North Vancouver, BC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

North Vancouver

Mountains at the back, a working harbour in front: the North Shore has been shaped by both. This riding took in the whole City of North Vancouver, a dense district of about forty-five thousand people built around the Lonsdale Avenue corridor, together with the whole District of North Vancouver, whose neighbourhoods spread from the Capilano River east through Edgemont, Lynn Valley and Seymour to Deep Cove and the head of Indian Arm. The Lions Gate Bridge, the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge and the SeaBus were its only links to the rest of the region.

Candidates

Andrew Saxton (Conservative) — Saxton was born in North Vancouver on 11 March 1964; his father had come to Canada in 1947 and built a business here. He finished at Upper Canada College in 1982, took his bachelor's degree in 1986 at the University of Western Ontario, and then spent two decades in international banking: Credit Suisse, first in Switzerland and afterwards in New York; HSBC in Vancouver and then Hong Kong from 1994; and, from 1997, the senior vice-president's post at HSBC's private bank in Singapore. He came home to run King George Financial Corporation, which invested in property, and sat on the Premier's Asia Pacific Trade Council. He won the Conservative nomination on the second ballot in 2007.

Don Bell (Liberal) — Bell was the sitting member, elected in 2004 and re-elected in 2006. Before that he had spent much of four decades in local government: first elected an alderman in the District of North Vancouver in 1970, mayor in 1976, 1978 and 1980, a school trustee from 1986 to 1990, and mayor again from 1996, by acclamation, with re-elections in 1999 and 2002. He also served as a director of the Greater Vancouver Regional District.

Jim Stephenson (Green) — A business consultant living at Lions Bay, Stephenson stood for the Greens.

Michael Charrois (NDP) — Charrois was a professional actor and theatre instructor who studied acting and playwriting at the University of Alberta and the Banff School of Fine Arts. His screen credits included Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, and he taught drama in community programmes around the Lower Mainland.

Tunya Audain, retired and living in West Vancouver, ran for the Libertarian Party.

About the Riding

The waterfront was changing character. Bulk terminals shipping grain, sulphur, coal and potash still lined the inlet, and Seaspan's shipyards and drydock kept a marine industrial workforce in place, but the former Burrard Dry Dock lands at the foot of Lonsdale were being rebuilt as housing and public space, with condominium towers going up around the SeaBus terminal through the decade.

Away from the water the riding was affluent, highly educated and service-oriented. Lions Gate Hospital was the largest single employer, followed by the school district and Capilano College, which became Capilano University on 1 September 2008. Most of the working population crossed a bridge or the inlet to reach a job, while Grouse Mountain and Mount Seymour supported a substantial visitor economy.

Traffic was the complaint that united the North Shore. Two bridges carried everything, both congested for hours each day, and the riding had no rapid transit. Port expansion and the road and rail network serving the terminals were municipal irritants that spilled into federal politics, because the port and the railways answered to Ottawa.

Ted White had held the seat for Reform, the Alliance and the Conservatives from 1993 until Bell defeated him in 2004. The campaign's final weeks coincided with the sharpest phase of the global financial crisis, which pushed savings, pensions and household debt to the front of the argument in a riding with a lot of all three.