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. 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. 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. 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. “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.” 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. National politics has a way of feeling local for the people of Carleton, and local politics has a way of feeling national. It wasn’t just that the local MP was a prime minister in waiting for so long. It was also that the way he got there involved giving sympathetic attention to the Freedom Convoy that occupied downtown Ottawa in 2022. Local attitudes on the convoy protest were not exactly the same as some national attitudes, the ones about pandemic skepticism and federal government overreach that aligned with Poilievre’s project to form a government to replace Justin Trudeau and his Liberals. Donald Trump’s trade wars were a shock campaign issue that focused attention on Poilievre’s response, evidently to Fanjoy’s benefit. In the end, it was Poilievre who got replaced. The race was tight, but Fanjoy won by almost 4,000 votes , with more than 50 per cent of the total in a race that included 89 other candidates in a strange electoral reform protest that made ballots awkwardly long. In a speech late on election night, Poilievre spun an upbeat message about high vote share and increased seat count that bodes well for the party he pledged to continue leading. But for a leader to lose his own seat is electoral embarrassment, especially when it comes as a late surprise. Before the election, Fanjoy told National Post’s Stephanie Taylor that he saw Poilievre’s status as an apparent prime minister in waiting as an opportunity. “Carleton, because of circumstance, has a remarkable opportunity to make a statement on the type of politics and direction that we want Canada to go in,” he said. “Although it’s technically just one of 343 ridings in the election, this one carries extra significance.” Rumours started spreading that Carleton was in trouble for the Tories just before election day, with stories that internal Liberal polling suggested a possible upset, a ten point Conservative lead dropping to five. Then, Carleton reported the highest advance turnout in the country. Something was happening. The Ottawa Citizen reported Fanjoy was unavailable for comment when his close victory was first projected by media “because it’s 4 a.m.” But he made a brief speech to supporters around midnight at the Manotick Legion, when victory was starting to look possible. “I will never forget what this feels like,” he said. Poilievre, watching the results in downtown Ottawa having already conceded the Liberals won the election that so recently seemed his to lose, probably felt the same thing.

• Pierre Poilievre didn't just lose his seat. He also likely lost his home
• Chris Selley: Pierre Poilievre lost the election to Donald Trump