Cindy White

Cindy White reports for Castanet on how automobiles, transportation infrastructure and local businesses intersect with everyday community life, using car culture and the road network as a way into stories about people, neighbourhoods and local economies.

Automobile culture and community events

Much of White’s recent work follows how car-focused gatherings shape civic life, rather than concentrating on vehicles alone. Her coverage of plans for a new Peachland event to replace the long-running World of Wheels car show looks at how the community responds to the loss of a signature automotive attraction and what kind of replacement can sustain local pride and tourism on the May long weekend. On Father’s Day she documents Kelowna’s waterfront “buzzing” with a car show alongside the Turtle Island Festival, emphasizing the crowds of families and visitors that turn a display of vehicles into a full-day cultural gathering on the lakefront. Across these pieces, the cars and shows are present, but her focus is on turnout, atmosphere and how organizers and residents use auto events to build tradition and support local businesses.

Transportation infrastructure and safety

White also reports on how road projects and transportation infrastructure decisions affect residents, treating planning details and engineering timelines as central parts of the story. In a earlier transportation piece referenced in the letters section, she interviewed a senior transportation consultant about the Burtch Road and Hollywood Road extensions and wrote about work set to begin soon, prompting public questions about whether route assessments had been completed. Her article on BC Hydro’s expansion of fast-charge stations along the Coquihalla Highway extends that approach to electric vehicle infrastructure, explaining how new fast-charging capacity on a major route changes what EV drivers can do on long-distance trips and how the utility is adapting the network to growing demand. She applies the same lens to personal safety in shared spaces, reporting on a resident who sounded the alarm after a man dressed all in black jumped out at him on the Mission Creek Greenway and framing the incident as a community concern about feeling secure on popular walking routes. Together, these stories show her drilling into how roads, charging stations and pathways are planned, experienced and debated by the people who use them.

Local business, food and drink

White’s automobile coverage sits alongside regular reporting on food, drink and business openings, often tied to the region’s tourism and hospitality economy. In the food and drink vertical she wrote about an award-winning plant-based bistro from the South Okanagan dipping its toes into the Central Okanagan, introducing StillFood Bistro’s expansion and what its arrival means for diners interested in plant-based options. She has contributed photography to pieces marking milestones for local eateries, such as Norman’s Diner in Rutland celebrating its first anniversary, anchoring stories of independent restaurants with on-the-ground visuals. On the business side she writes for Okanagan Edge’s business section, profiling a new winery and situating it in the broader Okanagan wine landscape. She also fronts short-form video news briefs, such as a segment highlighting non-alcoholic beverages from Sommzero, where she introduces products and trends in a concise format. Across these assignments she treats openings and anniversaries not as lifestyle fluff but as indicators of how local entrepreneurs, wineries and restaurants adapt to shifting tastes and the flow of visitors who arrive by car.

Community issues, culture and advocacy

Beyond cars and commerce, White spends considerable time on community issues and cultural life, often returning to themes of identity, remembrance and neighbourhood change. Her reporting on the Red Dress Day march to the Kelowna courthouse follows hundreds of people joining the Ki-Low-Na Friendship Society to honour missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people, and traces the event’s roots to the REDress Project installation of empty red dresses as a national symbol of loss. Earlier, an autism organization publicly thanked her for a “wonderful story” about a paddling event, underscoring her role in giving visibility to local advocacy groups and their fundraising efforts. She has explored long-running debates over where one Kelowna neighbourhood ends and another begins, writing about the contested boundary between Pandosy and Lower Mission and noting that the argument has been going on for decades and will likely continue for decades more. In seasonal coverage she has shown downtown Kelowna “hopping” with tourists on Easter Sunday and connected the crowds to hopes for a strong summer for the tourism industry. These pieces, taken together with her automobile and infrastructure stories, show a reporter who consistently ties physical spaces—roads, waterfronts, commercial districts—to the communities that inhabit them and the causes they rally around.

White has been a visible presence across Castanet’s news, business and lifestyle sections for multiple years, with recent bylines and credits spanning 2025 and 2026. She combines straight news about road projects, car shows and highway charging with human-driven coverage of Indigenous marches, autism fundraisers and neighbourhood identity, often in the same geographic corridors that drivers, cyclists and pedestrians share. Her work is distinguished by this habit of treating automobiles and infrastructure as part of a wider civic story, linking technical changes and events to the people, businesses and cultures that live along the route.