It was on this date in 1953 that future Prime Minister John Diefenbaker married the woman who would accompany him to 24 Sussex and beyond. Like her husband, Olive hailed from Saskatchewan and she worked as a school teacher and later as an official with Ontario’s Department of Education. She first met John Diefenbaker in their home province shortly after the end of the First World War. However, they would not meet again until the 1950s when both were widowers.Olive was at Dief’s side throughout the turbulent 1960s as he became the Prime Minister, was later defeated, and then pushed out as Tory leader. She was, perhaps, the only person Diefenbaker fully trusted. After her death in 1976, John Diefenbaker was never the same.[caption id="attachment_597037" align="alignleft" width="183"] Olive Diefenbaker[/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.