Even at the end Stephen Harper ducked and dived.



Just before his speech conceding defeat in Canada’s federal election on Monday, Harper’s Conservative party announced it would, in the coming days, be seeking an interim leader.

But when the outgoing prime minister took the stage at a convention centre in downtown Calgary he didn’t mention resignation once – choosing, even in the face of a resounding defeat, not to grant the media the satisfaction of a clip.

Instead Harper focused on thanking his supporters. “During the past nine and a half years it has been an honour to serve as your prime minister,” he told a crowd of two or three hundred despondent activists. “And a great experience to again meet Canadians from coast to coast to coast during the last two and a half months of the campaign.”

“We put it all on the line, we gave everything we have to give, and we have no regrets whatsoever,” he said. “How could we? We remain citizens of the best country on Earth!”

He did admit, however, this was “not … the result we had hoped for” before exiting to his long-time campaign song, Better Now by Collective Soul (“Break the news out / I’ve got to get out / Oh I’m feeling better now.”)

In this same room in 2011 Harper had presided with great satisfaction over a landslide election that swept the Liberal party away and gave his Conservatives a parliamentary majority. On Monday night the Liberal party returned the favour.

As guests started to file in just after 7pm, the polls closed in Ontario and the mood was already a little sombre. It would soon get much worse.

Conservative supporters at first tried to remain upbeat in the face of the coming storm.

Three generations of Bray family voters were among the first to arrive: Albert and Julia Bray, their daughter Susan and her husband Wally Welch, and their granddaughter Lindsay, a 19-year-oldwho had just voted for the first time. She said she voted Conservative largely because of Harper’s stance on Israel. “I’m a big supporter of Israel and Harper took a big stand,” she saaid. “I’m proud of that.”

Julia said she was surprised at the results coming out of Atlantic Canada – the first squalls in the coming storm. “The night’s not over yet,” Albert said. Asked which way they thought the results would go, Wally held his hand out palm-flat, shaking it side-to-side. His wife, however, remained hopeful.

“I’m thinking positively that it’s going to turn out well for the Conservatives,” she said.

“I feel the same way as my wife,” Wally said.

Within five minutes, their hopes were dashed.

The assembled Conservatives could only sit and watch in dismay as the results began coming in, first in drips from east coast, and then in a tidal wave as polls closed in Ontario and Quebec. The Liberal party had thumped them.

The last decade of Conservative rule was marked with controversy and accusations of corruption and fear-mongering.

Harper became prime minister with a minority government in 2006 after uniting two parties on the right of Canadian politics. In 2011, he cemented a majority government sweeping back to power with the support of many previously strong Liberal ridings, especially in the outer suburbs of Toronto such as Etobicoke, Ajax, Pickering and Scarborough.

His leadership of Canada’s Conservatives has coincided with repeated allegations of officials breaking electoral rules, and accusations of misleading or overruling parliament and the people. Harper himself has been called cold, aloof and ruthless for his habit of gagging or smearing anyone who speaks out against him. He lost a no-confidence vote in 2011, triggering an election which saw him come back with a majority.

His party played games with fear during this campaign too, with Harper driving wedge issues, especially that of the niqab, into play to try to catch his opponents out, and using “ker-ching” cash register gimmicks to try to build fear of the Liberals. On Saturday, he campaigned near Toronto with the former crack-smoking mayor Rob Ford.



After Harper finished speaking on Monday and left the hall, the bright lights came on and the room emptied quickly and without much ceremony. Zach Isaac, a 25-year-old party volunteer from Calgary, who was one of the loudest cheerers during Harper’s speech and was festooned with buttons and signs, told the Guardian while he was disappointed Canadians picked “the opposite of a fiscally responsible agenda,” he was nonetheless “very pleased to see the death of the federal NDP”.

“I will be celebrating the death of the NDP all night,” he said, showing the Guardian a badge that had the NDP in a crossed circle sign.

“It’s pretty sad,” said Kevin Thiessen, a Conservative party member originally from Ontario, adding he was “pretty disappointed” with his home province. “I feel kinda betrayed by Ontario,” he said. “The last election, they saved the day. Now where the hell are they?”

Standing with him was his friend Nathaniel Milljour, a cartoonist for the National Firearms Association, the Canadian equivalent of the American National Rifle Association. “Harper got bashed on social media for things that didn’t exist,” he said.

“He was betrayed, though. It’s unforgivable. And it’s Ontario that did the back-stabbing.”