Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Dartmouth—Cole Harbour

Across the water from downtown Halifax, this riding took in most of the former city of Dartmouth and the suburb of Cole Harbour beyond it — 89 square kilometres and just under 88,000 people. Two bridges and a passenger ferry link it to the Halifax peninsula, and Dartmouth's chain of lakes runs through the middle of it.

Candidates

Michael John Savage (Liberal) — Savage read history at Dalhousie and spent two decades in business before politics: general manager at S. Cunard & Co. from 1986 to 1997, sales and marketing director at Nova Scotia Power until 2002, then a vice-president at the recruiting firm Knightsbridge Robertson Surrette. He ran unsuccessfully in Dartmouth in 1997 and won the redrawn Dartmouth—Cole Harbour in 2004, holding it in 2006. He sat on the committee that produced the Civil Marriage Act in 2005. His father, John Savage, was mayor of Dartmouth from 1985 to 1992 and premier of Nova Scotia from 1993 to 1997.

Brad Pye (NDP) — Pye carried the New Democratic banner in a seat the party had targeted for years. He worked as a senior party program officer and was living in Ottawa at the time of the campaign. His father, Jerry Pye, had sat in the provincial legislature for Dartmouth North from 1998 until stepping down in 2006.

Wanda Webber (Conservative) — A Dartmouth teacher, Webber ran for the Conservatives, who had trailed both the Liberals and the New Democrats here since the riding was drawn.

Paul Shreenan (Green Party) — Also a Dartmouth teacher, Shreenan was the Green Party's candidate.

George Campbell, a Dartmouth church minister, stood for the Christian Heritage Party.

About the Riding

Dartmouth's harbour edge is industrial. The Imperial Oil refinery at Imperoyal, in production since 1918 and running roughly 88,000 barrels a day, employed a few hundred people between staff and contractors, and marine and shipping businesses occupy much of the Woodside shore. North of the old city centre lies Burnside, opened as the Dartmouth industrial park in December 1969 and built out after the A. Murray MacKay Bridge gave it a direct road link to Halifax in 1970. By 2008 it covered roughly 1,400 hectares running up the hill from Bedford Basin and was among the largest industrial and business parks in Atlantic Canada, with hundreds of firms in trucking, warehousing, light manufacturing and back-office work. The riding boundary runs around it along Wrights Brook and Windmill Road, so the park and its payroll sit inside the seat.

Cole Harbour, at the southeastern end, filled in with subdivisions through the 1970s and 1980s and is largely residential; many of its residents commute across the harbour or into the industrial parks of the wider municipality. Health care, education and public administration employ a large share of the workforce.

The riding is a study in contrasts within a single city. Older working-class districts in west Dartmouth and around Imperoyal and Woodside sit alongside middle-class suburban tracts, and pockets of public housing alongside newer developments on the lakes.

Provincially, this ground had been favourable to the New Democrats for a decade. The party formed the official opposition in the Nova Scotia legislature under Darrell Dexter and held most of the Halifax-area seats, but converting that into a federal win had eluded it here since the riding was drawn in 2003. With the autumn 2008 campaign turning on the economy, and manufacturing and refinery employment in the province under pressure, jobs and the cost of living framed the local contest.