I arrived in Toronto during the last weeks of winter of 1973. Like so many immigrants, I came to this country/province/city with scant knowledge of its history and sensibility. Ontario especially is a place full of subtle nuances. It took me years to begin to make some sense of it. I remember how long it took me to begin to read Canadian newspapers. For the longest time I couldn't tell what the game was all about.

I brought with me from Europe a very deeply embedded ideological framework with very clearly divided notions of Left and Right. And this was when Pierre Trudeau was in power and Canada was never as "colourful" as it was then. But the contrasts were still not clear enough for me. And Ontario? Ontario was Bill Davis country. If not for Stephen Lewis who spoke a language I kind of understood, I would've been completely lost in the lukewarm pool of Ontario politics.

And then I discovered the writings of Canadian political scientist Gad Horowitz about the distinctly Canadian phenomenon: the red Tory.

With time I understood the secret of Ontario politics. It doesn't matter what party governs at Queens Park as long as it does so with red Tory sensibility.

John Tory's problem in 2007 was, to put it simply, that Premier McGuinty is better at being a red Tory then John Tory.

"Bland works", as Bill Davis said famously