Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie

This riding sat in the middle of the east end of the island of Montreal. It took in La Petite-Patrie and the part of the Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie borough lying southwest of Pie-IX Boulevard; the remainder of the borough, beyond Pie-IX, belonged to Hochelaga. At about ten square kilometres of tightly built residential streets, it was among the most densely populated ridings in the country.

Candidates

Bernard Bigras (Bloc Québécois) — The sitting member since June 1997. Born in Montreal in June 1969, he studied economics at the Université de Montréal, worked at the National Bank of Canada and from 1994 served as a political adviser in Quebec ministerial offices covering tourism, culture and communications, and industry. He was returned in 2000, 2004 and 2006. Bigras built his parliamentary reputation on environmental policy, sitting with the Canadian delegation at the 1997 climate conference that produced the Kyoto Protocol and serving as the Bloc's environment critic for most of his time in the House; he had also carried the party's human resources and immigration files and chaired its caucus. The national argument over carbon pricing that autumn put his portfolio at the centre of the campaign.

Marjorie Théodore (Liberal) — Stood for the Liberal Party.

Alexandre Boulerice (NDP) — Making his first federal run, having stood provincially in Saint-Jean for the Union des forces progressistes in 2003. Born in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu in June 1973, Boulerice took a degree in sociology at the Université de Montréal, studied political science at UQAM and did graduate coursework at McGill. He worked in the newsrooms at LCN and TVA, where he served as vice-president of local 687 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, spent time with the Union des travailleurs et travailleuses accidentés de Montréal on behalf of injured workers, and later joined CUPE as a communications adviser. He had earlier led the Montreal region of the Parti de la démocratie socialiste.

Sylvie Boulianne (Conservative) — The Conservative nominee.

Vincent Larochelle (Green Party) — The Green candidate.

Jean-Patrick Berthiaume ran under the neorhino.ca banner, Stéphane Chénier for the Marxist-Leninist Party, and Michel Dugré with no party affiliation.

About the Riding

The northern half of the riding took shape around the Canadian Pacific Angus Shops, built from 1904 and named for the railway's director Richard B. Angus. They repaired and built locomotives and rolling stock and at their height employed more than ten thousand people. The works closed in 1992; redevelopment of the site as the Technopôle Angus, a mixed business and residential quarter, began in 1999 and was still filling in by 2008. Southwest of it, La Petite-Patrie is organized around the Marché Jean-Talon, trading since 1933, and the Italian commercial streets that surround it. Plaza St-Hubert, the strip on rue Saint-Hubert running under a glass canopy added in the 1980s, and Promenade Masson in Rosemont are the two main retail spines.

Housing here leans heavily to rental units in the walk-up duplexes and triplexes with exterior staircases typical of central Montreal. French dominates, though a substantial minority of residents grew up in another language, the result of successive waves of Italian, Latin American and Southeast Asian settlement. Employment concentrates in health and social services, education, retail, small manufacturing and a large cultural and creative workforce. By 2008 younger professionals and families were moving onto streets that had been cheap a decade earlier, pushing rents up and changing the commercial mix. Community groups, housing cooperatives and social economy enterprises remained unusually thick on the ground, and the federal cuts to arts and culture programs announced that summer landed with particular force in a neighbourhood with so many people working in those fields.