It is an important anniversary today involving one of Manitoba’s most significant 20th century politicians.On this date in 1943 Stuart Garson was sworn-in as his province’s 12th Premier. In doing so Garson, who had first been elected to the Manitoba Legislature in the 1920s, replaced John Bracken who had been elected national leader of Canada’s conservatives. Premier Garson was to remain in office for five years with one of his legacies being his policy of electrification for rural areas of Manitoba.He answered Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent’s call in 1948, becoming Canada’s Attorney General. Garson remained in this post for nine years when he, and the St. Laurent government were defeated in June 1957 by John Diefenbaker’s Tories.The former Premier passed into history in 1977.[caption id="attachment_601065" align="alignleft" width="249"] Former Manitoba Premier Stuart Garson[/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.