Rivière-du-Nord, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Rivière-du-Nord

Named for the river that runs through Saint-Jérôme, this riding was the La Rivière-du-Nord regional county municipality entire: Saint-Jérôme itself along with Prévost, Saint-Colomban, Sainte-Sophie and Saint-Hippolyte, some 450 square kilometres about 45 kilometres northwest of Montreal. It marks the point where the commuter belt north of the city gives way to the Laurentian hills.

Candidates

Monique Guay (Bloc Québécois) — The sitting member, and a Prévost resident. Born at L'Île-Bizard in October 1959, she studied at Dawson College and McGill and ran a real estate firm from 1987 before entering politics. Elected in 1993 in the old riding of Laurentides and returned there in 1997 and 2000, she moved to Rivière-du-Nord when the boundaries were redrawn, taking it in 2004 and again in 2006. She had been the Bloc Québécois critic for international co-operation and la Francophonie and then for labour from 1999 to 2004, deputy chair and later chair of the party caucus, and deputy House leader after 2004. By this campaign she was among the longest-serving members of the caucus.

Simon Bernier (NDP) — A Mirabel resident, he was nominated by the New Democrats.

Gilles Duguay (Conservative) — The Conservative nominee, from Val-David.

Joao Neves (Liberal) — Stood for the Liberal Party.

René Piché (Green Party) — From Sainte-Sophie, he was the Green candidate.

Jocelyne Leduc (Independent) — From Saint-Hippolyte, she ran without a party affiliation.

About the Riding

Saint-Jérôme counted 63,729 residents at the 2006 census, a figure that reflects the 2002 mergers folding in Bellefeuille, Saint-Antoine and Lafontaine — three municipalities that between them brought more people into the enlarged city than the old one had held. The place owes its shape to Antoine Labelle, parish priest from 1868 until his death in 1891, who pushed the settlement of the Laurentians and campaigned for the railway that reached the town in 1876. That roadbed is now Le P'tit Train du Nord, a linear park and winter trail running north toward Mont-Tremblant.

The city is the seat of the judicial district of Terrebonne, with the courthouse, a regional hospital put up in 1949 and opened the following year, and the Cégep de Saint-Jérôme. Health care, education, public administration and retail supply most of the steady employment, and the city functions as the commercial capital for the whole southern Laurentides.

The outlying municipalities tell a different story. Prévost, Saint-Colomban, Saint-Hippolyte and Sainte-Sophie grew quickly through the 2000s as buyers priced out of Laval and Montreal moved north into lake-and-forest subdivisions. Much of that workforce commutes down Autoroute 15 or works in residential construction, which had become one of the largest single sources of employment in the regional county municipality. The riding is almost entirely French-speaking.

Heading into October 2008, the local economic questions were those common to fast-growing outer suburbs: the cost and pace of housing, road and transit capacity toward Montreal, and services stretched by population growth. Alongside them sat the manufacturing losses accumulating across the Basses-Laurentides, and — as the campaign ran on into the autumn — the sudden deterioration of credit conditions that put residential construction itself in question.