Queen’s Park Dad

By all objective criteria, Dalton James Patrick McGuinty Jr. enjoyed remarkable electoral success in Ontario politics. When 59 Liberal members of the provincial parliament were going down to defeat in the 1990 general election, McGuinty was the only new Liberal elected that night. Six years later, against all odds, he won the leadership of the Ontario Liberals, despite coming fourth on the first ballot, and a worse fourth on the second.

His first electoral confrontation with Premier Mike Harris in 1999 ended in defeat, after the Progressive Conservatives’ ad campaign convinced most Ontarians that McGuinty was not up to the job. In fact, in his new memoir Making a Difference, McGuinty confirms what most people had already suspected—he was not ready to be premier in 1999.

Still, he captured enough of the total...