Jack Layton was in a good mood on the long flight back to Ottawa one night at the end of a gruelling second week of campaigning.
The New Democrat leader had delivered a particularly rousing version of his stump speech at a rally in Edmonton that morning while surrounded by a large crowd of orange-wearing supporters. It was an impressive show in the Conservative heartland and he knew it.
Yet, in the middle of a relaxed chat with reporters at the back of the plane, Layton, 58, stopped talking about the campaign – stopped talking about Tommy Douglas, even – and said he owed all his success to the women in his life.
"I really do!" he said.
"My first partner was and is amazing," he said of Sally Holford, the childhood sweetheart he married at 19 and with whom he had daughter Sarah, 33, and son Michael, 30.
"And Olivia!" he exclaimed. "Olivia is the goddess," he said of Olivia Chow, 51, who he married in 1988 and is the incumbent candidate for his party in the downtown Toronto riding of Trinity-Spadina.
He said he is also lucky to live with his mother-in-law, Ho Sze Chow, whom he has called the best Cantonese cook in the country for spoiling the couple with fresh fish from Chinatown, in black bean sauce.
"Between the two of them, I benefit from 10,000 years of Chinese women's wisdom," he said.
That, too, has become one of his catchphrases. Chow burst out laughing when she heard the line.
"He said that? What a sweetie!" she said last week.
Sometimes spotted riding a bicycle built for two, the couple has also lived their political lives in tandem.