Halifax, NS — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Halifax

The retirement of Alexa McDonough left this seat open for the first time in more than a decade. McDonough, who had led the federal New Democrats from 1995 to 2003 and represented Halifax since 1997, was not seeking another term, and all four main parties went into the campaign with no incumbent to run against.

The riding took in the whole Halifax peninsula and ran southwest through Armdale and Cowie Hill to Spryfield, then down both shores of the Chebucto Peninsula to Purcell's Cove, Herring Cove, Portuguese Cove, Ketch Harbour, Sambro, Harrietsfield, Williamswood and Pennant. Its western edge followed the railway cut and Bicentennial Drive, leaving Rockingham and Clayton Park to Halifax West. Sable Island, some 300 kilometres out in the Atlantic, was attached to it as well. The whole came to 231 square kilometres and about 89,400 people at the 2006 census, most of them packed onto the peninsula.

Candidates

Megan Leslie (NDP) — Born in Toronto in 1973 and raised in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Leslie took a degree in social and political thought and history at York University, added a certificate in refugee and migration studies, spent a year at the University of Tampere in Finland, and completed her law degree at Dalhousie. She worked as a community legal worker at Dalhousie Legal Aid Service, running mobile clinics with organisations such as Adsum House and the Metropolitan Immigrant Settlement Association, built a tenant rights project aimed at reducing homelessness, and helped found the Affordable Energy Coalition, which pressed the province for lower power rates for low-income households.

Catherine Meade (Liberal) — A lawyer with the Dartmouth firm Boyne Clarke, Meade was acclaimed as the Liberal candidate. Her party had last held Halifax under Mary Clancy, who represented the riding until 1997.

Ted Larsen (Conservative) — A communications adviser to former Nova Scotia premier John Buchanan, Larsen entered the contest late, taking the Conservative nomination in mid-September after the party's earlier candidate stepped aside.

Darryl Whetter (Green Party) — A fiction writer, critic and university teacher of English and creative writing, Whetter published the story collection A Sharp Tooth in the Fur in 2003, which the Globe and Mail named among its hundred best books of that year.

Tony Seed, an editor, appeared on the ballot for the Marxist-Leninist Party.

About the Riding

Halifax is the administrative, military and academic centre of Atlantic Canada, and the riding contains most of what makes it so. Four campuses sit within a few kilometres of one another on and around the peninsula — Dalhousie, Saint Mary's, King's College and NSCAD, the province's art and design school — and their students make up a large share of the population.

National Defence is the region's largest single employer, with the naval dockyard on the harbour's western shore. The Halifax Shipyard on the north end depends on federal procurement, an issue with obvious local weight in any election. The container terminal at the south end, the cargo piers along the harbour, provincial offices, hospitals, financial services firms and a young technology sector fill out the downtown economy.

South and west of the peninsula the character changes. Spryfield, Herring Cove and Sambro retain a working-class and inshore fishing identity, with lower household incomes than the urban core. Housing costs, student debt, poverty in the north end and the state of the fishery were live local concerns, and the market turmoil of September and October 2008 sharpened all of them.