Simcoe North, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Simcoe North

Simcoe North covers the northern end of Simcoe County, roughly 3,600 square kilometres of shoreline, farmland and rock lying between Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe. Orillia, at the narrows joining Lake Simcoe to Lake Couchiching, is the only city. Midland and Penetanguishene sit on the southern shore of Georgian Bay, and five townships — Tiny, Tay, Oro-Medonte, Severn and Ramara — fill the ground between them. Rama First Nation lies east of Orillia, and Beausoleil First Nation occupies Christian Island off the Tiny shore.

Candidates

Bruce Stanton (Conservative) — Stanton went into the campaign as the sitting member, having taken the seat in January 2006 when Liberal Paul DeVillers retired. He was the fifth generation of his family to make a living from tourism on Sparrow Lake, where the family business dates to 1884, and served as president of Bayview Wildwood Resorts Limited and The Cottages at Port Stanton. He sat on Severn Township council from 1999 to 2003 and lived at Coldwater.

Steve Clarke (Liberal) — Clarke opened the Brewery Bay Food Co. in downtown Orillia in 1993 and had run it since. The restaurant takes its name from Old Brewery Bay, the arm of Lake Couchiching where Stephen Leacock kept his summer home. This was Clarke's first campaign for federal office.

Richard Banigan (NDP) — Banigan was a publisher from Penetanguishene, at the Georgian Bay end of the riding.

Valerie Powell (Green Party) — Powell worked as a psychogeriatric consultant and lived at Coldwater.

About the Riding

Orillia had about 30,000 residents at the 2006 census and does the work of a much larger place, supplying retail, health and government services to a rural and cottage population that swells every summer. The Ontario Provincial Police run their general headquarters from the city. Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital, a Georgian College campus and a Lakehead University campus opened in 2006 round out the institutional payroll. The largest single employer in the area is Casino Rama, run by the Chippewas of Rama First Nation on reserve land just east of the city.

The Georgian Bay towns operate on a different economy. Midland and Penetanguishene grew out of shipping, lumber and boatbuilding, and both now lean on summer visitors drawn to Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, the Martyrs' Shrine, Discovery Harbour and the Wye Marsh. Light manufacturing continues in the corridor between them. Inland, the townships farm cash crops, beef and dairy; along the shorelines of Georgian Bay and Lake Couchiching, seasonal residents outnumber permanent ones in places such as Tiny and Ramara.

Several pressures framed the autumn 2008 campaign here. The Canadian dollar had reached parity with the American dollar in 2007, making the region a costlier destination for cross-border visitors and squeezing resort and marina operators. The market turmoil that broke during the campaign mattered in a riding with a large retired population living on savings. Lake Simcoe's water quality remained a federal file: Ottawa set up a clean-up fund for the lake in 2007 and topped it up to $30 million over five years in January 2008. And steady migration north from the Greater Toronto Area along Highways 400 and 11 kept pushing up housing and rural servicing costs in Severn and Oro-Medonte.