Prime Ministers often find themselves criticized when making appointments to the Senate of Canada. Sometimes an appointment is said to be blindly partisan, and the person accepting only a party hack. On other occasions, a Senator-to-be is said to lack the skills and gravitas needed to represent their fellow Canadians in the Red Chamber.
Well, on this date in 1970 I don’t think Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau could be accused of any of that with the choices for new Senators he announced. The 15th Prime Minister appointed Ernest Manning, Alberta’s Social Credit Premier for 25 consecutive years, and constitutional expert (and longtime academic and socialist) Eugene Forsey to the Upper Chamber. Both served with distinction in the Senate until their mandatory retirement dates at age 75.
Ernest Manning
Eugene Forsey
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.