London West, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

London West

London West covered the city's northwest quadrant: everything north and west of a line running from the western city limit along Dingman Creek, Southdale Road West, Wharncliffe Road South, Commissioners Road East, a Canadian National rail line, the Thames River, Wharncliffe Road North, Oxford Street West and Wonderland Road North. Byron, Oakridge, Westmount, Sherwood Forest, Hyde Park and Riverbend all sat inside it, along with Springbank Park and the subdivisions still spreading toward the western city limit.

Candidates

Ed Holder (Conservative) — Holder had first run federally in 1993, as a Progressive Conservative in London—Middlesex, losing to Liberal Pat O'Brien. Born in Toronto in 1954, he built his career in insurance broking in London: he founded Ontario West Insurance, which merged into Stevenson & Hunt Insurance Brokers, where he became a partner in 1995 and president in 1999, opening offices for the firm in Toronto, Cambridge and Waterloo. He led the London Chamber of Commerce as board president, chaired the London Convention Centre board and sat on the Board of Governors of the University of Western Ontario.

Sue Barnes (Liberal) — The sitting MP, Barnes had represented London West since 1993, when she succeeded Progressive Conservative Tom Hockin. Born in Rabat, Malta, in 1952, she came to Canada with her family in 1957, took a degree in literature at the University of Western Ontario in 1974 and a law degree there in 1977, and was admitted to the Law Society of Upper Canada in 1979. She practised law until her election. In government she was parliamentary secretary to the ministers of national revenue and of justice, and to the minister of Indian affairs and northern development, a role carrying the additional title of federal interlocutor for Métis and non-status Indians. After the Liberals lost office in 2006 she became the party's justice critic.

Peter Lawrence Ferguson (NDP) — Ferguson worked as a scientist in London.

Monica Jarabek (Green Party) — Jarabek taught at the secondary school level.

Steve Hunter ran for the Progressive Canadian Party and Leslie Bartley for the Christian Heritage Party.

About the Riding

London West held much of the city's established middle-class and affluent housing. Oakridge and Westmount were postwar suburbs that had matured into settled neighbourhoods. Byron, once a separate village on the Thames west of the city, had been absorbed into London but kept its own main street. Hyde Park and Riverbend were where the city was still building in 2008, on land farmed a decade earlier.

Most employment lay outside the riding's boundaries. Residents commuted to the hospitals, to Western's campus one riding over, to downtown offices, and to the insurance and financial services firms long established in the city; law, accounting, medicine and engineering were all well represented in these neighbourhoods.

Politically the seat had been competitive for a generation. Hockin held it for the Progressive Conservatives before 1993 and the Liberals had held it since, and the mix of professional and suburban households made it the London riding most sensitive to national swings.

By the autumn of 2008 the regional economy was under strain. Plants in and around London had been cutting shifts through the year, and the auto parts sector supplying assembly lines in Ontario and Michigan was contracting as North American vehicle sales fell. Health care was the other standing concern: the London Health Sciences Centre network served the whole of southwestern Ontario, and wait times, physician recruitment and hospital funding surfaced in every campaign. The national arguments over the proposed carbon tax, the Afghanistan mission and the September financial crisis all reached the riding, set against the record of a member who had sat on the government benches for most of her fifteen years in Parliament.