OTTAWA–Jack Layton, the New Democratic Party leader who led his party to Official Opposition status in this year’s federal election, has died after a battle with cancer. He was 61. “Your support and well wishes are so appreciated. Thank you,” Layton, posted to the social media site Twitter in July after announcing he was battling a new form of cancer. “I will fight this and beat it.” It ended up being the last public announcement he would make in his long political career, which saw him evolve from campus activist to rabble-rousing left-wing municipal councilor to the most electorally successful leader of the federal New Democrats in history. Layton had been on a leave of absence as party leader since July 25, when he temporarily stepped aside to fight a second — and evidently much more serious — bout of cancer. It is cliché to say that a politician has politics in his blood, and yet there are few politicians who embody it the way Layton did, with his family involvement in the life reaching all the way back to the birth of the country. There was his great-grand-uncle, William Henry Steeves, a bona fide father of Confederation from New Brunswick who also served as a founding member of the senate Layton has long wanted to abolish.