Canada's Harper Seen as Shrewd, Serious, Bland

Harper's father was an accountant in Toronto, where Harper was born and raised in a white, middle-class neighborhood. Completing the Canadian portrait, Stephen and his two younger brothers were absorbed in ice hockey, and Harper still is a master of hockey trivia.

Childhood friends remember him as polite, studious and quiet. After high school, Harper set out to work in western Canada. He soon enrolled in the University of Calgary, where his political interests blossomed and he began a march through the conservative political ranks, according to the biography "Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada," by William Johnson.

On campus, he became immersed in the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Young Republicans. Harper and Weissenberger were avid fans of intellectual conservative William F. Buckley's weekly television debate show, "Firing Line."

The students traded political tomes, debated political theory and hungrily followed the growing popularity of Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States, according to Johnson. They wondered why the strident conservatism those leaders represented had largely bypassed Canada.

"We called ourselves the 'Tiny Tories,' " said Goldy Hyder, another college mate, who went on to be chief of staff to a Progressive Conservative leader, Joe Clark.

"I would describe Stephen then pretty much as I would describe him now," Hyder said. "He is a very serious person. He obviously enjoys his policy and his public policy musing. He's reserved, fairly quiet. There is no question of his smarts. He was often in a room full of persons and he was the smartest of them all."

Harper ran unsuccessfully for Parliament in 1988 and won in 1993, but left four years later to take a job as head of the National Citizens Coalition, a conservative advocacy group. There, he forcefully argued that Ottawa and the eastern power structure treated western Canada unfairly. In 2001, he signed a letter urging the Alberta premier to "build firewalls around Alberta" against a "hostile federal government."

It became a controversial letter. And it was not the only position that later caused Harper trouble after he returned to Parliament in 2002 as leader of the opposition party. In their first matchup, in the 2004 national election, the shrewd Martin used Harper's support for the Iraq war and other pro-American statements to portray the Conservative as too closely aligned with right-wing U.S. Republicans.

"It's a very difficult balancing act," said James Blanchard, a former U.S. ambassador to Canada who is now a lawyer and consultant in Washington. Canadian prime ministers do not want to be seen as too close to Washington, he said.

Harper learned the lesson. He avoided foreign policy and politically explosive social policy issues in this campaign, focusing instead on government reform, tax cuts, health care, crime and transferring more power to provinces.

Even detractors give Harper credit for rescuing his party. He engineered the merger of feuding conservative wings into a single party in 2003, applied lessons from their defeat in 2004, and then commanded a tightly disciplined campaign with no major mistakes leading to this election.

His supporters point to that accomplishment as evidence that Harper is a keen political strategist, not just an ideologue.

"Those are marks of leadership," said the last Conservative premier, Brian Mulroney, in an election-night television interview from West Palm Beach, Fla. "Reaching out to unify the party, then to move the party to the center, then to devise a campaign strategy and finally to execute it flawlessly."

Harper's campaign staff declined a request for an interview before the election, citing the load of campaign obligations.

His first step after the election seemed as careful as his campaign. In his late-night victory speech in Calgary, he graciously thanked Martin for his service to the country. He also sought to soften his stern image by appearing with his two children, Rachel, 7, and Benjamin, 9.

His wife, Laureen Teskey, a graphic designer, remained a constant figure by his side in the campaign. Both disdain the media, according to reporters who covered the campaign, though they made an effort in this election run-up to be more civil to the press.

But those who know Harper credit Teskey with helping to soften his hard edges.

"He also has changed a lot. He became more well-rounded after he became married and had children," said Monte Solberg, a Parliament member from Alberta. "He has learned how to compromise. A lot of people have called him an ideologue, but I think he has put that to rest."