Parkdale—High Park, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Parkdale—High Park

The riding runs west from Dufferin Street to the Humber River, and south from the rail corridor above Dundas Street West down to the Lake Ontario shore, wrapped around the 161 hectares of High Park. Swansea, Bloor West Village, Lambton Baby Point, the lower Junction, High Park North, Roncesvalles and Parkdale are the neighbourhoods inside it.

Candidates

Gerard Kennedy (Liberal) — Kennedy was named the candidate in April 2007 with no one else on the ballot, after the riding's former Liberal MP, Sarmite Bulte, threw her support behind him; he was then Stéphane Dion's special adviser on election readiness. Born in The Pas, Manitoba, he studied at Trent University, became the first executive director of Edmonton's food bank in 1983, and moved to Toronto in 1986 to run the Daily Bread Food Bank for a decade. He won a by-election in York South in 1996 and served as Ontario's Minister of Education from 2003 until he resigned in 2006 to contest the federal Liberal leadership, where he finished fourth and swung his support to Dion — the leader he was now campaigning under.

Peggy Nash (NDP) — Nash was the sitting member, having taken the seat from Bulte in 2006. She began working life as an airline ticket agent and activist in the Canadian Airline Employees Association, which merged into the Canadian Auto Workers in 1985; she then worked as assistant to CAW presidents Bob White and Buzz Hargrove and led the union's 2005 contract bargaining with Ford of Canada. In the Commons she was the New Democrats' industry critic and sat on the industry, science and technology committee, and she led the parliamentary campaign against the proposed sale of MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates' satellite division to an American defence contractor, which the government blocked in the spring of 2008. She holds an honours bachelor of arts in French language and literature from the University of Toronto.

Jilian Saweczko (Conservative) — Saweczko, an entrepreneur, ran for the Conservative Party.

Robert Rishchynski (Green) — Rishchynski, an information technology manager, was making his second run for the Greens in Parkdale—High Park, having also contested the riding in 2006.

Andrew Borkowski (Christian Heritage), Terry Parker (Radical Marijuana) and Lorne Gershuny (Marxist-Leninist) filled out the ballot.

About the Riding

Few Toronto ridings compress as steep an income gradient into as small an area. Bloor West Village and Swansea are settled owner-occupied neighbourhoods of detached and semi-detached houses with a strong retail main street; south Parkdale, a short walk away, holds rooming houses, subdivided mansions and apartment slabs along Jameson Avenue and Queen Street West that make it one of the city's principal low-income tenant districts. Roncesvalles Avenue in between carries a Polish commercial strip of bakeries, delicatessens and independent shops, along with the Revue Cinema.

Parkdale has long been a first address for newcomers, and by 2008 its Tibetan, Caribbean, South Asian and East African communities gave the neighbourhood one of the most varied populations in Toronto. High Park itself — trails, sports fields, Grenadier Pond, a small zoo and the cherry trees that draw crowds each spring — is the riding's defining landmark.

The local economy runs on small business along the commercial corridors, health care, education and the public sector. West-end manufacturing had been shedding jobs for years, a collapse Nash could speak to directly from her years in auto bargaining.

Housing dominated the neighbourhood debate: tenant protection and affordable supply in Parkdale, redevelopment pressure pushing rents upward along Queen and Roncesvalles, and support for the social service agencies concentrated in the south end. Transit capacity on the Bloor-Danforth line, public access to the Sunnyside waterfront, and the argument over the Liberal carbon tax rounded out the campaign. With two nationally known candidates on the ballot, the riding was among the most closely watched Liberal-New Democrat contests in the country.