Progressive Conservative incumbent Norm Miller has been elected to another term as Parry Sound-Muskoka’s MPP.

Miller defeated Liberal Dan Waters, NDP Clyde Mobbley, and Green Party Matt Richter. CTV News called the vote at 9:15 p.m.

He has been the critic, Aboriginal Affairs since Sept. 30, 2013 and continues as such for Northern Development and Mines. A onetime chair of the Public Accounts Committee, he had also been Chief Opposition Whip since 2007 and Finance Critic. First elected in a by-election on March 22, 2001, he became Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Northern Development and Mines; Commissioner of the Red Tape Secretariat and sat on the Cabinet Committee for Economic and Resource Policy.

He is the son of the late Frank Miller, former Muskoka MPP and Ontario Premier. For the last 25 years, he and his wife, Christine, have operated Patterson-Kaye Lodge on Lake Muskoka. Miller is also a commercial pilot, and uses his small seaplane to visit constituents in the big riding. He and his wife have four children.

 

Riding Profile

The riding is on Georgian Bay with Muskoka Lakes and the Lake of Bays in the south.

Larger centres are Huntsville, Bracebridge, Gravenhurst and Parry Sound.

The biggest centre is Huntsville on the Muskoka River with many inns, cottages, resorts, hotels and motels. Bracebridge was built around a waterfall in the river with several other falls nearby. It is a tourist centre for the area and the seat of the district.

A big sportsplex and a theatre have opened and growing tourism may absorb some of the unemployed.

Gravenhurst has a tourism bonus with Bethune House. The birthplace of the Canadian doctor who served with Mao Tse Tung, Norman Bethune, attracts 12,000 visitors a year and a third of them are from China .It also has the Segwun, the oldest steamship in North America, touring Muskoka Lakes along with two others for charter.

Parry Sound is the seat of its district and has the world’s deepest freshwater port on Georgian Bay. Tourism is big with thousands of cottages, 100 resorts, a dozen marinas and two provincial parks.