Kings—Hants, NS — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Kings—Hants

The 2003 boundaries gave this seat all of Hants County together with the eastern two-thirds of Kings County, leaving the western end of the Valley — Berwick, Aylesford and the air base at Greenwood — to West Nova. What remains is two districts with little in common. Kentville, New Minas, Coldbrook and Wolfville sit on the Annapolis Valley floor; Windsor and Hantsport face the red tidal flats of the Avon River; and to the east the riding follows the Highway 102 corridor through Elmsdale, Lantz, Milford and Shubenacadie toward Halifax.

Candidates

Scott Brison (Liberal) — Born in Windsor and a commerce graduate of Dalhousie University, Brison built a fridge-rental business while a student and headed the company until 1997, and also worked in corporate sales. He won the seat in 1997 as a Progressive Conservative and moved to the Liberal benches in December 2003, days after the merger vote that produced the Conservative Party. Paul Martin made him Minister of Public Works and Government Services in July 2004. He entered the 2006 Liberal leadership race and withdrew after the first ballot to back Bob Rae; Stéphane Dion afterwards named him industry, science and technology critic and, for this campaign, a co-chair of the party's platform development — the work behind the carbon-tax proposal the Liberals were running on. He was seeking a fifth term.

Rosemary Segado (Conservative) — Segado, a property manager from Wolfville, carried the Conservative nomination against a member who had held the riding under two party labels.

Carol E. Harris (NDP) — Harris, an educator living in Wolfville, stood for the New Democrats.

Brendan MacNeill (Green) — MacNeill, a student in Wolfville, was the Green Party candidate.

Jim Hnatiuk of Enfield, a combat systems technician who had contested Kings—Hants once before in 2004, ran again for the Christian Heritage Party.

About the Riding

The 2006 census counted 81,531 residents. Farming sets the tone at the western end: orchards and mixed agriculture on the Valley floor, and vineyards on the slopes of the Gaspereau and Avon valleys that had made the district the base of a young Nova Scotia wine industry. Acadia University, founded at Wolfville in 1838, enrols roughly 3,500 students in a town of a few thousand people. Michelin's Waterville plant — one of three the company runs in the province, and the one given over to commercial truck tires — is the largest industrial employer on the Valley floor.

East Hants is a different place. The stretch from Elmsdale through Lantz to Shubenacadie is commuter country half an hour up Highway 102 from Halifax, with subdivisions and interchanges that have nothing to do with the orchards to the west.

Gypsum tied the riding directly to the American slump that dominated the autumn of 2008. Hants County quarries fed wallboard producers on both sides of the border and shipped out through the pier at Hantsport, so when United States housing starts fell, the quarries and the vessels serving them were exposed at once. The Minas Basin Pulp and Power mill at Hantsport, which made linerboard from recycled fibre and employed about 180 people, and food processing filled out the industrial base.

Windsor supplies the local colour. The town claims Long Pond as the birthplace of hockey; the Hants County Exhibition, run continuously since 1815, bills itself as the oldest agricultural fair in North America; and the Atlantic Giant pumpkin bred by Howard Dill on his farm there is grown by hobbyists around the world. Farm incomes, fuel prices and the proposed carbon levy were the arguments heard most often at the door.