York Centre, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

York Centre

York Centre occupies a rectangle of north-central Toronto between Steeles Avenue and Highway 401, with Bathurst Street closing it on the east and the Black Creek ravine on the west. Most of it was built out in the two decades after the Second World War: Bathurst Manor, Wilson Heights, Westminster–Branson and Downsview, with the old Canadian Forces Base Toronto lands near the geographic middle.

Candidates

Ken Dryden (Liberal) — Dryden had held York Centre since 2004, when Paul Martin recruited him, and was defending it for the second time. A goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens before he was a lawyer called to the Ontario bar, he was hired as president of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1997 and left the club in 2004 to run for Parliament. As Minister of Social Development from July 2004 to February 2006 he brought early learning and child care agreements to signature with all ten provinces, agreements the incoming Conservative government cancelled in favour of a direct monthly payment to parents. He sought the leadership in 2006, and Stéphane Dion afterwards made him chair of the caucus's new social justice committee, from which he toured fifteen cities arguing for the leader's November 2007 targets on poverty.

Rochelle Wilner (Conservative) — Wilner was a past national president of B'nai Brith Canada and worked as a human rights consultant in Toronto. Her candidacy formed part of a broader Conservative effort in 2008 to compete seriously in Toronto ridings the party had long conceded.

Kurtis Baily (NDP) — Baily, a surveyor by trade, was the New Democratic candidate.

Rosemary Frei (Green) — Frei worked in Toronto as a medical writer and stood for the Green Party.

About the Riding

Immigration had shaped this constituency more than almost any other in Ontario. Bathurst Manor and the Wilson Heights spine held one of the country's larger concentrations of Jewish voters; Filipino, Italian, Russian and South Asian families were spread across the rest, and Westminster–Branson in the northeast corner was one of the thirteen areas the City of Toronto had singled out for reinvestment after its neighbourhoods review. The housing stock ran to postwar bungalows and mid-century apartment slabs rather than the newer high-rise construction going up elsewhere in the city, and settlement services, family reunification and processing times were steady constituency work.

Downsview Park was the riding's defining public asset and its longest-running federal file. The base wound down in the mid-1990s, and roughly 230 hectares of the site were placed under a federal corporation told to build an urban park while selling or leasing the surrounding parcels to pay for it. A decade on, little had been built, and what should go on the developable land was a recurring local argument.

Immediately west of the park, Bombardier ran a large manufacturing and flight-test operation at Downsview Airport, assembling Global business jets and Q400 turboprops. Aerospace was the riding's principal industrial employer, which gave federal procurement and export credit an unusually direct local meaning.

Transit ran a close second. Ottawa capped its contribution to the Toronto–York Spadina Subway Extension at $697 million in March 2007, covering part of an 8.6-kilometre push north from Downsview station through York University to Vaughan. Money began moving in 2008, but no tunnelling had started when the writ dropped, and the schedule was a standing question at candidate meetings. Wilson and Downsview stations already served the riding; buses along Bathurst Street and the Wilson and Sheppard West commercial strips — small businesses, banquet halls and service outlets rather than large retail — carried the rest.