Right Turn

It wasn’t so much a big blue machine that chugged its way across Ontario’s political landscape in the spring of 1995 – it was more a big purple bulldozer driven by leader Mike Harris and a new breed of Tories. Gone were the pinstripes and the cigar-chomping backroom boys of the forty-two years of Tory rule. These Tories were young, hip, and they were riding the wave of their Common Sense Revolution, a platform launched a year earlier. Still, there were only a few who thought the PCs stood a chance of winning the Ontario provincial election. Though Bob Rae’s NDP government was foundering, Lyn McLeod and the Liberals were holding what looked like a steady two-to-one lead in the polls. Relying on a combination of video tapes, clever advertising, and a brilliant campaign plan, the Harris team turned it all around, pulling off one of the most stunning upsets in Canadian political history. Right Turn tells the story.