Okanagan—Shuswap, BC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Okanagan—Shuswap

North of Kelowna the Okanagan Valley narrows, then gives way over a low divide near Armstrong to the Shuswap country and its four-armed lake. The riding covered both watersheds: Vernon and Coldstream at the head of Okanagan Lake, the farm towns of Armstrong, Enderby and Lumby in between, and Salmon Arm and Sicamous along the Trans-Canada Highway to the east. Vernon, with roughly 35,000 residents, was the largest centre and the regional hub for health care and retail; Salmon Arm, about half that size, anchored the Shuswap end.

Candidates

Colin Mayes (Conservative) — Born in New Westminster on 11 April 1948, Mayes ran a trucking business in the Yukon and served as mayor of Dawson City in the mid-1970s. He later kept a grocery store and worked in business development before being elected mayor of Salmon Arm in 1996, an office he held until he stepped down in 2005 to run federally. He won the seat for the Conservatives in 2006 and was seeking a second term.

Alice Brown (NDP) — An electrician living at Falkland, in the ranching country between Vernon and Salmon Arm, Brown had also been the New Democratic candidate here in 2006.

Huguette Allen (Green) — Allen worked as a business consultant and lived at Lumby.

Janna Francis (Liberal) — Francis, a social worker in Vernon, stood for the Liberals.

Two others were on the ballot: Gordie Campbell, a worker from Armstrong, ran with no party affiliation, and Darren Seymour, a Vernon businessman, for the Canadian Action Party.

About the Riding

Farming shaped the middle of the riding. Orchards and vineyards run along the benches above Okanagan Lake and through Coldstream, while the flats around Armstrong and Enderby carry dairy herds and vegetable ground. Armstrong's name had travelled the province on packages of cheddar, though the town's own cheese plant had closed in 2004 when Saputo moved production to Abbotsford, and a small local cheese company had taken up the trade since. The Interior Provincial Exhibition, held at Armstrong over the Labour Day weekend, was the longest-running agricultural fair in western Canada and the largest annual event in the interior. Cattle ranching occupies the higher country toward Falkland and Westwold.

Forestry supplied the industrial wages, and it was in trouble. Tolko's sawmill, plywood plant and cogeneration facility at Armstrong and the Federated Co-operatives plywood mill at Canoe, on the water north of Salmon Arm, were the biggest wood operations in the riding, and both depended on a lumber market that had fallen apart with United States housing starts. The mountain pine beetle had by then killed a large share of the interior's mature lodgepole pine, guaranteeing a plentiful but declining wood supply followed by a shortage, and the federal share of the response — money for community adjustment, for reforestation and for retraining — was raised at every all-candidates meeting in the forest towns.

Tourism carried the rest. Silver Star Mountain Resort above Vernon operated year-round, Sicamous called itself the houseboat capital of Canada and rented several hundred boats each summer on Shuswap Lake, and the lake beaches drew visitors from Alberta and the coast. Retirees moving in for the climate pushed the median age above the provincial average and made health care staffing a constant subject.

The Okanagan Indian Band holds territory at the head of Okanagan Lake, the Splatsin are at Enderby, and the Neskonlith and Adams Lake bands sit near Salmon Arm. Federally the riding had gone to Reform, the Alliance and then the Conservatives without a break since 1993, and the contest was less about who would win than about which of the opposition parties would finish second.