Sean Conway, (born July 24, 1951) is a former provincial politician in Ontario, Canada and a university professor. He served for 28 years as a Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1975 to 2003, and was a high-profile cabinet minister in the government of David Peterson. After positions as a Fellow in the School of Policy Studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, a special assistant to the Principal of Queen's University, Daniel Woolf, and the Acting Vice-Principal (Advancement) at Queen's, Conway is currently an instructor at St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto and a Distinguished Research Fellow in the Centre for Urban Energy at Ryerson University. Background Conway attended St Joseph's Separate School and Madawaska Valley District High School. He earned his Bachelor of Arts at Waterloo Lutheran University (now Wilfrid Laurier University), and his Masters at Queen's University, both in history. His grandfather, Thomas Patrick Murray, represented Renfrew South for the Liberals from 1929 to 1945. Politics In the provincial election of 1975, at age twenty-four, Conway was elected as a Liberal Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) for the eastern Ontario riding of Renfrew North. He defeated Progressive Conservative candidate Bob Cotnam by 183 votes. The Progressive Conservatives won a minority government in the election, and Conway sat with his party in the opposition benches. The Liberals increased their parliamentary representation in the 1977 election, although not by enough to form government; Conway was re-elected over Cotnam by an increased margin. He became his party's official Critic for Health following the election, and served in this capacity for the entirety of the four-year minority parliament which followed. The Progressive Conservatives won a majority government in the 1981 provincial election, although Conway was popular enough in his own riding to be re-elected by about 2,000 votes. On March 9, 1982, he was chosen as Deputy Leader of the Ontario Liberal Party by David Peterson, who had defeated Sheila Copps in a leadership convention the previous month. In government The provincial election of 1985 resulted in a minority parliament, with the Progressive Conservatives having only four more seats than the Liberals and the New Democratic Party holding the balance of power with twenty-five seats. Conway, by this time regarded as being on the progressive wing of his party, was involved in the Liberal Party's post-election negotiations with the NDP. In this capacity, he helped bring