Scarborough—Guildwood

Scarborough—Guildwood occupies the southeastern portion of Scarborough in Toronto, stretching from Eglinton Avenue south to the Lake Ontario shoreline along the Scarborough Bluffs. The riding includes the neighbourhoods of Guildwood, West Hill, Woburn, Morningside, Scarborough Village, and parts of Bendale south of Lawrence Avenue.

Candidates

John McKay (Liberal) — McKay was the incumbent, first elected in 1997 to represent the former riding of Scarborough East. Born in Toronto, he attended the University of Toronto Scarborough campus for his undergraduate degree and earned his law degree from Queen’s University. A real estate lawyer by profession, he served as president of the Durham Bar Association before entering politics. In Parliament, McKay was parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Finance under Prime Minister Paul Martin from 2003 to 2006, and was sworn in as a member of the Privy Council. He built a reputation as a human rights advocate and sponsor of legislation related to foreign aid accountability.

Chuck Konkel (Conservative) — Konkel had previously run as the Conservative candidate in the riding in 2008, and returned for a second attempt in 2011.

Danielle Ouellette (NDP) — Ouellette carried the NDP banner in the riding.

Alonzo Bartley ran for the Green Party, and Paul Coulbeck ran as an independent.

About the Riding

The riding’s most distinctive geographic feature is the Scarborough Bluffs, a fifteen-kilometre escarpment of glacial sediment rising up to 90 metres above Lake Ontario. Guild Park and Gardens, an 88-acre property atop the Bluffs, preserves architectural fragments from demolished Toronto buildings and was once home to an artists’ colony. Bluffer’s Park, at the base of the cliffs, provides one of the few public waterfront access points in Scarborough.

The riding contained a mix of housing types. Guildwood itself was developed in the late 1950s as a planned suburban community, with single-family homes on curving streets and formal stone entrance gates. Farther north, the neighbourhoods of Woburn and parts of Bendale featured a more varied mix of post-war bungalows, townhouses, and apartment buildings, including clusters of high-rise rental towers.

The University of Toronto Scarborough campus sat just beyond the riding’s boundary. The Scarborough Hospital’s Birchmount campus also served the area.

The riding’s population was ethnically diverse, with large South Asian, Chinese, and Caribbean-Canadian communities among others. Housing affordability, transit connections, and access to services were recurring concerns. The aging Scarborough RT and the question of how to extend rapid transit into southeastern Scarborough were active policy debates heading into the 2011 election. Many residents commuted to jobs in downtown Toronto or elsewhere in the GTA, making transit a bread-and-butter issue.