Former federal Tory leader and Nova Scotia premier Robert Stanfield has died in Ottawa at the age of 89, after a lengthy illness.

The news was announced by Senator Lowell Murray, who said a private funeral will be held in Ottawa Friday and a family burial in Halifax.

Government buildings in Nova Scotia have their flags at half-mast.

Known affectionately as the best prime minister Canada never had, Robert Lorne Stanfield led the Progressive Conservatives through three unsuccessful election bids but lost every time to Pierre Trudeau's Liberals.

Though Stanfield never led his party to victory, his legacy remains of a man of honesty, integrity, and deep intelligence.

Nova Scotia Premier John Hamm says Stanfield changed his province and Canada for the better. Hamm has often named Stanfield among his political heroes, saying he was never afraid to make difficult choices for a stronger Nova Scotia.

Peter MacKay, leader of the soon-to-be defunct Progressive Conservatives, called Stanfield an inspiration and motivation for people to join the party.

"The country would be different had Bob Stanfield become prime minister. I think we would never have racked up such a huge debt," MacKay said. "He was very much committed to federal-provincial relations and providing more opportunities for young Canadians."

"He set a very high standard for all leaders."

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney called Stanfield an accomplished politician who never made enemies. Mulroney says unlike some politicians, no one ever had a bad word to say about Stanfield.

Stanfield acknowledged that while he was successful in provincial politics, he had little chance against Trudeaumania. He once joked that he was so overshadowed by Trudeau that he could walk on water and the next day's headlines would say: Bob Stanfield Can't Swim.

"I think the reason I didn't become prime minister is partly because of Mr. Trudeau's presence," Stanfield once admitted to CTV News.

Stanfield was born into the Stanfield knitwear family and studied law at Dalhousie University. But he didn't find the practice of law "really all that interesting," he said. Politics, however, was a different story.

In 1949, he joined Nova Scotia's floundering Liberal-Conservative Party. By 1956, he rose to the position of premier at the head of the then-renamed Progressive Conservatives.

The man, dubbed "Underwear Man" after the family business, went on to become the first premier to win four back-to-back majority governments.

Eleven years later, he traded provincial politics for the national stage, taking over the leadership of the federal Progressive Conservatives from reluctant departing chief, John Diefenbaker.

But his success as premier never translated countrywide. His slow, methodical speaking style and his scholarly dark-rimmed glasses always stood in sharp contrast to the image of the spry, sharp-witted, and fun-loving Pierre Trudeau.

Stanfield tried to defeat Trudeau in 1968, 1972 and then again in 1974, without success. That third election defeat was too much for him, and he retired from politics.

Stanfield was married three times. He had four children from his first marriage to Joyce Frazee, who died in a 1954 car crash. His second wife, Mary Hall, died in 1977 after surviving cancer surgery. He married a third time, to Anne Henderson Austin of Toronto, in 1978.