My riding is not often in the news, so I might as well start my blogging career here at DemocraticSpace with a short description. Pontiac is a somewhat heterogeneous electoral district, with a mix of urban and rural communities.

The area where I live, Buckingham, use to be a small town before it was integrated with Gatineau in 2002. Buckingham and the nearby neighbourhood of Masson-Anger, could be considered the eastern suburb of Gatineau and have a combined population of about 30000 citizens. Many people, myself included, work for the federal government in Hull or in Ottawa. Most residents speak French, although the proportion of English speaking residents is rather high by Quebec’s standards. Like the rest of the electoral district, Buckingham and Masson-Anger are not home to a lot of immigrants.

The rest of the riding is mostly comprised of smaller rural communities. Agriculture, lumbering and tourism are the main industries. The district gets its name from the region to the west of Gatineau. This area is somewhat unique, being one of the rare predominantly English speaking rural regions in Quebec. Last election, Lawrence Cannon, the conservative candidate, made news in the rest of Quebec, because he used English sign in that area; the only one in Quebec to do so to the best of my knowledge.

During the Chretien years, Pontiac was a solidly liberal district. However, things changed in 2006. We had a fairly competitive race last time. Stephen Harper visited us 2 or 3 times and even guaranteed a cabinet position to Lawrence Cannon before a single ballot had been cast (my brother brought me a nice “Harper No 1!” t-shirt). Gilles Duceppe did drop by once. He was probably hopping the division of the federalist vote would give his candidate a shot, but in the end, Lawrence Cannon, who had been running for months, had some good name recognition and some strong support from his leader, won fairly easily.

2006 Pontiac election results
Party Candidate Votes %
  Conservative Lawrence Cannon 16,067 33.63%
  Bloc Québécois Christine Emond Lapointe 13,790 28.87%
  Liberal David Smith 11,539 24.15%
  New Democrat Celine Brault 4,759 9.96%
  Green Moe Garahan 1,512 3.16%
  Marxist-Leninist Benoit Legros 107 0.22%

Sadly, this time, it doesn’t look like any of the leaders will grace us with their presence :-( . Even Mr Cannon seems to be more preoccupied with getting other Quebec conservatives elected than with his own re-election

I guess I’ll have to wait for that “Green Shift” shirt. Maybe I can get one for a discount at the post-election liberal sale…