Hope, Cultus Lake and Agassiz were quickly eliminated from a CBC contest to determine B.C.’s best small town.

Round one of the online contest was held last week, with British Columbians going online to cast a ballot for their favourite town with a population of 12,000 or fewer.

The province has been broken down into regions, and those regions have been broken down into brackets.

Hope was placed in the 32-town southwest region, which includes representatives from the Lower Mainland/Sunshine Coast/Gulf Islands on one side of the bracket and the Thompson and Cariboo on the other.

Voting started with 16 towns on each side of the bracket and half were eliminated.

Hope went up against Pemberton and the voting ended 62.58 to 37.42 per cent favouring Pemberton.

Agassiz was bumped by Bowen Island by a count of 75.35 to 24.65 per cent.

Cultus Lake was eliminated by Harrison Hot Springs by a 73 to 27 per cent margin.

Harrison moves on to face Bowen Island in round two, with the next round of voting on Wednesday, March 23.

Interestingly, fire-ravaged Lytton was on the other side of the bracket, withMayor Jan Polderman weighing in on why his town should win. A sentimental favourite, Lytton got past Logan Lake by a count of 63.66 to 36.34 per cent.

“It’s the pace of life, the tranquility, the fact we all know the people in town,” he said. “Lytton is a very affordable place to live. And as a result, we have some very colourful characters here in town.”

The other regions are Vancouver Island, the Interior and the North. It’s going to take seven weeks to narrow the field and determine a winner. The winning town will be announced on-air on your local CBC Radio One morning show April 29, winning what CBC describes as ‘special prizes.’

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