, May 22, 2025, in downtown Rochester. Joe Ahlquist / Post Bulletin

Noseworthy described DMC as a bipartisan vision that echoed Mayo Clinic’s historic moments, when Dr. Charlie Mayo drove the founding of the first versions of Rochester Community Technical College and the Rochester International Airport.

He added the original “City on the Hill” vision of Mayo Clinic started with the idea of relying solely on its reputation to attract patients without any advertising or self-promotion.

“But 25 years ago, the world was changing. In the early years of the 2000s, medicine became increasingly competitive, including top medical centers vying for the kinds of patients that Mayo Clinic attracted. Mayo would need to make changes to remain the leader … The idea was formed for a Destination Medical City and these leaders, some of whom are in the room, began their work,” said Noseworthy. “The stakes are high for everyone. It’s hard work fueled by the possibilities of improving the lives of our patients and of our communities. There have been frustrations, mistakes, apologies, regrouping, highs and lows nailed by intention and agonizingly long days. This measured, patient, consensus-seeking methodology has been ongoing every day for the last decade. And many of you are the architects of this amazing transformation.”

Former Gov. Mark Dayton, another retiree who helped shepherd the DMC initiative, described the massive economic development project as a memorable success of his administration. He said it was an easy vision to support.

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“When Dr. Noseworthy announced Mayo’s proposal to establish the next Destination Medical Center here in Rochester to further enhance your standing as the world’s premier medical institution, I was thrilled and immediately announced my support,” said Dayton.

Walz, whose speech wrapped up the event, concluded by returning to the theme of a halftime pep talk.

“We are solving some of the world’s biggest issues right here in Rochester, and we’re doing it in a collaborative way. We’re doing in a way to keep the charm of a small city,” he said. “If this is halftime, we’re leading at halftime and we’re not going to settle for setbacks. This would be one time, where I would say, ‘Let’s run the score up this.’”

Elon Musk holds a chainsaw given to him by Argentine President Javier Milei at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland this month. Musk, enabled by President Trump, has rampaged across the federal bureaucracy.

For the last six weeks, President Trump’s demolition man Elon Musk has rampaged across the federal bureaucracy — freezing payments, firing workers and disabling entire agencies.

“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk bragged, referring to the foreign aid agency.

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And Trump cheered him on. “Elon is doing a great job, but I would like to see him get more aggressive,” the president posted on social media in capital letters.

But Trump and Musk are planting political landmines across the government that could end up damaging them both.

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Many federal programs are intended to respond to disasters — or prevent them. Cut those programs and you increase the risk that small problems will turn into big ones.

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I asked officials and management experts to help compile a list of possible side effects from Musk’s blitzkrieg. Here’s a sample:

Cutting the Food and Drug Administration could cripple the agency’s ability to trace foodborne illnesses back to the source, an important step in stopping their spread.

Slashing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could slow the agency’s ability to react to epidemics, like the measles outbreak in Texas that has infected at least 146 people and killed one child, the first U.S. measles death since 2015.

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Firing Federal Aviation Administration technicians, as the Trump administration did in January, could make air transportation less safe or merely less reliable. Musk tweeted last week that the FAA’s air control communications system “is breaking down very rapidly [and] putting air traveler safety at serious risk.” (But take that with a grain of salt; he’s promoting his Starlink system as a replacement.)

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Purging the FBI and CIA could weaken efforts to prevent terrorist attacks. FBI Director Kash Patel has said he wants to send every agent in his Washington headquarters to field offices to “be cops.” If he follows through, that would include many of the bureau’s top counterterrorism specialists.

Other possible effects from the government-wide chaos are less terrifying, but would still disrupt Americans’ lives.

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If Musk’s technicians inadvertently insert errors in the government’s financial payment systems, Social Security checks could be interrupted, Medicare benefits disrupted, IRS tax refunds delayed.

Officials also worry that confidential information could leak — not only taxpayers’ personal details, but classified data about intelligence or defense programs.

Musk’s layoffs are also likely to produce a massive brain drain, driving talented managers out of the civil service and discouraging young people from joining. That will make federal agencies less efficient, not more.

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Thankfully, none of the worst-case scenarios has occurred. But any one of them could cause a political explosion that would damage Trump’s presidency.

The president may not recognize it, but he’s taking major risks — not only for the country, but for his standing with the public.

“We all love the idea of slashing the size of government,” said Donald F. Kettl, a public administration scholar at the University of Maryland. “But the more you cut back on government capacities, the more likely something will go wrong. And the instant it affects peoples’ lives — trouble with Social Security checks, problems with Medicare, having to worry about getting on an airplane — it becomes a political problem.”

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Politics Musk says his gestures at Trump inauguration event weren’t Nazi salutes Musk made the gestures during a giddy speech celebrating Trump’s return to power at a rally Monday at Capital One Arena in Washington. Many condemn the gestures, but not the ADL.

“Trump is playing with unexploded bombs here,” said Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution. “By doing this in so many places across the government — and by cutting with an axe instead of a scalpel — you increase the possibility of a major f— up.”

Kamarck says just one highly visible management failure can sink a presidency. Think Hurricane Katrina under President George W. Bush, the Obamacare rollout under President Obama, the Afghanistan withdrawal under President Biden — or Trump’s chaotic initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Kamarck wrote a book about such disasters: “Why Presidents Fail.”

Trump has taken high-risk behavior in the Oval Office to a new level, she said.

“Other presidents took hits because they missed the signals when problems were developing,” she said. “This is the first president who actually created the problems himself.”

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The public is already worried. A Reuters/IPSOS poll released Feb. 20 found that 58% of Americans said they were concerned that Social Security payments and other federal benefits could be delayed by Musk’s actions. A slightly larger number, 62%, said they do not support the freeze on federal grants and services that Musk’s team imposed.

As Kamarck found, presidents often get blamed for disasters they didn’t cause directly. “Obama didn’t design the Obamacare website that crashed, but he set up the system that produced it,” she noted.

Whether or not a president deserves it, politicians in the other party can be relied on to blame him. When a bungled FDA inspection led to a shortage of baby formula in 2022, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York said the root cause was “Joe Biden’s failed leadership.”

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Trump critics have already warned that they will hold the president accountable if a disaster occurs on his watch.

“If there’s a terrorist attack in this country over the next four years, and he’s put someone who is judged to not be qualified in as the director of the FBI, then that blood is going to be on his hands,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, said last year.

If any of the problems on that list do occur, it will only be natural for the public to ask whether Trump and Musk were responsible. It will also be natural for reporters to investigate whether Musk’s actions played a part.

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Trump might be tempted to pin responsibility on Musk and his young cyberwarriors, but it’s too late for that. He’s spent the last six weeks publicly cheering Musk’s actions and urging him to do more.

“It’s his mess now,” Kamarck said.

Let’s hope no disasters materialize. But if any of them do, Trump will learn the meaning of what then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.

A personal note: This will be my last weekly column for The Times. I’m grateful to the many readers who have given me part of their time over the last 16 years of columnizing — even, and sometimes especially, the ones who told me politely when I was wrong.

Linda Sturtevant

Utica Observer Dispatch

A petite flower, who loves to cheer up the winter months, is cyclamen.

This tuberous perennial comes in red, purple and white, as well as pink

Winter is cyclamen’s season of growing and blooming.

A petite flower, who loves to cheer up the winter months, is cyclamen.

This tuberous perennial comes in red, purple and white, as well as pink. The delicate blooms which rise above the leaves seem to be saying, “Look at me. I’m just here to cheer you up.”

Winter is cyclamen’s season of growing and blooming. It is perfect for our climate as it does not care to grow in direct sunlight or excessive heat. Given bright indirect sunlight and a comfortable house temperature, it can bloom for six to eight weeks.

Cyclamen is easy to care for. Fading flowers can be removed to encourage new blooms and yellowing dead leaves should be plucked off.

Avoid overwatering. Check it once a week to see if the top one inch of soil is dry. That is when it’s time to water

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When it stops blooming and the leaves begin to yellow, it is not time to throw it out. Cyclamen is a perennial and if cared for properly, it can thrive for decades.

The plant has a dormancy period in the summer. Come spring, it will stop booming and the leaves will no longer be abundant. That is the time to let the soil dry out and move it to a cool, shady place. You may want to set it outside during the summer, but make sure it is in a shady (preferably cool) area.

In the fall the plant is ready to start growing again. That is when it’s time for the bright indirect sunlight. It will need water now but be careful not to overwater.

Cyclamen does like a certain amount of humidity in the drier winter months. You can make a tray of pebbles sitting in water and place it under the plant (do not have the plant sitting in the water as that can cause root rot.)

Again, overwatering can be a problem. It can create a situation where botrytis (fuzzy gray fungus) will grow. This causes the leaves to turn yellow with brown patches.

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Overwatering will also cause wilting or drooping leaves.

Drooping leaves can also appear if the plant is too cold. Make sure the area is free of drafts.

Cyclamen can also become a victim of mites, which cause the leaves to curl, and aphids that will attack new growth.

Cornell Cooperative Extension Oneida County answers home and garden questions which can be emailed tohomeandgarden@cornell.edu or call 315-736-3394, press 1 and ext. 333. Leave your question, name and phone number. Questions are answered weekdays, 8am to 4pm. Also, visit our website athttp://cceoneida.com/ or phone 315-736-3394, press 1 and then ext.100.

They were bundled up in layers and huddled around burn barrels, trying to stay warm in the coldest week of winter.

The right side of one woman’s face was yellowing from a healing black and blue bruise.

A man’s forehead was scarring after being sliced open. Another had a black eye.

Each of them attacked inside a state correctional facility, where according to the Department of Corrections, assaults on staff have increased 85 percent since 2019.

When I visited Groveland and Five Points correctional facilities this past week, I expected to see anger.

Instead I saw hardworking state employees who are frustrated and fed up with a broken correctional system and a government that has failed them.

A government that has neglected to protect its own employees as well as those in their care and custody.

These correction officers are not asking for money. They are simply asking for safer working conditions. For facilities that are more secure for staff and for inmates. Isn’t that a reasonable request? Isn’t that the basic role of government, to keep people safe?

Correction officers in our state have one of the toughest jobs imaginable. A job most of us would never consider doing.

Their work is not pretty. There are no casual conversations around the watercooler. No scrolling social media on lunch breaks. No birthday celebrations. There are no fancy wooden desks and ergonomic chairs. No fine art hanging on the walls.

It is steel and concrete, sterile and gritty. Officers must always stay vigilant and alert, head on a swivel.

Being a correction officer is honorable and necessary work. We should all appreciate their service.

Now lawmakers need to get to work and take immediate action to improve safety and security inside state prisons.

Repeal the HALT Act.

Pause further prison closures and consolidations.

Reject the Commissioner’s directive that 70 percent staffing is the new 100 percent.

Mandate body scanner screening for all visitors.

Pass my bills for stronger contraband screening and a 20-year retirement option for correction officers.

Restore accountability and consequences in our laws.

Change is long overdue.

While some may judge the unsanctioned action of the workers standing out in the cold, we cannot ignore what they are standing for.

Their voices must be heard. They are pleading with us to hear them.

If you are an officer, staff or family member, please know I hear you. And I will keep fighting for the Governor and the leaders of the Senate and Assembly to hear you, too.

To them I say: Do what’s right. Do your jobs.