Kenora (electoral district)

Kenora is a federal and former provincial electoral district in Ontario, Canada, that has been represented in the Canadian House of Commons since 2004, and was represented in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from the early twentieth century.

Of the federal electoral districts located in Ontario it is the largest by land mass, and the smallest by population. It encompasses most of Kenora District except for the eastern third, and a small section of the northwest corner of Thunder Bay District. It includes many remote First Nations reserves of extreme Northern Ontario. It succeeds the former federal riding of Kenora—Rainy River.

Geography

It consists of the part of the Territorial District of Kenora lying west of a line drawn due north from the northeast corner of the Territorial District of Thunder Bay (Albany River) to Hudson Bay; and the part of the Territorial District of Thunder Bay lying northwest of a line drawn east from the western limit of the territorial district along the 6th Base Line, north along eastern limit of the townships of Bertrand, McLaurin, Furlonge, Fletcher and Bulmer, and due north to the northern limit of the territorial district.

Federal electoral district

The federal riding was created in 2003 from parts of the Kenora—Rainy River riding.

Member of Parliament

This riding has elected the following members of the Canadian House of Commons:

Provincial electoral district

Kenora has been a provincial riding since the early twentieth century. For many years, the Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) that it elected sat as "Labour" or "Liberal-Labour" members.

The riding elected Peter Heenan as a Labour representative in the 1919 provincial election. Heenan remained one of only four Labour MLAs re-elected in the 1923 election. He entered federal politics in the 1925 federal election and was elected a Liberal MP and served as Minister of Labour in William Lyon Mackenzie King's Cabinet.

In the 1929 election, Earl Hutchinson recaptured Kenora as a Labour candidate. He was re-elected in the 1934 provincial election, but gave up the seat to make way for Heenan who was to be appointed to cabinet. Heenan ran in the subsequent by-election, this time as a Liberal Party candidate, and was elected. He joined Mitchell Hepburn's Cabinet and served as Minister of Mines and Forests (1934–1941) and Minister of Labour (1941–1943).

Heenan was defeated by William Docker of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (a social democratic party) in the 1943 election that routed the Liberals and reduced them to third party status. Subsequently, the Liberals ran Albert Wren as a "Liberal-Labour" candidate unsuccessfully in the 1948 election before his victory in the 1951 election.

Albert Wren of Kenora was the longest serving "Liberal-Labour" Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP, as MLAs were called after 1938), sitting in the Ontario legislature from 1951 until his death in 1961. He ran for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party in 1954, coming in second, and again in 1958, coming in last. Robert Gibson succeeded Wren as the "Liberal-Labour" MPP for Kenora and served until the 1967 election.

T. Patrick Reid was elected "Liberal-Labour" MPP for the neighbouring riding of Rainy River in the 1967 election He ran as a "Liberal" in the 1971 election, and 1975 election. He reverted to the "Liberal-Labour" label for the 1977 election, and returned to being a "Liberal" MPP in 1981 election, and left politics in 1985.

The riding was abolished into Kenora—Rainy River prior to the 1999 election when provincial ridings were defined to have the same borders as federal ridings. It will not be recreated for the next election, because the ridings in Northern Ontario are not changing provincially.

Federal election results

See also

• List of Canadian federal electoral districts
• Past Canadian electoral districts

External links

• Riding history from the Library of Parliament
• 2011 results from Elections Canada
• Campaign expense data from Elections Canada