Davenport, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Davenport

At roughly thirteen square kilometres, Davenport was among the smallest federal seats in the country and among the most heavily immigrant. It formed a narrow band across Toronto's west end, running from the rail corridor below Dundas Street West and Bloor northeast to Eglinton Avenue West at Dufferin Street. Little Portugal, Brockton Village, Dufferin Grove, the Junction Triangle, Regal Heights, Fairbank and the Corso Italia stretch of St. Clair Avenue West all sit inside it.

Candidates

Mario Silva (Liberal) — Silva had held the seat since 2004 and came to it from nine years on Toronto city council. He first won a council seat in 1994 in Ward 3, Brockton, unseating the veteran councillor Tony O'Donohue by fifteen votes, and after amalgamation represented Ward 20, Trinity—Niagara, until 2003. Born in the Azores in June 1966, he took the Liberal nomination in 2004 from Charles Caccia, who had represented Davenport since 1968. In opposition after 2006 he was party critic for the Treasury Board and for labour, and in 2007 France named him a Knight of the Legion of Honour.

Peter Ferreira (NDP) — Ferreira worked as an immigration consultant. The New Democrats had taken about a third of the Davenport vote in 2006 behind Gord Perks, who won a seat on Toronto city council later that year.

Theresa Rodrigues (Conservative) — Rodrigues ran her husband Victor's architectural technology office in the riding. She had been the Conservative candidate in Davenport in the previous general election.

Wayne Scott (Green) — Scott, a retired courier, was the Green Party's candidate.

Wendy Forrest ran as an Independent after contesting the riding for the Canadian Action Party in 2006. Miguel Figueroa, leader of the Communist Party of Canada since 1992 and the named party in the June 2003 Supreme Court decision that struck down the fifty-candidate threshold for federal party registration, was again on the ballot, along with Simon Luisi for the AAEV Party of Canada and Sarah Thompson for the Marxist-Leninist Party.

About the Riding

No federal riding in Canada counted a larger share of residents of Portuguese origin. The community anchored the commercial life of Dundas Street West and College Street — bakeries, fish shops, travel agencies, social clubs — and Portuguese remained a working language across much of the neighbourhood. Italian Canadians formed the second historic community, concentrated in the north end around the Corso Italia shopping strip. Newer arrivals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Vietnam and East Africa filled in through the 1990s and 2000s.

Factories and the railways that served them built Davenport's economy. The Junction Triangle, wedged between three rail corridors, held foundries, tanneries and light manufacturing for a century, and the loss of those jobs through the 1990s left a long inventory of vacant industrial land that developers were steadily converting to housing and studio space. What remained by 2008 was an economy of small business: construction trades, restaurants, contract cleaning, garment work and retail along the main streets, with Dufferin Mall the largest single commercial site.

Incomes sat well below the Toronto average and rented housing dominated the stock, so federal questions about affordable housing, settlement funding and employment insurance eligibility landed directly. Younger artists and cultural workers had also been moving in for cheaper space, and the federal decision in August 2008 to end PromArt, a $4.7-million travel grant program run out of Foreign Affairs, and Trade Routes, a $9-million cultural export program at Canadian Heritage, drew sharp reaction from Toronto arts organisations during the campaign.