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On This Day in Canada’s Political History: Birthdate of First Australian PM to Address Canada's Parliament

  • Arthur Milnes
  • January 8, 2021
January 8, 1885 is the birthdate of Australia’s Prime Minister John Curtin, a firm ally of Canada’s who is often counted among Australia’s greatest Prime Ministers.In 1944, Prime Minister Curtin became the first-ever Australian PM to address Canada's Parliament.  Upon arriving at Ottawa’s Union Station, he declared to the media on hand that his nation would “stand side by side” with Canada to “represent free people” fighting for a “victory” against “aggressors”.PM Curtin took his turn addressing our MPs and Senators on June 1, 1944.  Appearing in a joint session of Parliament, he spoke for more than 40 minutes, without notes, issuing “a plea for the average citizen, for the shopkeeper, for the mother of forty years of age” to rally behind the war effort.Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King – whose personal diary is, for political history junkies, the gift that keeps on giving– reflected on the visit in a diary entry.

“I noticed,” he wrote privately, “that while I had taken the trouble to write him a letter by hand this morning (and) to send him and Mrs. Curtin a signed photograph and an autographed book, that I had to ask before the train left whether they had been received.  It seemed to me the more I was with Curtin and the more I talked with him, the more he seemed to very self-centered.”

And then Mr. King continued: “Excepting this self-absorbed attitude and lack of any gracious manner, his thought was on a high plane.” In this same diary entry, Prime Minister King wrote: “When saying good-bye, I referred to him as ‘my friend.’  He used the same expression in reply to me.  He is a fine character and has done yeomen service for his country and the united nations at the time of their greatest peril.”There is no word if the signed picture of Mr. King, presented to the Prime Minister of Australia in Ottawa so long ago, is on display Down Under.  But we can say for sure that if he were still with us today, William Lyon Mackenzie King would expect nothing less.It was not until 2006 that another Aussie PM, John Howard, spoke before our Parliament.Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist.  He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy.  A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.