In the early 1980s, Stephen Harper's idea of a hot date was to take his fiancée to political meetings. They would sit in the front row, ask questions and stay to the very end, according to Jim Hawkes, who held the monthly meetings as the Progressive Conservative member of Parliament for Calgary West.
When they weren't going to meetings, the couple would go to the Calgary Zoo. "He loved animals. We went to the zoo all the time,'' said Cynthia Williams, a heavyset 5-foot-3 redhead who was engaged to Mr. Harper for a year and is now a writer-producer in Calgary for A-Channel, owned by Craig Media Inc. She declined to give her age except to say she is a few years younger than Mr. Harper, now 45.
As students at the University of Calgary, they dated for almost five years. Neither went to church regularly. But in a twist, Ms. Williams's sister ended up teaching Sunday school to Mr. Harper's children at Calgary's Westminster Presbyterian Church. "He didn't go himself. He let his mom and dad take his kids to church."
They broke up, she said, "the year Don Getty ran for the leadership." (That would be 1985.) "We just grew apart," said Ms. Williams, a self-described Red Tory who has remained single. "We were young and started to want different things. It just wasn't meant to be."
She thinks the public misunderstands her ex-fiancé. "Stephen is not far right. He found himself involved with a party that was far right. Back when I was with him, he was progressive on social policies."
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This week, even as polls showed the leader of the newly united Conservative Party gaining on the Liberals, Mr. Harper did not disavow any of his hard-line positions on abortion, gay marriage, bilingualism, the death penalty and erecting a "firewall" around Alberta to keep out grasping feds. He would just rather not discuss such radioactive matters with the Rest of Canada. Nor will he let friends or family talk to the media.
He didn't decline, so much as ignore, repeated requests for interviews with him and his youngest brother, Robert, his campaign chairman in Calgary Southwest. But unauthorized interviews with his ex-fiancée, his mother, his hairdresser, former high-school classmates, teachers, political mentors and an uncle who hadn't gotten the word from Campaign Central about not speaking to the media, reveal a man who has steadily evolved into a deeply conservative politician.
"Stephen's epiphany came when he went out west. He was not right wing in high school. His friends were not right wing," said Bob Scott, who taught history to Mr. Harper at Richview Collegiate Institute in Toronto.
This week, Mr. Harper began trying to dilute his Albertan image by morphing back into a Central Ontarian. On the campaign trail in Whitby, Ont., he said, "As you all know, I grew up in the Toronto area." In Ajax, Ont., he told the crowd, "Do you know I grew up in this province?"
His more incendiary statements have been deleted from the website at the National Citizens Coalition, the right-wing lobby group he once headed. He no longer ends his speeches with a resounding, "God bless Canada!"
Yet he remains a libertarian who believes in the survival of the fittest. At 45, he is the youngest major party leader, but you don't see him hanging around Bono.
Stephen Harper was born in Toronto on April 30, 1959, or "income tax day," as George Harper, his uncle, put it. The family, which traces its roots to Yorkshire, settled in Tignish in the 1750s, near the boundary between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Until Stephen, the only politician in the family had been his great-great-great-great-grandfather Christopher, who was elected to the Nova Scotia House of Assembly in 1783.
Stephen's father, Joseph, a chartered accountant from Moncton, worked for Imperial Oil Ltd. in Toronto. The family lived in the enclave of Leaside, as WASP as most of the city. Stephen, the oldest of three boys, was asthmatic as a child and allergic to ragweed. He wasn't allowed a pet. He stayed away from sports, except for three years of hockey at Leaside Memorial Gardens, where he never made the select team.
