Jack Layton Voted Newsmaker of the Year

From hip surgery to leader of the Official Opposition to his untimely death, the NDP leader fundamentally changed Canada in 2011 like no one else. Except for that one guy, Steve something.

Jack Layton has been named by editors across the country as Canada's newsmaker of the year, with the late leader of the NDP nabbing an overwhelming 90 per cent of votes in the 65th iteration of the annual Canadian Press survey. Despite undergoing hip surgery early this year, Layton led his party to an electoral breakthrough in Quebec, increasing the NDP's seat total in the province from one to 59 on May 2, propelling them to become the Official Opposition for the first time in the party's history. After leading the NDP through a marathon filibuster against Conservative government back-to-work legislation, Layton's health deteriorated to the point where he handed reins of the party over to Nycole Turmel. Just a month later, on Aug. 22, he succumbed to cancer, prompting an outpouring of grief and goodwill from across the nation not seen in generations. The void in the NDP's leadership left by Layton has dominated discussion around the party's prospects ever since. Few other newsmakers of the year have ever garnered such consensus from the news editors. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who made some waves of his own this year, landed five per cent of votes. A parallel online poll hosted by Yahoo! Canada found that half of respondents voted Jack as the year's newsmaker, followed by Harper at 10 per cent and the Occupy movement at 9.5 per cent.