# Okanagan Register The unified register of Okanagan commerce. A free public register of 13,563 businesses in four towns, every line showing the page it came from and the day it was read. ![Bundles of papers tagged with a pine, grapes and mountains sit on the bench while Mackenzie points to a glowing list on the wall, beside a map of the valley.](/images/projects/okanagan-register/top.png) **The unified register of Okanagan commerce.** What works today: a free public register of 13,563 businesses in four towns (as of 2 Nov 2026), where every line shows the page it came from and the day it was read. Okanagan. find. support. local. Live site: https://okanaganregister.com ## 13,563 businesses in four towns, 4,965 of them with their own website read As of 2 Nov 2026: 13,563 businesses in four towns, Vernon, Kelowna, Osoyoos and Peachland. 4,965 of them have their own website read. ## What it does for you - **Ask for what you need**: say it in plain words, and it shows businesses whose own websites say they do it, with the exact words and the page they came from. - **Every line is sourced**: each fact on an entry shows the page it came from and the day it was read. - **Nothing guessed**: it never says a business is open or when it was founded. It says "licence on the list since" and "read from its website on". - **Fix your entry**: an owner who finds something wrong says so in a short form, with no account. The change is confirmed only through the phone or email on the business's own website or the town's list. - **Made for agents too**: every page has a machine-readable copy at the same address, ending in index.json. - **By town and by kind**: Vernon, Kelowna, Osoyoos and Peachland; food and drink, shopping, home and trades, health and beauty, services, community. ## Start in a minute Open okanaganregister.com and type what you need, for example "furnace repair in Vernon". Or hand it to your agent: "Read mackenziebowes.com/projects/okanagan-register.md, then use okanaganregister.com to find me a business in the Okanagan." ## How it works Two sources, and nothing guessed. The town's licence list gives the business name, licence number, the kind of business as the town writes it, and the date it went on the list. Licence lists last read 27 Oct 2026. Where there is a website, a program reads its pages and copies what they state: phone, email, hours, services, how the business describes itself, social links, and an address when the site publishes one. The reader is polite: one request a second to a site, no cookies, no forms, no logins, and it obeys robots.txt. Each copied line keeps the page it came from, a fingerprint of that page, and the time it was read. A fact not found is left out. ## Where it stops A licence on the list is not proof a business is trading, so the register never says "open". The licence list's street address is not shown - an address shows only when the business's own website publishes it. A website that loads all its words with scripts is not read. No short-term rentals. ## What's coming Where this is going: every business in the Okanagan, Osoyoos to Salmon Arm, in one free public register - every fact traced to where it was read. Planned: more towns (Penticton, West Kelowna, Salmon Arm, Armstrong, Enderby, Summerland, Oliver and others); every site read again each month, so a changed website changes its entry, with the new date; more facts on each entry from open BC datasets. ## Who builds it Mackenzie Bowes in Vernon, with a crew of agents. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence - City of Kelowna. ## Reference Questions: - **Does a listing mean the business is open?** No. A licence on the list is not proof a business is trading, so the register never says "open". It says "licence on the list since" and "read from its website on". - **How fresh is the data?** Every fact shows the day it was read. The licence lists were last read 27 Oct 2026, and monthly re-reads are coming - a changed website changes its entry, with the new date. - **Why is there no street address on most entries?** The licence list's street address is not shown. An address shows only when the business's own website publishes one. - **Something's wrong on my entry. Now what?** Tell us on the Fix an entry form: no account, nothing to sign. We confirm the change through the phone or email your own website publishes, or the one on the town's list, never the one typed into the form. - **Can my agent read it?** Yep. Every page has a machine-readable copy at the same address, ending in index.json. ## Follow The register lives at https://okanaganregister.com. --- Published 2026-11-03. Web page: https://www.mackenziebowes.com/projects/okanagan-register