Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke

More than 12,000 square kilometres of the upper Ottawa Valley made up this riding — all of Renfrew County plus a slice of the Territorial District of Nipissing taking in the eastern portion of Algonquin Provincial Park. It follows the Ottawa River northwest from Arnprior through Renfrew, Pembroke, Petawawa and Deep River, with farm concessions, logging roads and Shield lakes filling the interior. The 2006 census counted 98,803 residents.

Candidates

Cheryl Gallant (Conservative) — Gallant had represented the riding since 2000, when she took it for the Canadian Alliance in a rare Ontario breakthrough for the party, unseating the Liberal incumbent Hec Clouthier. Born in Sarnia in 1960, she holds a chemistry degree from the University of Western Ontario and did further work in biochemistry, toxicology, pharmacology and environmental chemistry. She worked in the group insurance business and managed a family professional practice before entering politics, and lived in Pembroke with her husband and four daughters.

Carole Devine (Liberal) — Devine was a registered nurse who had taught in the nursing program at Algonquin College's Pembroke campus and held a management post at Renfrew Victoria Hospital. At the time of the campaign she was executive director of Supples Landing, a Pembroke retirement residence. She had served as a trustee of the Renfrew County Catholic District School Board.

Sue McSheffrey (NDP) — McSheffrey trained at the Queen Elizabeth School of Physiotherapy in Birmingham and worked as a community physiotherapist with the Champlain Community Care Access Centre, having previously headed the physiotherapy department at Renfrew Victoria Hospital. She was a founding member of the Renfrew County District Health Council and chaired it from 1996 to 1998, and had led both OPSEU Local 481 and the Renfrew and District Labour Council. This was her third campaign here, after 2004 and 2006.

Ben Hoffman (Green Party) — Hoffman, a mediator from Eganville, stood for the Green Party.

Denis Gagné, a Renfrew farmer, ran as an Independent.

About the Riding

No riding in Ontario was more directly tied to federal spending. Garrison Petawawa is one of the army's largest bases, and its units were at the centre of the Afghanistan mission throughout the campaign: the 3rd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment had stood up as the core of the next battle group early in 2008 and took over in Kandahar that September. The town of Petawawa had grown around the base, and casualty notices were felt personally up and down the valley.

Chalk River supplied the other federal story, and it had been a national one. In November 2007 the National Research Universal reactor came down for routine maintenance, and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission refused to let Atomic Energy of Canada Limited restart it because seismic upgrades to two emergency cooling pumps were unfinished. Because the NRU supplied a large share of the world's medical isotopes, hospitals began cancelling scans, and in mid-December Parliament passed emergency legislation overriding the regulator to bring the reactor back. In January 2008 the natural resources minister removed Linda Keen as head of the commission. The affair left the future of the Chalk River complex, and the thousands of jobs attached to it, an open question going into the vote. Deep River, built in the 1940s to house the site's scientists, is a company town by another name.

The rest of the economy leans on forestry, farming and tourism. Ottawa Valley sawmills were working through a severe lumber downturn, dairy and beef operations use the river flats, and Algonquin Park and the whitewater runs draw summer visitors. Pembroke, with roughly 14,000 residents, is the commercial centre; Arnprior sits inside Ottawa's commuting shed. The Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation are at Golden Lake.