Deaths outpacing births in Greater Vernon

Jul 10, 2025 | 1:52 PM

The local death rates are nearly 1.5 times the birth rates in Vernon so far this year.

Vital Statistics, B.C.’s data collection agency, said the first six months of 2025 saw 317 deaths in the Vernon Centre/Coldstream health area.

Comparatively, there were just 207 births locally during that same period.

The deaths and births by months for the first half of the year were reported as:

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun
Deaths	71	55	56	50	48	37
Births	33	26	35	44	41	28

Highway alerts

Two orange rainfall warnings issued as heavy rain threatens southern B.C. highways

2h ago

Missing Snowmobilers

Three sledders, two whom were missing for days, rescued from Hunters Range area

3h ago

Council grants

Vernon to distribute over $50k in Council Discretionary Grants, $20K to the food bank

Dec 14, 2025

The other North Okanagan and surrounding communities saw similar trends in the first six months of 2025, with the exception of Revelstoke.

	Deaths as of June 30	Births as of June 30
Armstrong/Spallumcheen	65	46
North Okanagan/Lumby	71	50
Enderby	35	32
Lake Country	47	66
Downtown Kelowna	348	181
Glenmore	179	151
Rutland	170	194
Okanagan Mission	92	82
West Kelowna	248	206
Salmon Arm	251	131
Revelstoke	37	61

Vital Statistics data showed the entirety of British Columbia has also seen deaths outpacing births. As of June 30, there had been 21,559 deaths recorded across the province, compared to 20,633 births.

The data provided by Vital Statistics was preliminary and subject to change.

The report did not include any information on the causes of the deaths.

—

by Liam Verster

View Comments