Etobicoke Centre, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Etobicoke Centre

Etobicoke Centre occupied the middle band of Toronto's west end, roughly 36 square kilometres of the former City of Etobicoke holding just over 111,000 people at the 2006 census. Eglinton Avenue West and Dixon Road formed its northern edge, the Humber River its eastern one, and Dundas Street West and the Canadian Pacific rail corridor its southern limit, with the Mississauga boundary at Etobicoke Creek closing it off to the west. Richview, Humber Heights–Westmount, Humber Valley Village, Princess Gardens, Thorncrest Village, Markland Wood and Eringate–Centennial–West Deane sat inside it, along with parts of Eatonville and Islington–City Centre West.

Candidates

Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Liberal) — Took the seat in June 2004, when Allan Rock stepped down after eleven years as its member to become Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, and held it through the 2006 general election. Born in Etobicoke in 1960, he took a commerce degree at Trinity College in the University of Toronto and ran the family food businesses — Future Bakery, started by his grandparents, and M-C Dairy. In August 2006, after travelling to southern Lebanon on a fact-finding trip during that summer's war, he argued that Canada should be prepared to talk directly to Hezbollah; he resigned as the Liberals' deputy foreign affairs critic within days, while maintaining that the organisation belonged on Canada's list of terrorist entities.

Axel Kuhn (Conservative) — A business owner from Etobicoke, Kuhn was making his first run for public office. He carried the Conservative banner in a seat the Progressive Conservatives had held under Michael Wilson until 1993 and which had returned a Liberal at every election since.

Joseph Schwartz (NDP) — Schwartz worked in financial services in Toronto and stood for the New Democrats.

Marion Schaffer (Green Party) — A retired minister living in Oakville, Schaffer ran for the Greens, whose 2008 platform led with carbon pricing and a shift of taxation away from income and payroll.

About the Riding

This is settled suburban Toronto. Most of the housing stock went up between the late 1940s and the mid-1960s, in curving subdivisions of detached and semi-detached homes, with apartment and rental towers concentrated along the arterial roads. The Humber River and Mimico Creek valleys cut through the riding and account for a good deal of its green space, as does Centennial Park in the west, one of the larger municipal parks in the city.

The population is a layered one. Italian, Ukrainian and Polish families who moved out from the older inner-city neighbourhoods after the war remain a visible presence in the parishes, delicatessens and community halls, and they have been joined over the past two decades by South Asian, Filipino and Latin American households. English is the dominant home language, though a large minority of residents speak something else at home. This is also an older riding than most: the median age ran several years above the provincial figure, and close to one resident in five was over 65.

Economically it is a commuter belt. Highways 401 and 427 run along and through its northern end, feeding the office parks, freight terminals and hotels that cluster around Toronto Pearson International Airport just beyond the city line, and Kipling station, the western terminus of the Bloor–Danforth subway, sits just off the riding's southern edge. That mix left it exposed to what was happening in the autumn of 2008: credit markets seizing up through September and October, layoffs spreading across southern Ontario's manufacturing and freight sectors, and a housing market that had been the main store of wealth for most families here.