Walking around his neighbourhood on the eastern fringe of Vancouver-Fairview, retired Vancouver high school teacher Allan Buium can see change is in the air.
Campaign signs bearing the signature orange of the New Democratic Party are popping up with increasing frequency on front lawns and in the windows of the pretty, single-family homes that characterize the Main Street neighbourhood where he and his wife, Sherry, have lived since 1995.
Fairview has been Liberal cabinet minister Margaret MacDiarmid’s riding for the past four years, but with the provincial election looming next month, the NDP’s George Heyman has lost no time reminding constituents he’s a serious contender.
Buium, a self-confessed “political junkie” with deep roots in his community, has been busy doing his homework on the local candidates and trying to figure out which one is likely to win the political race.
His conclusion? Still undetermined.
“I think it will be a very close race within this riding,” the 73-year-old said.
Indeed, Fairview — a dynamic riding in the middle of city, ribboned with bike routes and key traffic corridors that cut through a dozen individual neighbourhoods from Main to Kitsilano, even a tony corner of Shaughnessy — is proving to be the least predictable seat in the region.
Its record has been so politically volatile even MacDiarmid, a medical doctor and health minister in the current government, won’t commit to whether she’ll be left standing — or sitting, as the case may be — after all the votes are tallied on May 14.
“I’ve had supporters say to me … ‘Of course you are going to win. That’s crazy. Why would you even be worried about that?’ And I will say to them that this is going to be a very, very competitive race in this riding,” MacDiarmid said in a recent interview at her Broadway constituency office.
Heyman, a former union heavyweight and current executive director of the Sierra Club B.C., has been aggressively campaigning in the riding since January and said he’s hearing “a real appetite for change” among the constituency.
“People are curious about what the NDP are going to do,” he said.
Both parties have experienced success and failure in the riding.
Held for years by Socred Grace McCarthy, Fairview was once the stronghold of Liberal Gary Farrell-Collins.
In 2005, the riding swung over to the NDP, with Gregor Robertson edging out Liberal candidate Virginia Greene to take the seat. Robertson’s jump to the Vancouver mayor’s chair three years later opened the opportunity for the Liberals to return.
The NDP’s Jenn McGinn, an accountant, narrowly hung on to the riding for her party in a 2008 byelection. But MacDiarmid, then a political newcomer, came back in the general election in 2009 to wrest control with 47 per cent of the vote, compared to the NDP’s 42 per cent.
Fairview has also been good to the Green Party of B.C. In 2001, the party posted its best-ever results in the riding, placing second behind the Liberals with 21.5 per cent of the vote.
Current Green candidate Matthew Pedley, a 30-year-old electrical engineer and new dad, is hoping he can shatter that record this year.
He believes his party has the broadest appeal, particularly among young professionals in a riding with an average income of $75,000.
“It brings a group of people who cannot only think about the issues and really plan for the future, but also can afford to live very green lifestyles,” Pedley said.
Four years ago, it was the fallout from the construction of the Canada Line and the soaring cost of housing that fuelled political debate in the riding.
Once again, those issues promise to top public interest at the polls, though the rapid-transit talk has shifted to the Broadway corridor where the city is pushing to have a $2.8-billion subway built.
Buium named affordable housing as the most critical issue facing Fairview residents. Regardless of who is elected, he’d like to see the government work closely with municipalities to boost the stock of social housing so that young people and families aren’t forced by economics out of the neighbourhood.
“We (he and his wife) have children who have received some assistance so that they can get into housing, but there is a large number who can’t,” he said.
Jane Heideck, a 39-year-old bike mechanic, said she’s been living in the Fairview neighbourhood for about 20 years.
She voted Liberal in the last election “because I didn’t really know who to vote for and everyone told me the NDP had messed things up.
“Now everyone wants to go back to the NDP because the Liberals really broke us,” she said.
Heideck said financial responsibility is the most important issue to her, but added she doesn’t like to get too worked up about politics.
“I have a little saying: ‘No matter who you vote for, the government still gets in,’ ” she said. “But that’s just me being a little cynical.”
Fighting voter malaise is a big factor in what is providing to be a vote-by-vote campaign.
At 52 per cent, 2009 voter turnout in the riding was only slightly above the provincial average (51 per cent), according to Elections B.C.
Heyman said he is trying to boost those voter numbers by speaking directly with residents.
“I think we need to inspire people to vote and if we want to inspire them to vote we actually have to inspire them by talking about vision and values,” he said.
On this point, at least, he and MacDiarmid agree.
“It’s important people know what I stand for and what my party’s platform is and allow them, of course, to become knowledgeable about the others and then people have a choice that they can, and hopefully will, make,” MacDiarmid said.
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