Sydney—Victoria, NS — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Sydney—Victoria

This Cape Breton riding pairs an industrial city with some of the emptiest country in Nova Scotia. It covers the northwestern part of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality — Sydney, Whitney Pier and the Northside towns across the harbour — together with all of Victoria County and the corner of Inverness County lying north of Cape Breton Highlands National Park. From Sydney's streets to the plateau above Pleasant Bay is most of a day's drive.

Candidates

Mark Eyking (Liberal) — Eyking was born in Sydney in 1960 to parents who had come from the Netherlands in 1952 and built a vegetable business on the edge of the city. He took an agricultural business diploma at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College and farmed at Millville for two decades before entering politics, defeating the sitting New Democrat, Peter Mancini, in 2000. He was parliamentary secretary for agriculture and agri-food from 2003 and then, under Paul Martin, at international trade with responsibility for emerging markets. He was seeking a fourth term.

Wayne McKay (NDP) — McKay, a teacher living in Sydney, was the New Democratic candidate in a riding his party had held as recently as the late 1990s.

Kristen Rudderham (Conservative) — Rudderham grew up in Sydney and finished the International Baccalaureate programme at Sydney Academy. She took a political studies degree at Trent University and spent two years at the University of Freiburg studying European market integration, then read law at the University of New Brunswick, where she won the Dickson Medal for oral advocacy. She advised the Conservative opposition leader in the Senate and then the Speaker of the Senate, articled at McInnes Cooper and worked in the public policy practice of an Ottawa firm before coming home. She was called to the Nova Scotia bar in November 2007 and joined the Sydney firm Sampson McDougall.

Collin Harker (Green) — Harker, a consultant living in Sydney, stood for the Green Party.

About the Riding

The 2006 census counted 76,801 residents, down 3.1% from 2001, and that decline is the central fact of local politics. Young people left for Alberta and Ontario, and arguments about employment insurance, training and regional development were arguments about whether they would come back.

Sydney's heavy industry is gone. The steel plant closed in 2001 and the federal coal company that once employed thousands had been wound down, leaving the tar ponds and coke ovens site at the head of the harbour. In January 2007 Ottawa and the province committed $400 million — $280 million of it federal — to remediate the site over eight years, and the work was under way through the campaign. What has grown in place of the mills is institutional: the Cape Breton Regional Hospital is the island's referral centre, Cape Breton University draws students from across the island, and Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation, the federal Crown corporation responsible for economic development on the island, has its head office in the city.

At North Sydney sits Marine Atlantic's terminal. The year-round crossing to Port aux Basques is a constitutional obligation Canada assumed when Newfoundland entered Confederation, and a seasonal run goes to Argentia; between them they make a town of a few thousand people a national freight node.

North of the harbour the riding empties out. Victoria County lives on tourism, fishing and forestry: the Cabot Trail, the national park, and the Bras d'Or Lake, an inland sea ringed by small communities from Iona to Baddeck, where Alexander Graham Bell built his summer home. Membertou at Sydney, Eskasoni on the Bras d'Or and Wagmatcook in Victoria County are among the Mi'kmaq communities in the riding. Health care, outmigration, seasonal employment and the pace of the harbour cleanup framed the local campaign.