Canada’s greatest diplomat, Lester B. Pearson, was anything but diplomatic on a visit to Temple University in the United States on this date in 1965. Pearson, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, was at the university to deliver a major address. With the Vietnam War raging, Canada’s Prime Minister suggested strongly to his U.S. audience that America consider a bombing pause over the skies of the war-torn Asian country. President Lyndon Johnson was, shall we say diplomatically, far from pleased.  He invited Pearson to lunch at Camp David for an explosive meeting. “You pissed on my rug,” he reportedly shouted at the Prime Minister. Then the Texan grabbed the PM by the lapels in anger and lifted him.  It was a terrible moment, perhaps the worst to have ever taken place in the long history of Canadian-American relations. You can read Prime Minister Pearson’s speech at Temple University here. caption id="attachment_530486" align="alignleft" width="280" Lester B. Pearson/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.