TORONTO -- A look at the life of former finance minister Jim Flaherty, who died last week at the age of 64:
Dec. 30, 1949: James Michael (Jim) Flaherty is born in Lachine, Que. He goes on to earn a bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a law degree from York University's Osgoode Hall Law School, and then becomes a founding partner in the firm Flaherty Dow Elliott.
1990: He unsuccessfully enters provincial politics in Ontario, losing in the riding of Durham Centre.
1991: Triplet sons, Quinn, Galen and John, are born to Flaherty and his wife, Christine Elliott.
1995: Flaherty wins the Whitby-Ajax seat in the Ontario legislature.
1997: He joins the Mike Harris cabinet as minister of labour and later serves as attorney general, finance minister, enterprise minister and deputy premier under Harris and his successor, Ernie Eves.
2002: Flaherty runs unsuccessfully to succeed Harris as Ontario Conservative leader, losing to Eves.
2004: Runs unsuccessfully to succeed Eves, loses to John Tory.
2006: Flaherty wins the federal riding of Whitby-Oshawa and becomes the finance minister of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's new Conservative minority government.
2006-2008: He institutes a series of tax cuts, including shaving two percentage points off the GST to fulfil a campaign promise. He brings in a registered disability savings plan to help Canadians with disabilities and their families and introduces tax-free savings accounts, which allow people to earn tax-free investment income.
January 2009: Flaherty's first budget after the global economic crisis contains a $40-billion stimulus package, as Canada plunges into deficit.
March 2012: Flaherty's budget kills the penny, which he said took 1.6 cents to produce.
January 2013: Flaherty addresses months of speculation about his health by acknowledging publicly that he is taking steroids for a skin condition.
July 2013: Flaherty takes ill during a G20 conference in Russia, and misses two days of meetings.
Feb. 11, 2014: Flaherty tables his final budget which underlines his pledge to erase the country's deficit by 2015. He comes close to balance by presenting a budget that carried a $2.9-billion deficit with a $3-billion contingency fund.
March 18, 2014: Flaherty abruptly resigns as finance minister. He declares that he is "on the road to a full recovery" and that his decision to leave politics was not related to his health.
April 10, 2014: Flaherty dies suddenly, and in the words of his family "peacefully," at his Ottawa home.
April 16, 2014: Gov.-Gen. David Johnston and the country's top political leaders join hundreds of other mourners to remember Flaherty at a state funeral in downtown Toronto.
