Here’s a first-hand account of Toronto’s reaction back when John Diefenbaker was elected. It’s by Larry Zolf, a prominent CBC fossil, who was there:

I came to Toronto from Winnipeg … in early 1957 just a few months before Dief’s upset victory. As a Westerner in Toronto I was overjoyed to see Dief win.

But as time passed and I went from Westerner to Torontonian, my attitude to Diefenbaker changed too. I had to admit that Dief’s wagging jowls, his jabbing forefinger, his hot style of politics did not go over very well in cool Toronto, my new home.

To Torontonians, Dief was a wild, incoherent plainsman with little or no talent, who had made the Conservatives a laughing stock in Canada. The [Avro] Arrow fiasco only convinced Toronto that Dief and his cowboys and ploughboys had no administrative or financial skills of any kind whatsoever; they were only hicks and rubes who would reduce all of Canada to little sod huts on the prairies.

You’ve read here again and again (scroll the archives) about the anti-Western prejudice of Ontarians against any leader from the West.

That, and that alone, is why Harper’s personality is now under attack by the Ontario press.

Before Harper’s personality, it was Manning’s appearance. Before Manning’s appearance, it was Clark’s luggage. Before Clark’s luggage, it was Dief’s “wagging jowls [and] jabbing finger.”

No irrelevancy is too trivial, and no personal insult too low, to be used to dismiss or destroy a leader from the West.

If by some accident a Westerner ever becomes PM, Ontario will destroy him personally. That’s what they did to Diefenbaker, and that’s what they’re trying to do to Harper.

To Ontario, Westerners are just “hicks and rubes” who belong in “little sod huts on the prairies.” That’s what Ontario thought 50 years ago, and that’s what they still think today.

Ontario will never, ever allow a Westerner to be Prime Minister. Not now, not a half-century ago, and not ever.