Wild Rose, AB — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Wild Rose

Wild Rose was an open seat in 2008. Myron Thompson, a former teacher and mayor of Sundre who had held it since the Reform sweep of 1993, announced the year before the campaign that he would not seek another term, ending fifteen years in the Commons. The constituency he was leaving ran from the Continental Divide at the British Columbia boundary east through Banff National Park and the Bow Valley, down the foothills to Airdrie on Calgary's northern edge, and out across Rocky View and Mountain View counties to the grain country beyond Crossfield — mountains, ranchland and one of the fastest-growing suburban corridors in the country inside a single set of boundaries.

Candidates

Blake Richards (Conservative) — Born in Olds in November 1974, Richards studied at Red Deer College and took a political science degree at the University of Calgary. He worked in the oil field and in agriculture-related industries before building a real estate business in Airdrie, and volunteered as a firefighter and minor hockey coach. Thompson had given him his start in politics in the early 1990s, and he took the Conservative nomination to succeed him.

Lisa Fox (Green) — Fox worked as an environmental consultant and lived in Cochrane. She ran in a riding where park management, watershed protection in the Bow basin and the pace of foothills development gave Green arguments unusual local traction.

Jeff Horvath (NDP) — A teacher living in Canmore, Horvath carried the New Democrat nomination. The mountain towns, with their large seasonal and service workforce, were where his party's message on wages and housing landed most directly.

Jenn Turcott (Liberal) — Turcott worked as a community assistant in Olds and stood for the Liberals in a constituency the party had never won.

Krista Zoobkoff, a business owner from Canmore, ran for the Libertarian Party.

About the Riding

Banff sat inside a national park and was governed accordingly. Its municipal boundary was fixed by federal law, commercial growth was capped, and residents had to satisfy an eligible-residency test tied to work, study or retirement in the park — rules that made housing scarce and expensive and that pushed workers down the valley. Canmore, outside the park boundary and unconstrained by those limits, had grown rapidly on recreational property and second homes, with the same affordability consequences for the people who staffed the hotels, restaurants and ski operations at Lake Louise, Sunshine and Norquay.

At the other end, Airdrie had reached close to 30,000 residents by the 2006 census and was still climbing, absorbing families priced out of Calgary. Water, wastewater, schools and the Highway 2 commute were the town's preoccupations, and Cochrane was on the same trajectory on Calgary's western side. Between them, Rocky View and Mountain View counties held ranching and mixed farming, with Olds, Didsbury, Sundre, Carstairs, Cremona and Crossfield as service centres. Olds College, a long-established agricultural and trades school, anchored the town that carried its name, and Sundre sat at the head of a gas-producing district. North of that the riding ran up into the Clearwater County forest reserve around Caroline and Nordegg.

The Stoney Nakoda Nation at Morley lay in the western part of the riding, between Cochrane and the mountains, and the reserve's economic development, housing and relationship with the federal government were standing issues.

Tourism, ranching, energy services and Calgary commuting made for an economy with little in common from one end of the constituency to the other. The autumn's financial turmoil hit the resort towns through discretionary travel and the suburban towns through the housing market. Federal spending on Banff National Park, the twinning of the Trans-Canada through the park, and growth-related infrastructure funding were the recurring local asks.