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The hardest part was yet to come: admitting as much to herself. even though she knew very well as many as one in three Canadians will experience some form of mental illness over the court of their life tines. And even as those who knew her best had noticed the fire in her eyes was flickering out.

For a long time, I wondered: ‘Where did my fire go?’

“For someone like me, who used to have so much fire in her belly, I was really searching for a spark,” MacLeod said in an exclusive interview last week. “For a long time, I wondered: ‘Where did my fire go?'”

On Sunday, at a celebration of her ten-year anniversary in office, in she made the decision to tell her constituents two things: First, she will run for the party nomination in the newly created riding of Nepean in 2018; secondly, her recent absences were a result of illness, not apathy.

“I was depressed. I wasn’t as present as I wanted to be for my party or my constituents,” she said.

The darkness grew deepest in winter 2015 but it didn’t lift with the spring light.

“I didn’t realize it until the summer,” she said, explaining an ankle and later a back injury left her hobbled, more housebound and she chalked it up to lethargy. She remembers being at the late July launch of Brown’s bid for a seat at Queen’s Park (he’d led the party without one since May). Instead of filling the room with her boisterous laugh, as happy as she was for her party, she left quietly, suddenly sad and unable to keep up appearances in the celebratory atmosphere.

“I don’t think it affected her ability to attend events, I think it affected her ability to want to attend events” said Alex Lewis, a fellow progressive conservative and one-time candidate who has known MacLeod for a decade and backed her leadership bid.