The three-headed political monster that nearly swallowed Stephen Harper's minority government has been chosen as the top Canadian news story of 2008 by the country's newspapers editors and broadcasters.
The stunning opposition bid to cobble together an unwieldy coalition government to replace the Conservatives was the No. 1 choice in the annual year-end survey of newspaper and broadcast newsrooms conducted by The Canadian Press.
Not even the stock market meltdown, which ran a close second, could beat the coalition gambit for sheer drama or for provoking a stronger -- and mostly irate -- response from average Canadians, survey respondents concluded.
"Who would have thought this bunch of terminally boring politicians could have worked Canadians into such a lather?" said Mel Rothenburger, editor of the Kamloops Daily News.
"Canadians haven't been this scandalized since Sir John A. (Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister) vomited on the podium."
The coalition story, which played out over a tumultuous two weeks in early December, garnered 48 of 133 votes in the survey, compared to 44 for the market turmoil, which presaged a global economic crisis.
The two stories are intertwined, however. Without the economic crisis, the three ideologically divergent opposition parties would have had little impetus to come together in a bid to topple the Tories.
Few other stories attracted nearly as much attention, according to the editors who responded to the survey.
The gruesome beheading of a man on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba was picked by 11 editors, while 10 others cast their ballots for the deadly outbreak of listeriosis from Maple Leaf Foods products that killed 20 people.
The coalition story had the most benign beginnings, with broad Conservative hints that restraint measures in the coming fall fiscal update would require everyone -- including politicians -- to share the pain.
Liberal, New Democrat and Bloc Quebecois MPs agreed in principle, but were stunned when Harper used the economic crisis to justify a measure that would financially crush his opponents: scrapping the $1.95-per-vote subsidy for political parties.
That partisan sucker-punch proved the spark that ignited an epic power struggle, not only among the parties but also among contenders for the Liberal leadership.
Scott Metcalfe, news director at Toronto's 680 News, described the ensuing high-stakes political drama as "almost Shakespearean in scope, co-authored by Stephen Leacock."
As if things weren't inflammatory enough, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty soaked his update with gasoline -- fudging the deficit numbers, providing no economic stimulus and larding it with ideologically driven measures like scrapping pay equity and temporarily stripping public servants of the right to strike.
All three opposition parties refused to support the update. Driven largely by NDP Leader Jack Layton, they immediately began backroom negotiations to defeat the government and replace it with a Liberal-NDP coalition, propped up by the separatist Bloc Quebecois.
Initially, the Conservatives scoffed at the idea of a coalition led by Stephane Dion, who was in the process of being shoved out the Liberal door following one of the party's worst ballot-box showings in electoral history.
Prime Minister Dion? Get serious. The erstwhile scourge of Quebec separatists forging a deal with a party dedicated to the breakup of the country? Absurd.
But the opposition parties were in deadly earnest; within 24 hours, Harper was scrambling for his government's very survival. He postponed confidence votes and began retracting, one by one, the offending measures from the fiscal update. He promised to move up a stimulus-laden federal budget to January.
But the opposition trio was unmoved. Four days after the fiscal update, Dion, Layton and Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe staged a stunning display as they formally inked a coalition pact.
They pledged to defeat the government and ask Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean to give a Liberal-NDP coalition, armed with at least 18 months of support from the Bloc, a chance to govern rather than plunging the country into another election.
Harper, initially dazed by the combined opposition fury, finally struck back with gusto.
He decried the coalition as akin to a coup d'etat -- albeit one experts said was perfectly in keeping with parliamentary democracy. And he fanned the dying embers of past national unity crises, excoriating Dion for getting into bed with socialists and separatists.
The Tory war room, meanwhile, urged party militants to flood the airwaves and take to the streets to protest the "anti-democratic" coalition, cranking out talking points and scripts for use on radio phone-in shows and letters to newspapers.
The tactic appeared to work. Talk radio shows reported a record volume of calls. Polls suggested Canadians -- particularly those in the western Conservative heartland -- were overwhelmingly opposed to a coalition replacing the government they'd just elected. Pro and anti-coalition rallies popped up across the country.
The saga "perfectly illustrated how confrontational party politics has become and said a lot about the style and substance of our prime minister," said Dan Leger, director of news content at the The Chronicle Herald in Halifax.
"After an apathetic decade or two, grassroots interest in politics was rekindled, even if it exposed yet again how little Canadians really know about the workings of their Parliament."
But it was Harper's televised address to the nation -- or, more precisely, Dion's response to it -- that finally sapped the coalition's momentum.
Dion's amateurish videotaped statement arrived out of focus and too late for use by major television networks. It was the last straw for Liberal MPs, many of whom were already getting cold feet about the coalition.
Once Harper persuaded Jean to suspend Parliament until Jan. 26, Liberals instantly took advantage of the cooling off period to jettison Dion and dispense with the democratic leadership contest that had been scheduled to choose his successor on May 2.
Pressure was applied on rival contenders to withdraw from the leadership race, allowing Toronto MP Michael Ignatieff to be anointed leader without the trouble of having to earn the votes of the party's rank and file.
Always lukewarm about the coalition, the former Harvard academic has not entirely renounced the idea. Rather, Ignatieff continues to hold the coalition cudgel over Harper's head, threatening to knock him out of office if the Jan. 27 budget fails to deliver sufficient economic stimulus.
With the denouement of the coalition saga yet to be written, it's conceivable that the No.1 news story of 2008 could top the charts again next year.
"It's rare for the public to become so involved in a story so quickly and to be this passionate this fast as well," said Rocco Frangione, news director at CFXN in North Bay, Ont.
"But this is the story that did it, and it's not over yet."
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