A very sad day on the Canadian political history calendar as it was on September 5, 1920 that Lady Macdonald, our first Prime Minister’s wife, passed into history, an ocean away from the nation her husband did so much to found.Agnes Bernard, the sister of Sir John A.’s senior assistant, Hewitt Bernard, met her future husband while Macdonald and the other Fathers of Confederation were in London finalizing the British North America Act in 1866-67.  The pair quickly fell in love and were married only weeks later, also in London.It had been a decade since Sir John A.’s first wife had died and the arrival of Agnes provided the Father of Confederation with stability, companionship and love on the home front.“My beautiful new Diary Book!” she recording in the privacy of her diary on July 6, 1867. “I am ever so pleased with it and have been examining and admiring it for full two minutes! The lock too! My diaries as Miss Bernard did not need such precautions but then I was an insignificant young spinster & what I might write did not matter. Now I am a Great Premier’s wife & Lady Macdonald & ‘cabinet Secrets and Mysteries’ might drop or slip off unwittingly from the nib of my pen.”“This new dominion of ours came noisily into existence on the 1 & 2,” she continued. “The very newspapers look hot & tired with the weight of announcements and Cabinet lists. Here - in this house - the atmosphere is so awfully political that sometimes I think the very flies hold Parliament on the kitchen table cloths! In theory I regard my husband with much awe, in practice I tease the life out of him, by talking of dress & compliments when he comes home to rest! Today he rebelled - poor man, & ordered me out of the room.”Both Sir John A. and Lady Macdonald were filled with joy and happiness upon the birth of their daughter Mary. This changed to sadness when their little girl was diagnosed with a hydrocephalic condition and was not expected to live long. (Mary Macdonald, however, outlived both her parents, living until the age of 64, and, like her mother, dying in England).While stories of Sir John A.’s drinking are legion, few mention the key role Lady Macdonald played in giving the first PM and courage and example to end his binge drinking bouts, probably ensuring he had an extra decade of life.Upon Sir John A.’s death in 1891, Lady Macdonald and her daughter crossed the Atlantic to live out their days. Sadly, both are buried in mostly forgotten graves in separate towns in the United Kingdom.  I have long felt that our federal government should forever ensure the upkeep of the grave memorial as a way of demonstrating greater respect for the late wife and daughter of Canada’s Father of Confederation.[caption id="attachment_582788" align="alignleft" width="128"] Lady Macdonald[/caption][caption id="attachment_582789" align="alignleft" width="149"] Mary Macdonald[/caption]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.