A young, telegenic, ambitious, dynamic leader out of Calgary leads a party full of idealistic and like-minded conservative Albertans, taking on a tired, stale government, set in its ways after 41 years in power.

The government’s recent change of Leader has been a disappointment, and too many of the same old people in government occupy all the same old jobs and the entitlements and benefits they bring.

Polls show that, while hard to accurately pinpoint the landscape, something is in the air – a new generation of Albertans seem to be moving away from the voting patterns of the past four decades.

In February of 1998, Daniel Johnson, Leader of the Quebec Liberal Party, announced that he was resigning.

As a political event, what did that mean to me?

Nothing.

I was with my family in Disneyland, Anaheim, California, having left the Premier’s Office in the Alberta government a week earlier.

But what did Johnson’s resignation mean to the national conservative movement in Canada?

Everything, as it turned out.