since arriving in Canada. He ran for the party provincially in 1999, 2003 and 2007, as well as federally in 2004 and 2006. He is the recipient of the Canada 125 Medal, presented to Canadian citizens for their contributions to the good of the community and society in general. In November 2009, Ryan was acclaimed to the position of president of the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL). He was re-elected for a second term in 2011 and again in 2013 and retired in 2015. During his six years as OFL president 4 unions undemocratically withheld union dues from the OFL because they disagreed with Ryan's leadership from the first day he was elected. Canada's largest private sector union, Unifor, which had supported him in the past, refused to support his re-election to a fourth term and instead supported a Unifor staff person who worked for Unifor President Jerry Dias. Following his retirement in 2015, Ryan wrote a book 'A Grander Vision'about growing up in Dublin, Ireland and his life in the Canadian labour movement. The book was published by Dundurn Press in April 2019. Work with New Democratic Party In addition to his union activities, Ryan has been involved with the New Democratic Party (NDP) since the 1980s. He has served on the Ontario NDP's provincial council and Environment committee, and is a former president of the Durham Centre riding association. Ryan's affiliation with the Ontario NDP became tenuous in the early 1990s, when some felt that the party had moved to the right under Bob Rae's leadership. On one occasion, he referred to the Rae government's austerity "Social Contract" bill as the most anti-labour piece of legislation he had ever seen. He subsequently resumed supporting the provincial party under Howard Hampton's leadership in a bid to rebuild the NDP/Labour relationship. Ryan has stood as an NDP candidate in three provincial and two federal election campaigns. He contested Scarborough Centre in the 1999 provincial election, and finished third behind Progressive Conservative incumbent Marilyn Mushinski and Liberal Costas Manios. In the 2003 provincial election, he campaigned in Oshawa and came within 1,109 votes of defeating PC incumbent Jerry Ouellette. Ryan moved the NDP's vote from around 5000 to over 18,000 during the course of his campaigns in Oshawa. Ryan also stood as a candidate for Oshawa in the 2004 federal election, and lost to Conservative Colin Carrie by 463 votes in