West Nova, NS — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

West Nova

West Nova occupies the southwestern arm of mainland Nova Scotia: Yarmouth, Digby and Annapolis counties together with the western end of Kings County, which the 2003 redistribution moved across from Kings—Hants. It faces two very different bodies of water — the Gulf of Maine at Yarmouth and Wedgeport, the Bay of Fundy at Digby and Annapolis Royal — and its interior runs up the Annapolis Valley through Bridgetown, Middleton, Kingston, Aylesford and Berwick. The Acadian shore of Clare, strung along St. Mary's Bay, gives the riding a large French-speaking population.

Candidates

Greg Kerr (Conservative) — Kerr began as a teacher at Bridgetown Regional High School and then spent fifteen years in provincial politics as the member for Annapolis West, first elected in 1978. He entered cabinet under Premier John Buchanan as minister of culture and later held the environment and finance portfolios, leaving Province House when the Liberals swept the province in 1993. He afterwards ran a beef farm and a logging operation, and lived at Granville Ferry. He had been the Conservative candidate here in 2006 and was back for a second attempt at the seat.

Robert Thibault (Liberal) — Born at Digby in 1959, Thibault sat on the Clare municipal council from 1988 to 2001 and won the riding federally in 2000. He was made minister of state for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency in 2001 and took over Fisheries and Oceans in 2002, then served Paul Martin as parliamentary secretary on the health file. Stéphane Dion named him critic for competitiveness and the new economy in April 2007 and later health critic. He was seeking a fourth term.

George Barron (NDP) — Barron, a paramedic living at Bear River, ran for the New Democrats.

Ronald Mills (Green) — Mills, a retired industrial electrician, was the Green Party candidate.

Cindy M. Nesbitt, a company director from Freeport on Long Island, ran as an Independent.

About the Riding

The 2006 census counted 86,393 residents, down 2.1% from 2001. The fishery dominates the southern end. Yarmouth and the Municipality of Argyle sit at the centre of Lobster Fishing Area 34, the most valuable lobster district in the country, and the harbours from Pubnico through Wedgeport to Meteghan support harvesting, processing and boatbuilding. Digby's scallop fleet works the Fundy grounds, and the villages of Digby Neck and the islands out to Freeport live on fishing and whale-watching. Prices and access to the American market matter more here than almost anywhere else in the province, which made the credit freeze of that autumn an immediate rather than an abstract concern.

Ferries were the other perennial. The Digby–Saint John crossing was worked by the Princess of Acadia, a vessel owned by Transport Canada and run under a subsidy arrangement whose renewal had repeatedly been left in doubt, and the high-speed service linking Yarmouth to Maine carried the tourist traffic on which the town's summer economy rested.

Canadian Forces Base Greenwood, in the Kings County corner of the riding, is the largest air force base on Canada's east coast and flies the CP-140 Aurora on maritime patrol. With its civilian workforce it ranks among the region's biggest employers, which turns defence procurement and base staffing into local employment questions.

Agriculture fills the Valley floor around Berwick, Aylesford and Middleton, and forestry works the interior. The Municipality of Clare, a string of villages running along St. Mary's Bay, is the heart of Acadian Nova Scotia and home to Université Sainte-Anne at Church Point, founded in 1890 and the province's only French-language university. Annapolis Royal, one of the oldest European settlements in Canada, keeps Fort Anne and, on the river below the town, the only tidal generating station in North America. Fuel costs, fisheries policy and the ferry subsidies were what candidates heard about most.