Edmonton — Surely no other candidate carries such a good-luck charm into Monday's federal election.
Rona Ambrose slips a tiny hand into the right pocket of her jacket and pulls out a small chunk of concrete embedded with several dark stones.
It is a piece of the Berlin Wall.
It was given to her earlier this day by a farmer who, back in the fall of 1989, joined fellow Germans in taking hammers to the infamous barrier between East and West Germany. When he came to Canada, he brought part of the wall, and, last week, split it into three pieces: one for himself, one for his son, and one for the Conservative Member of Parliament for Edmonton-Spruce Grove.
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He broke down in tears when he gave it to her. It would, he said, always remind her of the meaning of democracy.
But on Monday evening, assuming the polls hold, it could also stand as a symbol of the breaking down of a political wall that many believe kept Western Canadians apart from the country they belong to and which should also belong to them.
"The West Wants In" was the slogan of Preston Manning's Reform Party when it was founded in 1987.
Now, nearly 20 years later, Reform has become the Canadian Alliance has become the new Conservative Party under Stephen Harper. The face of federal politics in Alberta has gone from what was often seen as cranky curmudgeons, invariably male, to the likes of 36-year-old Ms. Ambrose, a rising Alberta star in federal politics.
"The West is in," says former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed. "Even if it's a minority government, it will be a positive thing for Canada."
"The West is in with a vengeance," says Mel Hurtig, the lifelong nationalist who recently moved to Vancouver after more than 70 years in Edmonton.
"I think it remains to be seen," cautions Preston Manning. The Reform founder, however, does think "the lie has been put" to any thinking that Western conservatism could not make headway in Ontario and even in Quebec. No matter what Monday's outcome, this campaign has been worth it.
"National unity," Mr. Manning says, "and the state of federalism is in better shape today than it was before this election began."
Talk of Western alienation will not vanish overnight, yet something undeniable has changed: a sense of not only being in, but getting involved.
"Alberta can lead," Ms. Ambrose says. "We don't always have to say we're on the outside."
This sense of being on the "outside" has been around so long that some of her generation have known nothing else.
"It's been 20 years," says Ezra Levant, the publisher of the conservative Western Standard magazine and a former assistant to Mr. Manning.
"I was born in 1972, and I've known nothing else except for this constant frustration."
It is not as if there have not been Conservative governments in that time. Joe Clark had a minority briefly in 1979, and Brian Mulroney won two majorities in the 1980s. Mr. Clark was even born in High River, Alta., yet Albertans of today identify far more with the Ontario-born-but-Alberta-bound Mr. Harper than they ever did with native-son Mr. Clark.
Should Mr. Harper's Tories form the next government, Westerners are expected to play key roles -- perhaps even someone as young and relatively inexperienced as Ms. Ambrose.
It could involve a seismic power shift. Already, the country is witnessing a demographic and economic tilt to the West, rich in energy and situated alongside the dynamic Pacific trade routes; the political ground is also moving. The triangle of Ottawa-Montreal-Toronto that has largely controlled federal politics since Confederation would be joined by a second triangle anchored by Calgary and including Edmonton and parts of the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.
"Montreal was the crucible for ideas 35-40 years ago," Mr. Levant says. "Calgary has now taken that place. Calgary is the hothouse for ideas. Some of them are good, some of them are bad. But the key is that in Stephen Harper, there is now someone who can articulate the good ones."
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