Calgary Centre, AB — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Calgary Centre

Bounded by the Bow River on the north, the Elbow River and the CP main line on the east and Glenmore Trail on the south, and reaching west to Sarcee Trail and 37 Street SW, Calgary Centre packed the downtown core and the ring of neighbourhoods around it into 42 square kilometres. The riding held the head-office towers of the Canadian oil and gas industry, the apartment blocks of the Beltline, Chinatown and the East Village, the old money of Mount Royal, Elbow Park and Britannia, and mixed streets in Sunalta, Scarboro, Bankview, South Calgary, Altadore, Erlton, Killarney and Glamorgan — the densest and most walkable seat in the province.

Candidates

Lee Richardson (Conservative) — Born in North Battleford, Saskatchewan in 1947 and educated at the universities of Calgary, Alberta and Oxford, Richardson went to Parliament Hill in his twenties as executive assistant to John Diefenbaker, then spent nine years with Premier Peter Lougheed, rising to chief of staff. He moved to Ottawa in 1983 as deputy chief of staff to Brian Mulroney and, after the 1984 election, served as the Prime Minister's deputy chief of staff and special adviser on western affairs. He sat as the Progressive Conservative member for Calgary Southeast from 1988 until the 1993 election swept the party out, ran a Calgary financial firm for eleven years, then returned to the Commons in 2004 as member for Calgary Centre, succeeding Joe Clark. Re-elected in 2006, he was the sitting member and one of the few Alberta Conservatives with a pre-Reform political pedigree.

Heesung Kim (Liberal) — An architect practising in Calgary, Kim had been the Liberal candidate in this riding in 2006 and stood again in 2008, giving the party a second consecutive campaign with a known local name.

Natalie Odd (Green Party) — Odd worked as an executive director in Calgary's environmental non-profit sector and carried the Green nomination.

Tyler Kinch (NDP) — A freelance graphic designer, Kinch carried the New Democrat nomination.

Antony "Tony" Grochowski (Independent) — Grochowski ran without a party affiliation.

About the Riding

At the 2006 census Calgary Centre held 124,197 people, up 5.8% in five years, growth driven almost entirely by condominium construction in the Beltline and along the river. The downtown office market was at its tightest in a generation, with a new round of towers under construction to house energy companies that had outgrown their space, and the daytime population of the riding ran far above its residential count.

The seat's social range was wider than any other in Calgary. Mount Royal, Elbow Park and Britannia are among the wealthiest addresses in western Canada; a few blocks away, the Beltline and the East Village carried the city's highest concentrations of rental housing, rooming houses and shelter beds. Rents had climbed through the boom while single-room accommodation was demolished for redevelopment, and on 29 January 2008 the Calgary Committee to End Homelessness published a ten-year plan built on housing people first. The city had also set up the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation in 2007 to rebuild the Rivers District, starting with the East Village along the Bow. Chinatown sat between the towers and the river, and 17 Avenue SW carried the city's main restaurant and bar strip.

Younger, more educated, more likely to rent and less directly tied to the resource economy than the suburban seats around it, Calgary Centre had historically given the opposition parties their best showings in the city. The issues that reflected this in 2008 were inner-city affordable housing, downtown transit, arts and cultural funding, and environmental policy, set against a national campaign dominated by the Liberal carbon tax proposal and, from mid-September, by the financial crisis and the fall in oil prices that took the shine off Calgary's expansion.