Post-war Boom and Opposition
Ontario politics in recent times have been dominated by the Progressive Conservatives, also known as the Tories. The Liberals had formed the Government for only five years out of sixty years from 1943 to 2003. For forty-two years, from 1943 to 1985, the province was governed by the Tories. During this period, the Ontario Liberal Party was a rural, conservative rump with a southwestern Ontario base, and were often further to the right of the moderate Red Tory Conservative administrations.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Liberals were almost shut out of Metropolitan Toronto and other urban areas and, in 1975, fell to third place behind the dynamic Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP) under Stephen Lewis. With the NDP in ascendancy in the late 1960s and 1970s, it appeared that the Liberals could disappear altogether.
The Liberals remained more popular than the Tories among Catholic and Francophone voters, due to its support for extending separate school funding to include Grades 11-13. The Tories opposed this extension until 1985, when they suddenly reversed their position. This reversal angered traditional Conservative voters, and may have contributed to their defeat in the 1985 election.
Read more about this topic: Ontario Liberal Party
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