Canada’s fourth post-Confederation Governor General took office on this date in 1878. His Excellency was only 33 and his full name was John George Edward Henry Douglas Sutherland Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll. Lorne’s wife was none other than Princess Louise, a daughter of Queen Victoria itself.
Both Lorne and his Princess were accomplished artists. In Canada, they were to play roles in the earliest years of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts and the National Gallery of Canada.
Historian P.B. Waite wrote that Lorne has not received a fair shake before history. “He loved Canada and was an excellent publicist for the new dominion just when it needed such promotion,” Waite argued. “His trip to the prairies and to British Columbia showed he had an excellent appreciation of the press, and his sketches and writings attracted public attention. He himself was caught and held by the beauty of the country …. Lorne has been underrated as a governor general: few have wrought better than he.”
You can read more about this past Governor General at his entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography at this link.[caption id="attachment_1576696" align="alignleft" width="160"]
Governor General Lorne[/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.