ROTHENBURGER – Confusion over mayor’s absence all came down to blocked texts

SO THE ANSWER to why Mike O’Reilly told a City council meeting that Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson was a no-show, and hadn’t let anyone know about it, comes down to blocked texts.

Quite simply, Hamer-Jackson texted O’Reilly asking him as deputy mayor to chair the June 23 meeting but the texts never got through because O’Reilly had blocked him.

That’s the explanation O’Reilly offered this past weekend. To go back to the beginning, Hamer-Jackson’s wife Lori was in hospital seriously ill with pneumonia. The mayor texted O’Reilly at 10:02 a.m. asking him, as deputy mayor for June, to chair that afternoon’s meeting, as Hamer-Jackson was spending his days at Lori’s side at RIH. He then tried a few times to confirm that O’Reilly had received the first text.

Specifically, that first text stated, “I’m going to need you or one of the deputy Mayors to chair the open meeting due in part to your personal behaviour, actions and inactions. Mayor Hamer-Jackson.”

The mayor later explained this wording as reflecting that O’Reilly had been aware of Lori Hamer-Jackson’s illness and that Reid Hamer-Jackson believed her health had been affected by all the conflict between the mayor and councillors.

But with the meeting about to begin, nobody seemed to know what had become of the mayor.

“For the record and for the public’s awareness, we started late. Mayor Hamer-Jackson did not show up to the meeting today, nor did he give us notice he was not going to be here today,” O’Reilly said as he took the chair.

I tried to connect with O’Reilly a number of times, without success, to find out what went wrong. I wrote at the time there were only a few reasons things could have gone awry.

1. for some technological reason, O’Reilly didn’t receive the mayor’s texts.
2. the mayor’s texts were blocked.
3. O’Reilly received them but didn’t read them.

I’ll explain how it turned out to be Number 2. Since O’Reilly wasn’t responding, I figured I may as well file a Freedom of Information application with the City to find out whether the texts had been received.

Specifically, I requested: “access to texts and emails to and from Coun. Mike O’Reilly on Tuesday, June 23, 2026 on the subject of Mayor Reid Hamer-Jacksons’ attendance/non-attendance at that day’s meeting of Kamloops City council.”

In due course, the City’s FOI office got back to me last week, providing screenshots of several texts sent by the mayor to O’Reilly on the day in question. The parts that referred to Lori Hamer-Jackson’s illness were redacted, as health issues are considered personal information under FOI and any reference to them is routinely withheld.

So what I got was basically what I’d already seen, but I pinged O’Reilly again asking him, now that I’d received FOI confirmation that he’d received the mayor’s texts, could he explain what happened.

This time, he got back to me, willing to get together to talk about it. Which we did, over a coffee at Timmy’s on Saturday morning.

“I have not received those text messages from Reid,” O’Reilly began.

Pardon me? “They weren’t received. I didn’t get them.”

He explained that he didn’t get them because he has blocked the mayor’s texts since Oct. 27, 2024.  Hamer-Jackson can be very persistent with questions day and night all days of the week and, well, I guess O’Reilly wanted a break.

But he says he did not block the mayor’s emails. Indeed, he said, when Hamer-Jackson couldn’t attend the previous meeting on June 9, he emailed O’Reilly and it was received, so O’Reilly took the chair, no muss no fuss. (Minutes of that meeting indicate Hamer-Jackson was absent for “personal reasons.” Minutes of the June 23 meeting state he was absent for “unexplained reasons.”)

For the June 23 meeting, though, the mayor sent messages via text only; no emails.

So why did O’Reilly ignore my initial attempts to contact him? He was, he says, trying to gather information.

So why didn’t he respond and say he was collecting information, or even say right off the bat he didn’t get the mayor’s texts because the mayor is blocked from texting him? “My bad,” he says.

For the mayor’s part, he says he didn’t know he’s been blocked from texting O’Reilly for more than a year and a half. “Why would any councillor block the mayor?”

Why didn’t he email O’Reilly anyway on June 23 to be sure, as he had for the June 9 meeting? Because, he says, he prefers texting over emailing due to the volume of emails he receives.

Well, OK, whatever their reasons for failing to communicate, the answer to the mystery is that O’Reilly didn’t know Hamer-Jackson had to miss the meeting, because he doesn’t see texts from the mayor.

One more detail. During our coffee chat, O’Reilly and I had trouble figuring out how I received copies of Hamer-Jackson’s texts from the FOI office, since I had assumed I was getting copies of what O’Reilly had received, and O’Reilly, in fact, hadn’t received them.

This time, it’s my bad. The point was cleared up this morning by the City’s FOI department. My “to and from” wording in my application prompted the FOI folks to poll all nine members of council, not just O’Reilly. The result was that the mayor provided the copies of his own texts, the same ones some local media have already written about.

If I’d been more careful with my wording, and specifically requested records only from O’Reilly, it would have avoided some confusion. (However, telling O’Reilly — mistakenly — that I’d confirmed that he’d received the texts certainly got his attention.)

ONE MORE THING: Council did send get-well flowers to Lori H-J after she got home from the hospital. They were rejected.

Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, writes for the Kamloops Chronicle and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and was a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.