Who is Bruce Fanjoy? Meet the man who won Pierre Poilievre's riding
If all politics is local, Bruce Fanjoy had a headstart in his race against a national figure. Looking him up in the archives of his local newspapers turns up the kind of stories people cut out and put on the fridge.
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Here he is, an assistant coach of for 10-year-old hockey players, successfully encouraging them to raise money for pediatric palliative care at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario by reading 100 books in 30 days, and then meeting Roch Carrier and getting a signed copy of The Hockey Sweater as a reward. Here he is volunteering with Bike Ottawa at a vigil for a cyclist killed by a motorist.
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And here he is, a hockey dad with some connections, getting former Ottawa Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson in touch with a 12-year-old boy who broke two vertebrae playing defence for the local peewee AA team.
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That kind of reputation is campaign gold on the front porch of ridings like Carleton, south of Ottawa, even if you are running against Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, who has held it since it was recreated in 2015 out of three ridings, one of which he also held since 2004, seven wins in all. Fanjoy estimated he knocked on 15,000 doors before the campaign even began, often encountering skeptics.
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'One of the impacts of someone holding a riding for as long as Pierre Poilievre has held Carleton is some people forget it doesn't have to be that way,' Fanjoy recently told the Ottawa Citizen. 'I believed from the beginning that there was a path to victory…. A lot of people are looking for an alternative. I wanted to make sure I gave Carleton a strong, thoughtful, solutions-focused alternative to someone who hasn't accomplished anything in 20 years of service.'
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Fanjoy has a business degree and previously worked in marketing for a large consulting firm. His wife Donna Nicholson is a cardiac anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Ottawa. They have two grown children. Lately, he has overseen the construction of a new family home in Manotick, on the Rideau River near the historic mill, built according to 'passive' design principles to minimize the home's energy consumption, which he promotes as an environmentalist.
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