by Maurice Y. Michaud (he/him)
If you’re only beginning your in-depth study of the Canadian electoral system, or if your interest in the subject is more fleeting, or if your political memory is a bit short because of your age (which isn’t your fault!), trying to unpack how electoral ridings have changed over time could quickly give you a headache.
Take Québec, for example. How are you supposed to know that the riding of Maurice-Richard was originally Ahuntsic in 1966, becoming Crémazie in 1973, BEFORE becoming Maurice-Richard in 2018? Or that the riding we now know as Beauce-Nord corresponds more or less to Dorchester from 1841 (in the Province of Canada) until 1973 (in the Province of Québec)? Or that Abitibi-Est, which seems to have always existed, is in fact only a division in 1944 of Abitibi, which itself had been created in 1923, and what remained was renamed Abitibi-Ouest? Or that Bertrand from 1981 to 1994 had been created from Chambly and Verchères, but Bertrand from 1994 to this day had been created from Labelle, Prévost and Rousseau — same name, different regions?
We’re all familiar with the expression, “Follow the money.” Well, the idea behind master ridings is to try to “follow the territory” (or areas). This way, we focus less on the names that were given to the ridings after each redistribution, for often the names are meaningless or can lead us to mistaking two different areas as being the same. Think of how “Vancouver” in the first assembly of British Columbia in 1871 meant Vancouver Island, because back then, the city we know now as Vancouver didn’t even exist! Or refer back to the introduction of this section, where we can see how the original riding of “Kootenay” in 1871 had spawed as many as 10 other ridings by 1903, but only 4 can be traced back to it today.
The concept of master ridings is similar to PoliCan’s concept of political families. With that concept, we can see the continuity of a political formation. For example, at the federal level, the contemporary version of the Conservative Party was originally the Reform Party/Canadian Alliance, which absorbed the original conservative family in 2003, which itself was known by then as the Progressive Conservative Party.
So let’s try to apply that same kind of logic to ridings.
Ridings were created at the time that an assembly was first constituted. Let’s call those the original master ridings. Then, new ridings have been created from parts of those master ridings, themselves becoming master ridings. Later, these new masters can be carved out to create even more new masters, or they can be merged back, in whole or in part, into their originating master — or into one or more entirely different neighbouring masters. That’s how some ridings that may have started off being primarily rural gradually became suburban or urban — or vice versa.
On the one hand, as Canada’s population has become more urban, some masters have disappeared — including some of the original ones, even in the cities. On the other hand, many new masters have appeared since the 1960s to reflect the growth of the cities, and how they are being better represented in the assemblies now that the process of drawing the electoral maps has mostly been taken away from politicans. But from an historical perspective, all this shifting has created quite a dog’s breakfast.
This search engine based on master ridings allows you to make sense out of chaos.
You are likely to find a lot of use in your browser’s search feature (Ctrl-F or ⌘-F) to navigate through these listings.
