Mississauga—Streetsville, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Mississauga—Streetsville

Roughly 49 square kilometres in the city's northwest corner made up Mississauga—Streetsville. Mississauga Road and Highway 401 closed off its northeastern flank, Mavis Road and Britannia Road West its eastern one; from there the line ran down Terry Fox Way and west along Eglinton Avenue West before turning up Erin Mills Parkway and back along Britannia Road West to the Halton boundary, with Brampton across the top. Its centre of gravity lay in two communities older than the city itself: Streetsville on the Credit River and Meadowvale to the north.

Candidates

Bonnie Crombie (Liberal) — Born in Toronto in February 1960 to Polish immigrant parents, Crombie was raised in High Park and then Etobicoke and attended Michael Power/St. Joseph High School. She graduated from St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto in 1982 in political science and international relations and took an MBA at York's Schulich School of Business in 1992. Her business career ran through marketing management at McDonald's Canada and the Walt Disney Company and then government relations for the Insurance Bureau of Canada. This was her first run for public office.

Wajid Khan (Conservative) — Born in Lahore in 1946, Khan served as a pilot and officer in the Pakistan Air Force from 1966 to 1973, flying Shenyang F-6 fighters during the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war, and settled in Toronto in 1974. His business interests in Canada included the Dufferin Mazda dealership. He won the riding for the Liberals in 2004 and held it in 2006. On 8 August 2006 Stephen Harper appointed him a special adviser on the Middle East and Afghanistan, and on 5 January 2007 he left the Liberal caucus for the Conservatives — so the Conservative incumbent defending the seat had been elected to it twice under another banner.

Keith Pinto (NDP) — A student living in Mississauga.

Otto Casanova (Green Party) — Casanova managed the export department of a Canadian manufacturing firm and had earlier founded a family business. He had studied economics, graphic arts and computer science and was working toward a political science degree at York University. He founded the local Green association and had run here in 2006.

Two independents, Viktor Spanovic and Ralph Bunag, also stood.

About the Riding

Streetsville was built on water power. Timothy Street, who had contracted the 1819 survey of northern Toronto Township, was given leave to put up a saw and grist mill, and five mill sites along a three-mile run of the fast-flowing Credit gave the settlement its early importance. It took a village charter in 1858 with John Street as first reeve and held out against absorption until the City of Mississauga was created in 1974. Queen Street still carries a compact strip of heritage storefronts, and the Bread and Honey Festival, started by the town's promotion committee in 1973, remained its signature June event.

To the north, Meadowvale runs in two registers. The original hamlet along Second Line West and Old Derry Road, sixty-odd buildings around a crossroads, became Ontario's first heritage conservation district in November 1980. South of it lies the Meadowvale of the 1970s and after — curving streets, two constructed lakes and a GO station on the Milton corridor. Subdivisions on the western edge were still going up as the campaign began, and school capacity and road congestion were persistent complaints.

Household incomes ran above the Mississauga average, and the workforce commuted to Toronto, to the airport employment lands or to the corporate parks along Highways 401 and 403.

The seat's short history had already produced two changes of party allegiance without a single change of member. That guaranteed the 2008 contest would be argued as much over loyalty and representation as over policy.