Vancouver Quadra, BC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Vancouver Quadra

Vancouver Quadra took in everything in the city west of Granville Street south of 41st Avenue and west of Oak Street between 41st and 16th, together with the University Endowment Lands and the Musqueam reserve on the north arm of the Fraser — forty-nine square kilometres and about 120,000 people. At its western tip stood the University of British Columbia, separated from the rest of the city by the forest of Pacific Spirit Regional Park. East of the park lay West Point Grey, Dunbar-Southlands, Kerrisdale, Arbutus Ridge, Shaughnessy and the western half of Kitsilano, with the horse paddocks of Southlands along the river.

Candidates

Joyce Murray (Liberal) — Murray had been in the Commons barely six months, having won the by-election of 17 March 2008 called after Stephen Owen resigned the seat. Born in South Africa and brought to Vancouver by her parents as a child, she earned a BA and an MBA at Simon Fraser University and, with her husband Dirk Brinkman, incorporated Brinkman and Associates Reforestation in 1979, building it into one of the largest tree-planting contractors in the country. She sat in Gordon Campbell's provincial cabinet as British Columbia's first minister of water, land and air protection from 2001 to 2004, and afterwards as minister of management services.

Deborah Meredith (Conservative) — Meredith had run Murray close in March and was back for a second attempt within seven months. She was a long-serving lecturer in law at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business, teaching commercial law, and lived in Vancouver.

Dan Grice (Green) — A business technology consultant, Grice campaigned on climate policy and carbon pricing, and on democratic reform.

David Caplan (NDP) — A freelance writer living in Vancouver, Caplan ran for the New Democrats in a riding that had never been favourable ground for the party.

Norris Barens, a first aid attendant from Surrey, also stood for the Libertarian Party.

About the Riding

Quadra was among the richest and best-educated constituencies in Canada, and the university accounted for much of both. UBC's Point Grey campus held tens of thousands of students and staff, the TRIUMF particle accelerator, the Museum of Anthropology and a cluster of research institutes and spin-off companies, all dependent to some degree on federal granting councils. Campus housing was expanding fast under the university's own development plan, adding thousands of residents in the University Endowment Lands, which sat outside any municipality and were administered directly by the province.

Off campus the riding was residential and expensive. Dunbar and West Point Grey were streets of pre-war houses on large lots; Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale ran to older money and to apartments; the Kitsilano end was younger and more heavily rented. Property values had climbed relentlessly, and even here affordability had begun to register as a political issue, particularly for graduate students, university staff and young families. The Musqueam Indian Band's outstanding claims to land across the west side remained unresolved.

Environmental policy carried more weight in Quadra than in most seats. British Columbia had brought in its own carbon tax on 1 July 2008, so the federal Liberal platform's carbon-pricing proposal was less abstract to voters here than elsewhere, and Murray's forestry and environment background fitted the argument. Concern about oil tanker traffic on the coast and about federal support for university research also featured, as did the crowded bus corridor along Broadway that carried students out to the campus.

The seat had a long Liberal pedigree. John Turner represented it through his years as party leader and prime minister, followed by Ted McWhinney and then Stephen Owen. The March by-election unsettled that assumption: turnout was poor by general-election standards, the contest came down to the wire, and both main parties went into October treating Quadra as genuinely contestable.