Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory will announce tonight that he plans on challenging Education Minister Kathleen Wynne in Don Valley West in next year's provincial election.Tory, 52, who represents Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey, will mark the start of the one-year countdown to the Oct. 4, 2007, vote with a brazen salvo against a newly minted cabinet minister.

Conservative insiders told the Toronto Star that the party leader looked closely at several city seats before selecting Don Valley West, a riding where he was born and where he lived for 48 years."

John said he would run in Toronto in the next provincial election and he's keeping that promise," a party insider said yesterday.

While Health Minister George Smitherman has been goading Tory to run against him in Toronto Centre-Rosedale, where the Conservative leader now resides, party officials feel the north Toronto seat is a safer bet.

Tory will make his intentions official tonight in a speech to supporters at the CNIB Centre on Bayview Ave.

Don Valley West is home to one of the Tories' strongest riding associations of any unheld seat.The Conservatives had also considered fielding their leader in Willowdale, held by Liberal David Zimmer, or in Transportation Minister Donna Cansfield's Etobicoke Centre seat.Tory has represented his Orangeville-area riding since March 2005, where he succeeded former premier Ernie Eves in one of the safest Conservative seats in Ontario.Because the Conservatives hold no Toronto ridings, Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey was his only available avenue to the Legislature.Wynne, who wrested the seat from former Tory cabinet minister David Turnbull in the 2003 vote, was elevated to cabinet two weeks ago, in part to insulate her against a challenge from Tory."I have always said I welcome John Tory to come into Don Valley West," she told reporters after being sworn in as education minister on Sept. 18.At the time, Tory said her promotion would not enter into his decision. "I will choose my riding in the next little while. I'm going to choose it without regard as to whether it's represented by a minister," he said. While it is a gamble to go after a Liberal seat, Tory ran in the 2004 Conservative leadership contest with promises of breaking through in Toronto. Recent history has not been kind to sitting education ministers facing off against strong challengers.In the 1999 election, then Progressive Conservative education minister Dave Johnson lost to Liberal David Caplan in neighbouring Don Valley East, thanks largely to teachers' unions campaigning against him.