It’s safe to say no Ontario politician has ever had a year quite like new Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown.

Brown started out 2018 as a Simcoe-area MPP and leader of the now-governing Ontario Progressive Conservative (PC) party — but will finish it as mayor of Canada’s ninth largest city.

The story in between dominated headlines for long stretches both in Brampton and across the province.

Not even a year ago, the 40-year-old Brown seemed fated to become the province’s next premier. His PC party had just released its new platform dubbed “The People’s Guarantee” and was set to square off against a very unpopular Kathleen Wynne Liberal government in the June provincial election.

That all came crashing down after a surprise news conference on Jan. 24, where Brown emotionally denied a pair of sexual misconduct claims by a pair of women in a CTV News report. He resigned the leadership the next day.

Brown categorically denied the claims and is currently suing CTV News for $8 million in a defamation lawsuit over its initial reporting, calling the allegations false and part of a “co-ordinated campaign” against him from within his own party.

In October, Brown told the Brampton Guardian he never saw eye-to-eye with the more “hard-right” factions of the PC party.

“That certainly made some enemies within the party, but I felt that I was doing what was right for Canada and for Ontario,” he said.

He was eventually replaced by current Premier Doug Ford and the rest might have been history, but that was only the start of Brown's roller-coaster year.

After a short-lived bid at regaining the leadership, he was booted from the PC caucus altogether in February amid further controversy, including a still-active fraud investigation into the party’s nomination process in a Hamilton region riding. Brown has denied any wrongdoing or involvement in the investigation.