Meet some of B.C.'s first babies born in 2026

B.C.’s first little resident born in 2026 entered the world at just 18 minutes past midnight at Kelowna General Hospital on Thursday morning.

The baby weighed 6 lbs., 8 oz. The parents are choosing to keep their names private, according to a B.C. Health Ministry spokesperson.

It was the second consecutive year that the province’s first baby was born in the Interior, with 2025’s first child arriving in Kamloops.

Through its online betting platform, B.C. Lotteries Corp. had offered 20-1 odds on the province’s first baby being born at Kelowna General. Those were “pretty high” odds, considering hospitals in the more populous Metro Vancouver areas are more likely to have the first baby of the year, said BCLC spokesman Matt Lee.

He said hundreds of people have bet on which hospital will have the first baby every year that BCLC has offered the game of chance.

This year, about six per cent of all bettors chose Kelowna General but Lee couldn’t disclose the exact number or the size of bets. At 20-1 odds, a $10 bet would pay out $200.

Meanwhile, parents Haruna and Jian Suzuki were thrilled to welcome Vancouver Coastal Health region’s first baby — no name yet — born Jan. 1 at 1:30 a.m. at Richmond General. The baby weighed 7 lbs., 11.6 oz.

“We feel very happy that we were able to make our special day even more memorable” with the birth of the region’s first baby of 2026, said Haruna in an email. “We are truly grateful to everyone who supported us.”

“I’m incredibly proud of my wife for being so strong,” added Jian in the email. “It was such a fulfilling and special moment.”

Four siblings in Terrace, meanwhile, got a new sister when Baby Molina was born at 2:25 a.m. at Ksyen Regional Hospital in Terrace, the first in northern B.C., according to the Northern Health authority’s Facebook page.

She weighed 7 lbs., 9 oz., and her parents are Chantal and Robert Molina, and her brothers and sisters are Robert, Maybelline, Alanna and Alexander.

A baby girl delivered at B.C. Women’s Hospital at 12:31 a.m., weighing 7 lbs., 4.2 oz., was the first of 2026 for the Provincial Services Health Authority, which includes that hospital, and therefore the first in Metro Vancouver. A spokeswoman didn’t have any other details.

Baby Beckett, weighing 8 lbs., 3 oz., was born to parents Breanna and Pedro at 12:53 a.m. at Ridge Meadows Hospital, in Maple Ridge, making him the first baby in the Fraser Health region.

And on Vancouver Island, the first baby of 2026 was a boy born at Victoria General at 3:48 a.m., according to maternity ward staff. He weighed 3 lbs., 1 oz., and is in the neonatal ICU.

The First Nations Health Authority, which delivers health services to the Indigenous communities, including pre- and postnatal maternity care, doesn’t operate hospitals or maternity wards.

The babies are the first of 41,000 births expected this year in B.C.

As of Dec. 1, 39,072 live births were recorded for the first 11 months of 2025, according to B.C. Vital Statistics Agency statistics.

That puts 2025 births on track to equal the usual number recorded over each of the past 18 years. The highest number of births over that time was 45,402 in 2016 and the lowest was 41,403 in 2023, according to the stats, which are grouped by B.C. neighbourhoods, called community health service areas.

In the first 11 months of 2025, the highest number of births in those areas — and the only one that topped 1,000 — was in Whalley, at 1,144. Vancouver’s West End recorded 283.

The Jan. 1 births aren’t likely to change B.C.’s declining birthrate, which was Canada’s lowest in 2023 at 1.0 children per female, according to a June B.C. Statistics report on fertility rates between 1991 and 2023. The Canadian rate in 2023 was 1.26 children per female, it said.

B.C.’s rate drop to 1.0 in 2023 from 1.08 per female in 2022 was a 7.4 per cent decrease.

That marks the 12th time in the previous 15 years that the rate dropped year over year, a declining trend that began in 2008 during the global financial crisis, it said.

And as the number of deaths in B.C. have risen — and have exceeded the number of births in B.C. since 2021 — the province continued a negative natural population growth rate, according to the report.

The drop in fertility was also the third year-over-year decline in fertility since 2019 and reflected a national trend, with 11 of 13 provinces and territories hitting a record low fertility rate in 2023, it said.

From 2019 to 2023, Canada’s fertility rate drop was the largest in the G7 and the second largest across comparable high-income countries, according to the report.

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