Compton—Stanstead, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Compton—Stanstead

The Vermont and New Hampshire boundary forms the southern edge of this Estrie riding, which runs from the dairy country around Coaticook east into the forested uplands of the Haut-Saint-François. It takes in the regional county municipalities of Coaticook and Le Haut-Saint-François, the Hatley and Stanstead end of Memphrémagog, and a large piece of the City of Sherbrooke itself — the Lennoxville and Rock Forest–Saint-Élie–Deauville sectors, the downtown and Fleurimont being left to the neighbouring Sherbrooke riding.

Candidates

France Bonsant (Bloc Québécois) — Born at Waterville in 1952, Bonsant sat from 1991 to 1999 on the council of the Le Haut-Saint-François regional county municipality as the delegate for Ascot Corner. She unseated David Price in 2004 — Price had been elected here as a Progressive Conservative in 1997 and joined the Liberals in 2000 — and held the seat in 2006. She went into the September campaign as the sitting member seeking a third term.

William Hogg (Liberal) — A professor living at Magog, Hogg stood for the Liberals.

Michel Gagné (Conservative) — Gagné, of Asbestos, was the Conservative candidate.

Jean Rousseau (NDP) — Born at Asbestos in 1961 and living at Saint-Denis-de-Brompton, Rousseau spent his working life as a musician, songwriter and performer. He studied administration at the Cégep de Sherbrooke and completed a bachelor's degree in industrial relations at Université Laval in 2006. This was his first campaign for office.

Gary Caldwell (Green Party) — Born in Toronto in 1942, Caldwell studied at the University of Toronto and Université Laval, taught at Bishop's University in Lennoxville, and took up farming at Sainte-Edwidge-de-Clifton in the 1970s. Working with the Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture, he published studies of English-speaking Quebec outside Montreal and, with Pierre Anctil, of Jewish life in the province. He carried the Conservative banner here in 2004 and again in 2006, and moved to the Greens in 2007.

About the Riding

Agriculture sets the tone in the west. The Coaticook regional county municipality is the dairy heart of the Eastern Townships, accounting for better than a third of the region's milk producers, and the Laiterie de Coaticook, founded in 1940 and making ice cream since 1942, is the best-known name to come out of it. The Parc de la Gorge de Coaticook, whose 169-metre pedestrian suspension bridge hangs some fifty metres above the river, anchors a tourist trade that also draws on the inns and lakeshore cottages around Lake Massawippi, North Hatley and Ayer's Cliff.

East of there the ground rises and wood takes over. William Angus bought the falls on the Saint-François in 1882 and put up a sawmill and pulp mill; the kraft paper plant that grew out of it, run by Cascades since 1983, remained the anchor of East Angus. Falling lumber and paper demand, and the long softwood dispute with the United States, were live worries in Cookshire-Eaton, Scotstown and the forestry villages around them.

Stanstead, formed in 1995 out of Stanstead Plain, Rock Island and Beebe Plain, sits flush against Derby Line, Vermont. The Haskell Free Library and Opera House, opened in 1904, was deliberately built across the line, and on Canusa Street the boundary runs down the middle of the pavement. Nineteenth-century quarrying made the district the granite capital of Canada, and tighter American border management through the 2000s turned routine crossings into a standing local grievance.

The population is largely francophone; a long-settled English-speaking minority remains around Massawippi, Stanstead and Lennoxville, home to Bishop's University and Champlain College. Compton was the birthplace of Louis St-Laurent, prime minister from 1948 to 1957. Rural questions dominated the local conversation heading into October 2008: fuel and input costs on the farm, the state of the forest industry, and the steady departure of young people for Sherbrooke and Montreal.