Yet another way Canada varies from the United States: here, the Conservatives are blue, and the Liberals are red.

And the New Democratic Party is orange, and the Greens are -- believe it or not -- green.

As a largely rural riding in southwestern Ontario, Perth-Wellington is deep indigo Conservative, and has been since it was formed in the redistribution after the 2001 census. Perth County, with its seat at Stratford, has voted Conservative since Confederation. The riding has been represented by a Liberal MP only during periods when its boundaries reached into the suburbs of Waterloo and Kitchener.

That puts me into an almost negligible political minority here. In more than 50 years as a voter I have cast my ballot for a Conservative exactly once: in (I think) 1981, for Flora Macdonald in Kingston and the Islands.

Nowadays, I can never make up my mind which of the major non-Conservative parties I favour this week, as I spent so much of my working life in politically non-aligned military or government service. Besides, they're all centre-left, varying in their social roots and policy focus. At every election, I have to read the campaign literature carefully to decide which losing candidate will get my support!