With the federal election campaign in full swing, it is worth looking at our riding and its history.
The West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country riding has a new boundary this time around.
As of April 22, 2024, a chunk of eastern West Vancouver, which includes Park Royal, Sentinel Hill and Ambleside, is part of the North Vancouver riding, not ours.
The change was apparently to make the populations of the riding more equal.
(Legally, riding boundaries have to be reviewed after each 10-year census.)
Currently, our riding includes more than 114,000 people and stretches almost 13,000 square kilometres, spanning the Sunshine Coast Regional District, Bowen Island, a slice of North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Lions Bay up to Pemberton and Mount Currie.
We used to have the longest federal riding name, but were usurped by Ontario’s Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes in 2015.
Years ago, we were part of the Capilano-Howe Sound riding.
It included portions of North Vancouver District, West Vancouver, and much of the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District.
Our riding was called West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast from 1997 to 2004.
It changed to our current name in the early 2000s, at the request of our then-MP John Reynolds.
“He requested the name change through a private members bill which changed the names of several ridings,” reads a 小蓝视频 story from the time.
Reynolds was an interesting and storied politician, serving federally as a representative of the Conservative Party of Canada, and its predecessors, the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance and the Reform Party of Canada.
Provincially, he ran for the Social Credit Party.
This riding also briefly had Canada’s first Green Party MP after the Liberal-elected Blair Wilson, who crossed the floor to the Greens shortly before the 2008 federal election, which he then lost to Conservative John Weston.
Historically, it has been a Liberal or Conservative riding, with no NDP candidate elected.
This riding has had its fair share of female representation.
For example, we were led by Conservative (and feminist) Pat Carney in the 1980s, and, more recently, Pamela Goldsmith-Jones of the Liberal Party, who was elected in 2015, after being a councillor and mayor in West Vancouver.
Throughout all of this history, we, the people, have held the most interesting power, as we do now, writing the next page in our history when we go to the polls later this month.
