Prince Edward—Hastings, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Prince Edward—Hastings

Two very different landscapes shared this eastern Ontario seat: the County of Prince Edward, a limestone peninsula of farms, dunes and shoreline reached across a narrow neck of land, and the County of Hastings, thinning northward from farmland into the lakes, rock and bush of the Canadian Shield around Bancroft. Belleville was the population centre; the neighbouring city of Quinte West was excluded from the boundaries. Deseronto, Madoc, Marmora, Tweed, Stirling and the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory all fell inside. The 2006 census counted 113,227 residents.

Candidates

Daryl Kramp (Conservative) — Kramp took the seat in 2004 after two earlier attempts, in Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington in 1997 and 2000. A native of Kirkland Lake, born in 1947, he trained as a police officer and spent several years doing investigative work for the provincial force. He then moved to Madoc and built a living out of retail, wholesale and hospitality ventures, among them a restaurant, and won a place on the village council, later serving as deputy reeve.

Ken Cole (Liberal) — Cole, a Belleville businessman, carried the Liberal banner in a riding his party had held from 1988 to 2004 under Lyle Vanclief, who was Jean Chrétien's agriculture minister from 1997 until the end of 2003.

Michael McMahon (NDP) — McMahon arrived in Windsor as a small child in 1951 and went on to spend three decades teaching high school science, part of it overseas in Papua New Guinea. Within the secondary school teachers' union he rose to branch president and sat on several of its major committees, and he had lately stepped back from the local school board. This was his second run here, after 2006; he campaigned on the doctor shortage and emergency room waits, long-term care beds, and redirecting oil subsidies toward building electric vehicles and wind turbines in Canada.

Alan Coxwell (Green Party) — Coxwell farmed at Stirling and stood for the Green Party.

Paul Barnes, an electrical draftsman from Marmora, ran as an Independent.

About the Riding

Belleville, with roughly 48,800 residents, is the commercial hub of the Bay of Quinte and the riding's only sizeable city. Light manufacturing, food processing and retail carried the local economy, along with Belleville General, the largest of the Quinte Health Care hospitals. Just to the west, outside the riding boundary in Quinte West, sits 8 Wing Trenton, the point at which Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan came home; the stretch of Highway 401 running from the base toward Toronto had been formally named the Highway of Heroes in August 2007. Thousands of military families lived within commuting distance, so base spending, procurement and veterans' services carried real weight.

Prince Edward County, with about 25,500 residents, was in the middle of a transformation. It had been recognised as Ontario's newest designated viticultural area in 2007, and a cluster of small wineries, restaurants and galleries was pulling visitors into Picton, Wellington and Bloomfield. Sandbanks Provincial Park and its freshwater dune system remained among the busiest parks in the province. Older mixed farming and canning traditions carried on alongside it.

North Hastings is a different country again. Bancroft has called itself the mineral capital of Canada for decades and has hosted the Rockhound Gemboree, the country's largest gem and mineral show, every summer since 1963. Forestry, cottaging and seasonal trades sustain the towns along Highway 62, and Madoc and Marmora carry mining histories of their own. The Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte hold the Tyendinaga territory, which sits between Deseronto and Belleville along the shore.

Distance shaped the campaign. Rural residents faced long drives to specialists and to work, which put the doctor shortage and fuel prices squarely into federal territory alongside farm income, the forestry downturn and development in the Shield communities to the north.