The “Man from Halifax,” as Sir John Thompson of Nova Scotia came to be known, was sworn-in as Canada’s 4th Prime Minister on this date in 1892, replacing the retiring Sir John Abbott. Thompson was the first Roman Catholic to serve as PM.
A brilliant jurist and politician, much was expected of Thompson upon his taking reigns of the late Sir John A.’s now decaying party and government. Thompson, however, did not live long enough to turn the party’s fortunes around. In 1894, while at England's Windsor Castle, Thompson suffered a heart attack and died, aged 49. He is only the second Canadian prime minister to have died in office, after John A. Macdonald.[caption id="attachment_527333" align="alignleft" width="457"] Sir John Thompson[/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.