Willowdale

Willowdale was an urban riding in the former City of North York, now part of Toronto, situated between Highway 401 to the south and Steeles Avenue to the north. The riding was bounded by Bathurst Street and the West Branch of the Don River to the west and Bayview Avenue to the east. It encompassed the neighbourhoods of Willowdale, Lansing, Newtonbrook, and the North York Centre civic hub along Yonge Street. The riding was centred on the Yonge Street corridor, one of the most intensely developed stretches of high-rise residential construction in the Greater Toronto Area.

Candidates

Chungsen Leung (Conservative) — Leung was a Taiwanese-born Canadian businessman who had built a career in tourism, hospitality, and technology. He was the chief executive officer of several small and medium-sized enterprises based in Richmond Hill and had served as a director and audit chair of the Xenos Group, a Toronto Stock Exchange–listed software development and engineering company, as well as a director of Active Growth Capital. He was seeking to capture the riding for the Conservatives.

Martha Hall Findlay (Liberal) — Hall Findlay was the incumbent Liberal MP, having won the seat in a March 2008 by-election triggered by the resignation of long-serving Liberal MP Jim Peterson. She was re-elected in the October 2008 general election. A lawyer and businesswoman, she earned a bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of Toronto and a law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School. She practised corporate and commercial law at Baker McKenzie in Toronto, then served as general counsel and executive at Bell Mobility. She later founded The General Counsel Group, a legal and management consulting firm specializing in telecommunications and technology. Hall Findlay had previously run as the Liberal candidate in Newmarket—Aurora in 2004 and was a candidate in the 2006 Liberal leadership race. In Parliament, she served as a critic on trade and international commerce.

Mehdi Mollahasani (NDP) — Mollahasani was the NDP candidate in Willowdale.

About the Riding

Willowdale had a population of approximately 110,000 and was one of the most densely populated and multicultural ridings in the country. The Yonge Street corridor through the riding had undergone dramatic transformation in the decades before 2011, evolving from a strip of low-rise commercial buildings into a wall of condominium and apartment towers. The North York Centre, anchored by the former North York City Hall (later the North York Civic Centre), Mel Lastman Square, and the Toronto Centre for the Arts, served as the civic and cultural heart of the riding.

The riding was home to large Chinese, Korean, and Iranian communities, among the highest concentrations of these populations in any Canadian riding. Commercial strips along Yonge Street and Sheppard Avenue featured businesses catering to these communities, including Korean restaurants and shops along the Sheppard corridor and Chinese and Iranian establishments to the north and south. The Bayview Village Shopping Centre, at the riding's eastern edge, was a major retail anchor.

The local economy was oriented toward professional services, retail, real estate, and small business. Many residents worked in the downtown Toronto financial district, commuting via the Yonge subway line, which ran through the heart of the riding with stations at Sheppard-Yonge, North York Centre, and Finch. The Sheppard subway line, which had opened in 2002, connected the riding eastward to Bayview and Don Mills. Heading into 2011, condominium development along Yonge Street was accelerating, raising concerns about population density, traffic congestion, and the adequacy of community infrastructure to serve the growing number of high-rise residents.