Kenora, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Kenora

Few ridings in the country covered so much ground for so few voters. Kenora, created for the 2004 election out of the old Kenora—Rainy River, ran some 327,000 square kilometres — close to a third of Ontario — from the Manitoba boundary east past Sioux Lookout and north from Lake of the Woods deep into the boreal forest. Its towns, Kenora, Dryden, Sioux Lookout, Red Lake, Ear Falls, Ignace and Pickle Lake, were separated by hours of highway, and dozens of First Nations communities inside its boundaries could be reached only by aircraft or winter road.

Candidates

Greg Rickford (Conservative) — Rickford was born at Paris, Ontario, in 1967 and held an unusual combination of credentials: a diploma from Mohawk College, a nursing degree from the University of Victoria, both civil law and common law degrees from McGill University, and an MBA from Université Laval. He worked first as a nurse and later as a lawyer in the remote First Nations communities of the Kenora District, giving him a familiarity with the northern half of the riding few candidates could match. This was his first run for public office.

Roger Valley (Liberal) — Valley was the sitting member. Born in Kenora in 1957, he worked as a commercial fisherman before entering public life, then served as a city councillor and mayor of Dryden and spent close to a decade as president of the local provincial Liberal riding association. He won the newly created Kenora seat in 2004 after the retirement of Bob Nault, the former Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, having narrowly taken the nomination from Indigenous leader Charles Fox, who then backed him in the general election. He was returned in 2006.

Tania Cameron (NDP) — Cameron worked as a band manager near Kenora and had spent years in community administration and advocacy across the district. This was her first federal candidacy.

JoJo Holiday (Green Party) — Holiday, a homeopathic practitioner from Keewatin, ran for the Green Party in a riding where the party organisation was thin and distances made canvassing difficult.

About the Riding

The riding's economy had been built on trees, and by 2008 that foundation had cracked. Abitibi-Consolidated announced in December 2005 that it would permanently close its Kenora paper mill, the town's largest employer, taking about 320 jobs with it. Similar shutdowns and curtailments moved through mills across northwestern Ontario over the following three years as newsprint demand fell, the dollar strengthened and energy costs rose. Dryden's mill, the largest industrial employer in that town, was under continuing pressure.

Mining offered the counterweight. The Red Lake gold camp remained one of the richest in Canada, and exploration spending across the Kenora District was running at high levels, aimed at gold as well as nickel, copper and platinum group metals. Tourism supplied the third leg: Lake of the Woods and the lake country around Sioux Narrows and Minaki drew lodge and cottage traffic, much of it from Manitoba and the American Midwest.

The riding contained a large number of First Nations across Treaty 3 and Treaty 9 territory, and the federal government's direct responsibilities there made Ottawa a more immediate presence than in most Ontario ridings. Drinking-water systems, housing shortages, on-reserve schooling, policing and access to health care were federal files with visible local consequences. Sioux Lookout served as the medical hub for the far north, with patients flown in from communities hundreds of kilometres away. The long-documented mercury contamination of the English—Wabigoon river system downstream of Dryden continued to affect communities along it.

Distance was itself a campaign issue. Reaching the fly-in communities required charter aircraft, and the question of how any single member could serve a territory of that size came up in every election held there.