St. Paul's, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

St. Paul's

St. Paul's covered midtown Toronto between the Canadian Pacific rail corridor in the south and Eglinton Avenue in the north, spilling a little past Eglinton on either side of Yonge Street. Along the Yonge spine sat Deer Park, Chaplin Estates and Davisville, reaching east to Bayview Avenue in the Davisville stretch but stopping short of Moore Park and Rosedale. West of Yonge the riding took in Forest Hill, Casa Loma, Wychwood, Humewood, Cedarvale and Oakwood Village, running out to Winona Drive and Oakwood Avenue. The 2006 census put the population at 111,131, a little lower than in 2001.

Candidates

Carolyn Bennett (Liberal) — Bennett had held the seat since 1997. Toronto-born in 1950, she took her medical degree at the University of Toronto in 1974 and was certified in family medicine two years later, practising for twenty years, chiefly out of Wellesley and Women's College hospitals, founding the Bedford Medical Associates partnership and holding a clinical appointment in the university's department of family and community medicine. She first sought office provincially in St. Andrew—St. Patrick in 1995. Paul Martin appointed her minister of state for public health in December 2003, the portfolio under which the Public Health Agency of Canada was created and the first chief public health officer appointed after the SARS outbreak. She entered the Liberal leadership race in 2006 before withdrawing.

Heather Jewell (Conservative) — Jewell, who came from a business background, stood for the Conservatives in a seat the Progressive Conservatives had last won in 1988 under Barbara McDougall, who went on to serve as external affairs minister.

Anita Agrawal (NDP) — Agrawal, a manager by profession, ran for the New Democrats.

Justin Erdman (Green Party) — Erdman worked in digital marketing and was the Green Party candidate.

The Libertarian Party ran John Kittredge, a management consultant.

About the Riding

St. Paul's contains some of the most expensive residential property in Canada alongside rental apartments and modest semi-detached housing, often within a few streets of each other. Forest Hill, an independent village until Toronto absorbed it in 1967, sets the tone at one end of that range; Oakwood Village and the Caribbean shops and restaurants along Eglinton Avenue West sit at the other. A substantial Jewish community is centred on Forest Hill and Cedarvale.

The riding's working population is weighted toward law, medicine, finance, media and the arts, and its household incomes rank among the highest in the country. Yonge and Eglinton, at the northern edge, is a dense office and retail node with a subway station beneath it. Along St. Clair Avenue West, construction of a dedicated streetcar right-of-way had dragged on since 2005 — halted by a court challenge, restarted in 2006, still unfinished — and had become a running grievance among merchants who blamed it for lost trade.

Two national issues landed with particular force here. The Conservative government's cuts of roughly $45 million to arts and culture programs became a live campaign controversy, and a news conference in Toronto during the writ period at which more than twenty performers condemned the cuts gave it local resonance in a riding thick with people who work in film, theatre, publishing and broadcasting. And the collapse of equity markets through late September and early October, which wiped out a large share of the value of retirement savings, was felt keenly in a district with an older, affluent and heavily invested population.

Beyond those, the riding's federal agenda ran to health policy and public health capacity, transit funding for the Eglinton corridor, affordable housing in the western neighbourhoods, and immigration and settlement services.