Calgary Southwest, AB — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Calgary Southwest

This was the corner of Calgary framed by the Glenmore Reservoir to the north, the Macleod Trail rail corridor to the east and the Fish Creek valley to the south. Its neighbourhoods were laid down in waves. Oakridge, Palliser, Braeside and Cedarbrae date from the 1960s and 1970s; Canyon Meadows, Woodbine and Woodlands filled in through the 1980s; Evergreen, Bridlewood and the streets around Shawnessy were still being completed on the southern rim when the writs were issued. The western reaches of Fish Creek Provincial Park, including Bebo Grove and Shannon Terrace, fell inside the boundary.

Candidates

Stephen Harper (Conservative) — Harper went into the campaign as Prime Minister. He had taken the seat at a by-election in May 2002 after Preston Manning left federal politics, and had sat once before in the Commons, for Calgary West from 1993 to 1997. The five years between were spent running the National Citizens Coalition; he returned to win the Canadian Alliance leadership in March 2002 and negotiated the merger with the Progressive Conservatives the following year. The minority government he formed in February 2006 cut the GST to five per cent on 1 January 2008 and delivered the residential schools apology that June. He asked the Governor General to dissolve Parliament on 7 September. Harper took bachelor's and master's degrees in economics at the University of Calgary.

Marlene Lamontagne (Liberal) — A retired Calgary business person, Lamontagne stood for the Liberals in a riding whose contest was, in practice, a referendum on a national leader rather than a local member.

Kelly Christie (Green) — Christie supervised construction work in Calgary, where he had settled after moving from Winnipeg.

Holly Heffernan (NDP) — A registered nurse, Heffernan spent her working life in Calgary hospitals and had been an activist with the United Nurses of Alberta for decades. This was her second consecutive campaign in the riding, after 2006.

Two smaller campaigns completed the ballot: Dennis Young, a legal agent chosen leader of the Libertarian Party of Canada in May 2008, and Larry R. Heather of the Christian Heritage Party, an audio restoration specialist who had been a candidate in Calgary municipal, provincial and federal contests since the 1980s.

About the Riding

Calgary Southwest was created for the 1988 election and had been in centre-right hands from the start. Barbara Sparrow won it for the Progressive Conservatives in 1988, Manning took it for Reform in 1993 and held it until he retired from politics, and Harper's by-election win continued the line. By 2008 the riding association ran the ground campaign largely on its own, since its member spent the writ period travelling the country.

Households here skewed toward homeowners with above-average incomes. A large share of residents worked downtown for oil and gas producers, engineering consultancies, law firms and banks, commuting north on Macleod Trail or the LRT's south line. Retail and service employment clustered along Macleod Trail and around Shawnessy, while the reservoir and the Fish Creek ravines shaped how the neighbourhoods on the riding's flanks were laid out.

The autumn of 2008 gave Calgary a direct stake in the campaign. Crude oil had peaked above US$140 a barrel in July and was falling hard by the time Parliament was dissolved, credit markets seized during the campaign's second half, and energy head offices began trimming spending plans. Conservative campaigning across Alberta concentrated on the carbon-pricing package Stéphane Dion had unveiled in June, which the party cast as a tax on the province's main industry. Opposition candidates here pressed instead on hospital staffing, housing costs after Calgary's mid-decade price surge, and the Afghanistan mission.