Bibliography of Ontario

Christina Blizzard, Right Turn: How the Tories took Ontario. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1995. An account of the 1995 Ontario Provincial election and the Progressive-Conservative Party’s rise to power, with a focus on the re-branding of the Ontario PC party under the party leadership of Mike Harris and the impact of the Common Sense Revolution campaign platform. The account details the unique circumstances in Ontario which enabled the OntarioPC party to rise from a third party and seize majority government victory.

John Ibbitson. Promised Land: Inside the Mike Harris Revolution. Scarborough: Prentice Hall Canada Inc, 1997.Promised Land is divided into two parts with the first being an examination of the how the Common Sense Revolution was constructed and the people involved in its conception. Attention is put on the evolution of the Ontario PC Party under Mike Harris’s leadership and the influences and circumstances which became responsible for the policies outlined in the CommonSense Revolution. The second part of Promised Land examines the Ontario PC Party after they had one majority government in 1995 with attention on the consequences of instituting the CommonSense Revolution in Ontario and the impact it had on various segments of society. Focus is put on the protest by certain segments of society, such as labour and the teachers union, towards the policies introduced by the Harris government and how the government confronted and overcame these challenges.

Rosemary Speirs. Out of the Blue: The Fall of the Tory Dynasty in Ontario. Toronto: Macmillan, 1986.An examination of the decline of the Progressive-Conservative party in Ontario and an analysis of the party’s fall from power beginning with the resignation of Bill Davis in 1985 and his government’s defeat in the 1985 election subsequently giving way to the emergence of David Peterson’s Liberal government. Attention is put on how the Ontario PC Party managed itself in those wilderness years as the Liberals andNDP increasingly seized and divided political control of Ontario. Further analysis covers the party’s innerdivisiveness as it struggled to reinvent itself and renew its position within Ontario politics.

Felice Martinello. “Mr. Harris, Mr. Rae and Union Activity in Ontario.” Canadian PublicPolicy Vol.26 No.1(2000): 17-33. AccessedJuly 21 2013. DOI: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3552254Acomparison between Bob Rae’s NDP government and Mike Harris’s PC government andtheir policy attitudes towards organized labour in Ontario. A decade of data ranging from 1987-1998 is used to compare the effects of government change over which note the contrasting certification/decertification activity as well as number of complaints regarding unfair labour practices and focus is put on how these issues were significantly impacted with the election of the Ontario PC government in 1995 and remained in sharp contrast throughout the Harris yea. The study the article examines is a reflection of left-right party positions on organized labour which became a major issue of Mike Harris’s terms in government.

Sid Noel, edit. Revolution at Queens Park:Essays on Governing Ontario. Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, 1997. A collection of essays examining the dramatic political shift Ontario has experienced since 1985 by putting attention on the 1995 election and the circumstances which resulted in a“revolution in Queens Park” via Mike Harris’s conservative government winning a majority. The essays present new perspectives on how aspects of the election such as media, political culture as well as economics played a crucial role in determining the end results.

General

This article is about the social reform changes that the Rae government had made or tried to make during their rule. The polices that were made during the Rae government that affected social aspects of Ontario were the Consent to treatment act which gave permission to children aged 12 and over to refuse medical treatment without parental consent, a very progressive labour legislation that would make private companies throughout Ontario hire visible minorities, women and disabled people. The article emphasizes the Rae party’s policies to change deep seated social injustices in Ontario. The article continues to discuss other policies in the labour field and the educational field. The article concludes with the author discussing Rae’s commitment to fighting social injustices and changing the power balance in Ontario to giving power to less advantaged people according to race and gender.

Geography and environment

Ontario to 1869

Ontario since 1869

Primary sources

See also