After about 24 years on it, former Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Ernie Eves has stepped down off the province's elected political stage.

Eves, whose image trademarks were his slicked-back hair and expensive suits, announced from his Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey constituency office Monday night that he would be resigning as an MPP.

He told a crowd of about 50 people that he made the decision with "a great deal of sadness."

The move would open up a safe Tory seat that would allow John Tory -- who succeeded Eves as party leader and who attended the announcement -- to run in a by-election.

Tory -- a business executive and backroom strategist who took the party's reins last fall, defeating former finance minister Jim Flaherty -- had insisted he would have a seat by the spring sitting of the Ontario legislature. It begins Feb. 15.

Ontario politics watchers had expected Eves to step down before Christmas. That didn't happen.

"I can recall people becoming leaders of a party and not having a seat for a year or two years before they even thought about it," Eves told The Canadian Press in a Sept. 17 interview.

Eves, 58, had come out of political retirement to replace two-term premier Mike Harris in 2002. To do so, he left a high-powered banking job on Bay Street.

Eves was to provide a kinder, gentler alternative to the hard-right style of Harris.

But he was unable to lead the Tories to a third term. They were defeated by the Ontario Liberals, led by Dalton McGuinty, in the Oct. 2, 2003 provincial election. Early in 2004, Eves announced he would step down as Tory leader.

After attacking McGuinty for broken election promises one last time, Eves said: "By the way, I think I could kick the hell out of McGuinty in the next provincial election," a line which got him some applause from the faithful.

CFTO's Desmond Brown reported Monday that although Eves said he doesn't have another job lined up yet, "he said he'd like to keep serving the public in one way or another."

Eves' provincial political career began in 1981 when he won election in the constituency of Parry Sound by six votes, earning the nickname "Landslide Ernie."

He held the seat in every subsequent election.

When Harris took power in 1995 with his neo-conservative Common Sense Revolution, Eves was named finance minister and deputy premier.

A major achievement was announcing a balanced budget for Ontario in 2000, the first in almost 30 years.

Ontarioans also received a tax rebate of $200 that year.

He officially became premier-elect on April 15, 2002 and won a by-election in May in the Dufferin-Wellington-Peel-Grey constituency centred around Orangeville, northwest of Toronto. Tory MPP David Tilson had stepped aside so Eves could get into the legislature.

Eves arrived in the job with the Tory government's popularity in decline. His government was seen as bungling a number of important files and attracted scorn for presenting its 2003 budget at Magna International's headquarters instead of the legislature.

One of his finer hours as premier occurred in the days after the Aug. 14, 2003 blackout in Ontario, when he was given rave reviews for steady leadership.

While he cast himself as a regular guy born to working-class parents who was more "Main Street than Bay Street," Eves wound up with the elegant Isabel Bassett, a former cabinet colleague, as his life partner (they are not married).

Eves' first marriage broke down not long after his son was killed in a traffic accident in Parry Sound.

With files from CFTO's Desmond Brown and The Canadian Press