Avalon, NL — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Avalon

Avalon wraps around the provincial capital without taking in any part of it. The horseshoe begins on the south shore of Conception Bay, runs north through Bay Roberts, Harbour Grace and Carbonear to Old Perlican, comes back down the coast below St. John's through Bay Bulls, Witless Bay and Ferryland, and swings west across St. Mary's Bay to Placentia Bay and the Cape Shore. The 2003 redistribution built it out of Bonavista—Trinity—Conception, St. John's West and St. John's East, setting half-hour commuters alongside communities that have lived from the water for generations.

Candidates

Scott Andrews (Liberal) — Andrews was born in St. John's on 28 December 1974 and sat on the Conception Bay South town council. He had also run the provincial Liberal organisation as its executive director. He took the federal nomination on 24 January 2008, on second-choice ballots after no candidate reached a majority on the first count.

Fabian Manning (Conservative) — Manning held the seat and was defending it. Born at St. Bride's on the Cape Shore on 21 May 1964, he served three terms on his hometown council and was a leading figure in the Cape Shore Regional Development Association. He entered the House of Assembly in 1993 for St. Mary's—The Capes, succeeding Loyola Hearn; lost the redistributed district of Placentia and St. Mary's to Anthony Sparrow in 1996; and won it back in 1999. The provincial Progressive Conservative caucus voted him out in May 2005 after he publicly attacked the government's crab management policy, and he sat as an independent Progressive Conservative until resigning that December to run federally. He took Avalon in 2006 on the retirement of the Liberal cabinet minister John Efford, and in Ottawa sat on the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans and chaired his party's Atlantic caucus.

Randy Wayne Dawe (NDP) — A truck driver from Clarke's Beach, Dawe had been on federal ballots twice before in Bonavista—Trinity—Conception, for the Progressive Conservatives in 1997 and the Canadian Alliance in 2000. This was his first campaign for the New Democrats.

Dave Aylward (Green) — A student from Witless Bay on the Southern Shore.

About the Riding

Conception Bay South, a town of 21,966 at the 2006 census, is split between two districts: Seal Cove, Upper Gullies and Kelligrews at the western end fall in Avalon, while Foxtrap, Long Pond, Manuels, Chamberlains and Topsail sit in St. John's East. The town was stitched together out of those eight settlements in 1973, and most of its working population drives into St. John's or Mount Pearl. Farther along Conception Bay North, Bay Roberts (5,414) had grown into a wholesale and distribution point for the region, while Carbonear (4,723) supplied its hospital, a College of the North Atlantic campus and its main shopping centre.

Placentia (3,898) carries a longer institutional memory than most towns here. It was Plaisance, the French capital of Newfoundland until the Treaty of Utrecht forced France to give up its Placentia Bay settlements in 1713, and it later lived off the American naval base at Argentia, established in 1940 and closed in 1994. Argentia still served as the terminal for Marine Atlantic's longer crossing to North Sydney, and the base lands remained the subject of redevelopment proposals.

A quarrel between two governments shaped the campaign. Premier Danny Williams, who argued that Ottawa's 2007 equalization changes had gutted the Atlantic Accord, urged voters to back anything but Conservative candidates and registered the effort with Elections Canada as a third party in mid-September. Fisheries management, employment insurance and the drift of young workers to Alberta ran through the campaign here.