Sherbrooke, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Sherbrooke

The Sherbrooke riding took in four of the city's six boroughs — Brompton, Fleurimont, Jacques-Cartier and Le Mont-Bellevue — covering the built-up core where the Magog River meets the Saint-François and running north to the old town of Bromptonville. At roughly 170 square kilometres it was almost an enclave: Compton—Stanstead wrapped around it on the west, south and east, taking in the Lennoxville and Rock Forest—Saint-Élie—Deauville boroughs, and only the northern tip touched a second neighbour, Richmond—Arthabaska. The city as a whole counted 147,427 residents at the 2006 census, making it the administrative and commercial capital of the Estrie region.

Candidates

Serge Cardin (Bloc Québécois) — Born in Sherbrooke in July 1950, Cardin worked as an accountant and served on Sherbrooke city council from 1986 to 1998. He entered the House of Commons through the September 1998 by-election held after Jean Charest left federal politics to lead the Quebec Liberal Party, and won the seat again in 2000, 2004 and 2006.

Nathalie Goguen (Liberal) — Goguen, a Sherbrooke resident, carried the Liberal banner.

André Bachand (Conservative) — Born in Asbestos in December 1961, Bachand was elected mayor of his home town in 1986 at the age of 24, the youngest in Quebec at the time, and served until 1997, taking on the prefecture of the surrounding regional county municipality from 1987. He sat as the Progressive Conservative member for Richmond—Arthabaska from 1997, entered the 2003 leadership race but withdrew before the convention for lack of money and backed Peter MacKay, then served briefly as deputy leader. He declined to join the merged Conservative Party in December 2003 and finished his term as an independent. Sherbrooke was his return to federal politics.

Yves Mondoux (NDP) — A television host whose programmes included I.D. Maison and Complètement Marteau, and an early promoter of green house-building in Quebec, Mondoux lived in Austin and was recruited by the New Democrats in September 2008.

Sébastien Côrriveau ran for neorhino.ca, the satirical party registered with Elections Canada in August 2007 as a revival of the old Rhinoceros Party.

About the Riding

Sherbrooke's economy had been reorganised around its institutions. The Université de Sherbrooke, whose main campus sat in Le Mont-Bellevue inside the riding, was the city's largest employer. The Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke, split between the Fleurimont hospital and the Hôtel-Dieu, was the second, with teaching duties and a research centre attached. Together they gave the city a professional and research workforce with no equivalent elsewhere in the Townships, and made federal transfers for health, the research granting councils and student assistance directly relevant to the local job market.

Manufacturing had been receding since its peak in the 1950s. The textile mills and steel works that once defined the Saint-François valley were largely gone, though the city kept a niche in sporting goods: Sherwood had been making hockey sticks in Sherbrooke since 1949 and Inglasco produced pucks. Public administration, retail and regional services filled much of the gap, with provincial and federal offices clustered downtown.

The city was overwhelmingly francophone, and its housing stock older and denser than in the suburban municipalities around it, with a large renting student population near the university and along the main arteries.

Politically the seat had swung hard. It elected Jean Charest as a Progressive Conservative from 1984 until his departure in 1998 and had been Bloc Québécois ever since. Heading into October 2008, the local federal debate turned on research and post-secondary funding, health transfers, and whether a service-and-education economy would be insulated from the manufacturing losses hitting the rest of the Townships.