Yellowhead, AB — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Yellowhead

Named for the pass the fur brigades used to cross the Rockies, Yellowhead covered roughly 77,000 square kilometres of west-central Alberta and held about 103,000 people. Its western corner was Jasper National Park; from there the riding ran east along Highway 16 through Hinton and Edson, north to Whitecourt and Grande Cache, south to Drayton Valley, and out to the edge of Parkland County within sight of Edmonton's western suburbs.

Candidates

Rob Merrifield (Conservative) — Born at Mayerthorpe in 1953, Merrifield was raised on the family farm near Whitecourt and took over its operation as a young man, serving on school and hospital boards and on agricultural industry committees before entering federal politics. He won Yellowhead for the Canadian Alliance in 2000, succeeding Cliff Breitkreuz, and was returned in 2004 and 2006. He chaired the Commons health committee from 2006 until November 2007, when he moved to the chair of the finance committee, and he co-chaired the Canada–United States Inter-Parliamentary Group from 2006 to 2008.

Ken Kuzminski (NDP) — A carpenter from Jasper, Kuzminski ran for the New Democrats in a riding where forestry and construction employment gave the party a base in the mill and mountain towns even when the seat itself was out of reach.

Monika Schaefer (Green) — Schaefer taught violin in Jasper and was making her second run for the Greens in Yellowhead, having first carried the nomination in 2006.

Mohamed El-Rafih (Liberal) — El-Rafih worked as a tutor and lived in Calgary. He stood for the Liberals in a constituency where the party's vote had been marginal for two decades.

John M. Wierenga, a welder from Neerlandia, ran for the Christian Heritage Party, and Melissa Brade of Gunn for the Canadian Action Party.

About the Riding

Timber and coal built the middle of this constituency. West Fraser operated the pulp mill and sawmill complex at Hinton; Weyerhaeuser held the forest management area around Edson; Millar Western and Alberta Newsprint ran mills at Whitecourt. Open-pit coal mines in the Coal Branch south of Edson, in the mountains near Hinton, and at Grande Cache in the northwest supplied metallurgical and thermal markets. All of it depended on the same two variables — commodity prices and the fibre supply — and both were under strain in 2008. The mountain pine beetle had crossed the divide from British Columbia, and the Alberta government's control strategy, launched in 2007, was reshaping harvest plans across the Hinton and Edson management areas. Softwood lumber shipments to a collapsing American housing market were falling at the same time.

Drayton Valley and Brazeau County in the south sat over the Pembina field, one of the largest conventional oil pools ever found in Canada and still producing a half-century after its discovery. Whitecourt and Woodlands County combined gas drilling with sawmilling. Jasper, in the far west, had been run as a park administration since its founding and only became a self-governing specialized municipality in 2001; its economy was almost entirely tourism, and the Columbia Icefield, Maligne Lake and the railway and highway through the pass carried visitors year-round but unevenly.

Joe Clark held Yellowhead from 1979 until he stepped down in 1993, and the seat had run to the right of centre without a break since. Merrifield had never faced a close contest in it.

Fibre supply, the beetle, the softwood agreement and the price of natural gas were the issues that came up on doorsteps in the mill towns. In Jasper the questions were about park funding, wildlife management and the seasonal housing shortage. The distances involved — a candidate could drive four hours and still be in the riding — kept the challengers' campaigns thin outside the main centres.