Well, Ontario, you wanted change. And oh boy, did you ever get it.

The complete upheaval a surly electorate promised over the month-long campaign — a door-slamming end to 15 years of Liberal rule — registered like thunder Thursday night.

Shunned by about four out of five Ontario voters, Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals ended the night in near oblivion, imploding from majority rule to single-digit seats in the Legislature.

You trowed da bums out with resounding unity, painting blue and orange throughout what was for a generation a blanket of Ontario red.

The historic shellacking stripped the Liberals of official party status, meaning they now will have to rebuild without the staff funding and other privileges that come with the threshold of eight or more seats.

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But that’s where the unity ended. Having carved away the middle, the scythe of Ontario’s anger broke apart against two wildly divergent visions of the way forward.

In raw numbers, Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives won by more than a nose, but far less than a landslide, claiming 40 per cent versus 35 per cent for Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats. The difference was about one out of every 20 Ontario voters.

But as pollsters had forewarned, the numbers were deceptive. Even in a dead heat, better vote distribution favoured a PC victory. And so that small numerical advantage — coupled with the amplifying effects of the our 19th-century first-past-the-post format — turned the trickle into a Tory triumph. A majority triumph, ending the night anointed with some 74 seats to easily ensure clear legislative sailing ahead, regardless of what the opposition has to say about it.

Premier Doug Ford. Try that out on your tongue a few times. And if you are among the many Ontarians who has made a hobby of laughing long and hard over all that has happened south of the border since the election of Donald Trump, say it again.

Premier Doug Ford. Get used to it. If you are among the more than six out of 10 Ontario voters who never wanted to say those words, buck-a-beer can’t come soon enough.

It remains to be seen whether the patchwork of colour in this new Ontario — the City of Toronto aglow in NDP orange, the 905 banded in turning-point blue, a broad swath of middle Ontario also blue, yet the far north solidly orange — will have any mitigating effect on the unknown quantity that is the Ford agenda.

Should we anticipate a hairpin turn to the right, with Ford unveiling scorched-earth change out of the gate, Trump-style? Or will the PC establishment prevail, holding its new and untested leader to a more moderate pace, perhaps with an eye to building a blue wave strong enough to run beyond a single term.

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Kathleen Wynne is stepping down as leader of the Ontario Liberals following the party’s poor performance in Thursday’s provincial election. The outgoing premier says she is “passing the torch” to a new generation. (The Canadian Press)

Standing as they do today, with a freshly minted mandate, Ontario’s PCs must be shaking their heads in wonder, pinching themselves. To have survived the weeks of chaos that saw a scandal-soaked Patrick Brown excised from the helm of the party only to watch Doug Ford emerge from a smouldering mess of a last-minute leadership convention, tearing up the party’s carefully-honed platform and suddenly spouting populist bromides that even a majority of the party’s own leaders appeared not to want.

To have survived all that and then to win. It’s the political equivalent of plunging at high-speed into a multi-car pileup in which you somehow, after spinning madly through the air, ass over teakettle, wheels to the sky, manage to land upright and intact. With the rubber on the road and not a scratch on the car. And nothing but empty highway ahead. And all of it yours.

But some PCs will know, deep down, that the man behind the wheel makes more than half the province really nervous. Maybe he makes them a bit nervous too.

Ontario, for all its nerves, is still a world apart from the United States. We didn’t just become them, no matter how these numbers break. An angry electorate made clear that if this was a change election, the fury was all about ending the Liberal status quo.

And so it’s hard to envision, for the nearly six in 10 voters who parked their vote elsewhere, anything less than anger will erupt at the first sign of an aggressive, Trump-style approach to power. The morning after is likely to reek of careful-what-you-wish-for, as progressive Ontario ponders what comes next.

Nothing is likely to ease their pain of Ontario’s progressives quickly, after so toxic a campaign. In these final days, anger seemed to almost metastasize into evermore-caustic memes targeting each leader, mocking each campaign. The converted pleading with the converted — and throwing ugly shade, if not outright blocking, the other side.

Conversely, for true blue Ontario conservatives who have lived a generation under various iterations of progressive Liberal rule — particularly those in ridings led by longtime MPPs just itching to exercise power after so long in opposition — this is dawn, finally, after what seemed endless darkness.

One post making the rounds on Facebook — a plea for civility from an anonymous veteran Ontario government bureaucrat — captured the ugliness of it all. And pushed back, angry over anger itself.

The anonymous Ontario insider claimed to have worked under “13 ministers (three Tory, 10 Liberal)” and while “some were cerebral, some were folksy, some were tough as nails, some were sweet as pie,” every one of them “were all in.”

“They took their job seriously. They worked hard. They suffered daily abuse from anyone and everyone who felt that politicians did not warrant respect or even decency.

“Everybody is posting about the importance of voting. Yup, agree. But the visceral anger over the past month of voters of every inclination has been, well, disheartening is one word for it.

“It takes guts to run and it takes more guts to serve. It takes no courage or imagination to heap scorn. Before anyone complains about what they get out of democracy, maybe they could consider what they put into it.”

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For up-to-the-minute results, visit the Star's Ontario election page

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