On January 12, 1986, Jim Walding was nominated as the New Democratic Party candidate for the Manitoba constituency of St. Vital. Although Walding had been an MLA for fifteen years, he had fallen out of favour with key elements in his party, and won the nomination by only a single vote. Walding went on, in turn, to bring down his own government by a single vote, marking the only time in the history of Canadian politics that a majority government was brought down from within. Combining data drawn from archives, interviews, and the media, Just One Vote is a vivid and exceptionally detailed study of the nomination process. Ian Stewart outlines the geographic, social, and political backdrop behind Walding’s contested party nomination, the unusual chain of events triggered by the contestation, including the fall of the Pawley government and the NDP’s defeat in the 1988 provincial election, and examines the fallout from these events on Manitobans and Canadians.

Ian Stewart PhD, taught at both Queen's and UBC before joining the department of political science at Acadia University for 32 years. He is now retired after authoring 30 articles on Canadian politics. He also wrote or co-wrote Roasting Chestnuts: The Mythology of Maritime Political Culture (UBC Press, 1995), The Savage Years: The Perils of Reinventing Politics in Nova Scotia (with Peter Clancy, James Bickerton and Rodney Haddow, Lorimer, 2000), Conventional Choices: Maritime Leadership Politics (UBC Press, 2007) and Just One Vote: From Jim Walding's Nomination to Constitutional Defeat (University of Manitoba Press, 2009). Conventional Choices was short-listed for the Donald Smiley Prize for the best book on Canadian politics in 2008, and Just One Vote was short-listed for the Margaret McWilliams for best book on Manitoba history and for the Donald Smiley Prize for the best book in Canadian politics in 2010. Ian Stewart and his wife Audrey live in Greenwich, Nova Scotia.

Ian Stewart's profile page

“Stewart’s attention to detail is remarkable. … As a contribution to local and and provincial political history it is first-rate, and as a contribution to the literature on the Canadian political process it succeeds on many different levels.”

North Dakota Quarterly, Summer 2009.

“A welcome addition to the already significant Canadian literature on the New Democratic Party of Manitoba. The attention paid to this subject reflects the party’s democratic socialist ideology and its domination of provincial politics for much of the past 40 years, including Manitoba’s current government.”

Great Plains Research, Vol. 20, No. 2