Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His eight books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. He is currently working on a book about the Harper majority government to be published in the autumn of 2014 by Penguin Canada.

On Thursday night, at an Etobicoke pub called The Longest Yard, there will be one of two things – a party or a wake.

The nature of the event will depend upon the decision taken 450 kms away by people not likely to darken the door of The Longest Yard or any place like it – the esteemed members of the Supreme Court of Canada.

The court will announce on Thursday whether the voters of Etobicoke Centre have an MP, or will be going back to the polls to select one. Whatever the ruling, the merry-makers or mourners in the pub will have to get along without the man they have followed doggedly for more than a year in his quest for electoral justice – Borys Wrzesnewskyj.

For Borys, the defiant former Liberal MP, Ukrainian freedom-fighter and restlessly successful businessman, will be in his car today taking the solitary, reflective drive to Ottawa from Toronto. “I think better when I drive.” He wants to be in the nation’s capital when the Court decision is revealed so that he can look the decision, the media, and his fate squarely in the eye.

“I’m actually quite glad we will finally have a decision,” he says.

Why wouldn’t he be?

After months of legal trench warfare, first in the Ontario Court of Justice, and then in the deeper waters of the Supreme Court of Canada, Borys has spent over $300,000 in legal fees, handed off his parental responsibilities for his two young daughters to his wife Lina Fedko and spent hours every night knocking on doors in his former riding to explain this sanguine, complex, private war being waged on the public’s behalf by a private citizen.

Win or lose, Borys thinks the long, expensive scrap will pay dividends for the country.

“We couldn’t even address the issue of voter-suppression in Etobicoke Centre. Our elections legislation is silent on that point. That has to change. And something else that has to change is that you shouldn’t have to be blessed as I have been to be able to afford to challenge corruption in court. Everyone should have that ability in a democracy.”

As for Prime Minister Harper’s timing in calling three by-elections just days before tomorrow’s decision on Etobicoke Centre, Borys says the cynicism is consistent with Conservative tactics.

“He waited all this time to call those by-elections and then couldn’t wait three or four more days? The only reason we didn’t have a by-election after the Ontario court threw out the 2011 election result is that the polls showed me 10 points ahead. That’s the only reason.”

Remarkably, given the stakes for his embattled Liberal Party, it is a war he has mostly fought on his own. There has been no encouragement from the party’s legal counsel, no pat on the back from either party leader Bob Rae or leadership hopeful Justin Trudeau, no big cheque from the party’s National Director Ian McKay.

Perhaps this is pay-back for an inconvenient truth: Borys refused to sign off on the installation of Michael Ignatieff as party leader; in his view, it didn’t pass the democratic smell test. For better or worse, Iggy’s guys still carry a big stick in the party.

It could also be that Borys is no shrinking violet when it comes to laying it on the line about what is wrong with the party’s notion of renewal. People “who are not Liberals” have been let in on the decision-making process. Many of Paul Martin’s policy initiatives have been dropped like an old girlfriend for the shorter hemline of untested charisma – or so Borys believes.

Which is not to say that none of his former colleagues have wished him well in the heat of this most important night of the soul. Liberal MPs Frank Valeriote and Jim Karygiannis have. But for the most part, he has fought on with a devoted band of supporters in the riding, his family, and his own resources. He has no regrets.

“From the moment I found out that Ted Opitz’s team targeted seniors to take away their right to vote, I knew I had to do this. When officials of Elections Canada confirmed what happened at St. Demetrius, I had no option.”

Interestingly, the word for both “voice” and “vote” in Ukrainian is the same – “holos”. And in Borys’s family, that “holos” is holy, a sacred word, a seminal value.

“You know, your character is shaped when you are child. I came from a family that lived in the heart of darkness of the 20th century’s two most horrific systems – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and survived. The vote is no academic exercise to me or the people who raised me. My grandmother loved the vote and taught me to love it.”

From the blue and yellow baker’s certificate his grandfather earned in Czarist Russia back in 1905 to memories of his father, Roman, shouldering hundred pound sacks of flour at the family business west of Toronto, Borys has no shortage of inspiration for his fight against “the Tory politics that are killing democracy in Canada.”

But it is tough on people like his mother, Irene, a woman in her late eighties, who probably hoped for more serene times for her son and his family.

“My mother has resigned herself to the fact that this battle is based on values she herself instilled in me. Would she rather it wasn’t happening? Of course. Does she understand why it is? Better than anyone.”

Nor does Borys have to look a long way back for inspiration as the moment of judicial truth draws near. Long before they were married, his wife Lina battled through the hazards of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, just as Borys did. And then there is his personal anger at the ditch politics that may have deprived him of a rightful victory in Etobicoke Centre – and his constituents of an honest election.

“Stephen Harper politics are putting the greatest country on earth, one with a special mission, in danger. I despise the politics of targeting demographics to manipulate elections – our seniors, poor single mothers, the disenfranchised young. We have to keep standing up to the bully until we have no strength left.”

And then there is a very unlikely source of strength – Popeye the Sailor Man.

“When I was a boy, I could never quite hear what Popeye was muttering under his breath. So I put my ear to the TV set and liked what I heard. He was saying, “I am what I am, and that’s all that I am…

And whatever happens, that’s what they already know about Borys back at The Longest Yard.

Readers can reach the author at [email protected]. Click here to view other columns by Michael Harris.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.