TORONTO – He was bigger than life.

If a political figure is measured by his influence on the Province, Bill Davis will surely emerge as one of the true fathers of a modern Ontario society. A a graduating university student, i remember him as a small-town lawyer deeply steeped in the ultra-conservative politics of an Ontario still very dependent on an agrarian based economy buttressed by a manufacturing-centred Toronto.

His home base was then “sleepy” Brampton, population 55,000. The Family Compact and the Orange Order, his core supporters, did not look too kindly upon those new post-war immigrants from Europe who were not British.  (more…)