Timmins—James Bay, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Timmins—James Bay

Less than three months before the vote, De Beers formally opened the Victor mine in the James Bay lowlands about 90 kilometres west of Attawapiskat, giving Ontario its first diamond mine and this riding a new kind of resource economy. Timmins—James Bay covers nearly a quarter of a million square kilometres, running from the city of Timmins north to the salt water of James Bay and on to the Hudson Bay coast at Peawanuck. It takes in Kirkland Lake and Larder Lake in the south, Iroquois Falls, Black River-Matheson and Cochrane across the clay belt, and the coastal communities of Moosonee, Moose Factory, Fort Albany, Kashechewan and Attawapiskat.

Candidates

Charlie Angus (NDP) — Angus was the sitting member, having won the riding in 2004 and held it in 2006. Born in Timmins, he spent his early adulthood in Toronto, where he co-founded the punk band L'Étranger with Andrew Cash and later fronted the alt-country group Grievous Angels. He moved to the Timiskaming town of Cobalt in 1990, launched HighGrader, a magazine about northern Ontario life, with his wife Brit Griffin in 1995, and wrote several books on the region's mining history. He had served as the New Democrats' Canadian heritage critic and by 2008 was the party's spokesman on digital issues, leading the opposition to the copyright bill the government introduced in June 2008. He had made conditions in Kashechewan, evacuated over contaminated drinking water in 2005 and repeatedly flooded since, a signature file.

Paul Taillefer (Liberal) — Taillefer was a teacher from Timmins.

Bill Greenberg (Conservative) — Greenberg worked as an advisor and lived in Timmins.

Larry Verner (Green Party) — Verner was an environmental technician from Moosonee, on the Moose River near James Bay, and one of very few candidates in the country running from a community with no road connection to the rest of the province.

About the Riding

Timmins, with about 43,000 residents, has been a gold town since the Porcupine rush of 1909. Goldcorp's Porcupine operations and Xstrata's Kidd Creek copper-zinc mine and metallurgical site were the largest industrial employers, and the city serves as the supply, medical and administrative centre for the whole northeast. Kirkland Lake, at the riding's southern end, sits on a camp that has produced gold since 1913; its Macassa mine had been back in production since 2002, and the high metal prices of the preceding years had revived exploration across the district.

The forest economy that built the clay belt towns was in retreat. Iroquois Falls had been laid out as a company town around a pulp and paper mill before the First World War and still depended on it; newsprint and lumber operations there and at Cochrane faced weak markets, a high dollar and rising fibre and energy costs. Timmins and the surrounding Cochrane District towns have a large French-speaking population, and federal services in French were a standing expectation.

The northern third of the riding is another country. The coastal First Nations are reached by air, by winter road, or by the Ontario Northland railway to Moosonee. Housing shortages, boil-water advisories, school and health facility deficits and the cost of freight were chronic problems, and the Victor mine's impact-benefit agreement with Attawapiskat, ratified by the community in 2005, raised the question of whether resource wealth would translate into lasting local employment.