Chambly—Borduas, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Chambly—Borduas

The riding's compound name pairs the fort on the Richelieu with Paul-Émile Borduas, the painter born at Saint-Hilaire in 1905 who wrote Refus global in 1948. Its 453 square kilometres of Montérégie southeast of Montreal took in Beloeil, Carignan, Chambly, Marieville, McMasterville, Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Otterburn Park, Richelieu and Saint-Basile-le-Grand, along with adjoining parts of the Rouville and La Vallée-du-Richelieu county municipalities. The 2006 census counted 116,925 residents, better than eleven per cent more than five years earlier.

Candidates

Yves Lessard (Bloc Québécois) — Born at Barville in January 1943, Lessard worked as a businessman and union adviser and sat on Saint-Basile-le-Grand council from 2001 to 2004 before winning the riding federally that year. Re-elected in 2006, he took on human resources and skills development for his party and used the file to press for looser employment insurance eligibility rules and better benefits for workers in seasonal and cyclical industries.

Gabriel Arsenault (Liberal) — Arsenault, of Mont-Saint-Hilaire, carried the Liberal nomination.

Suzanne Chartrand (Conservative) — Chartrand, of Chambly, ran for the Conservatives.

Serge Gélinas (NDP) — Gélinas, also of Chambly, stood for the New Democrats.

Olivier Adam (Green) — Adam was the Green Party candidate.

About the Riding

Chambly gives the seat its centre of gravity. The town of some 22,600 grew around the stone fort raised between 1709 and 1711 in the Vauban manner at the foot of the Richelieu rapids, first called Fort Saint-Louis and later renamed for Jacques de Chambly; Parks Canada runs it as a national historic site with a museum and interpretive programming. The canal cut alongside those rapids in 1843, so that vessels could reach Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and the American market, now carries thousands of pleasure craft each summer and doubles as a cycling and skating corridor. Since 2002 the Bières et Saveurs festival has drawn crowds to the fort grounds every Labour Day weekend and become a fixture of the regional calendar.

Across the water, Beloeil and Mont-Saint-Hilaire sit beneath one of the Monteregian hills. Andrew Hamilton Gault willed the mountain's forested flank to McGill University on his death in 1958, and the Gault Nature Reserve now protects more than a thousand hectares of old-growth forest, serving as a research station as well as a hiking destination. Otterburn Park, Saint-Basile-le-Grand and Carignan are chiefly residential, absorbing families priced out of the island. Marieville and Richelieu retain a stronger agricultural character, with the dairy, grain and orchard land of the Richelieu valley running east toward Rouville.

The district is overwhelmingly francophone and functions largely as commuter country. A rail line carries passengers from Mont-Saint-Hilaire into central Montreal, and Autoroutes 10, 20 and 30 handle the rest. Federal issues that registered here in 2008 reflected that mix. Lessard's employment insurance work had a natural constituency among manufacturing and seasonal workers in a region where plant closures had been accumulating; farm organisations pressed candidates on supply management and income stabilisation; and money for commuter rail and highway capacity was a standing municipal demand. The federal government's decision that summer to end a series of arts and culture programmes also became a talking point across Quebec ridings during the campaign.