Canada’s new Conservative Party had a new leader on this date in 2004 with the selection of Stephen J. Harper as their standard bearer. He received almost 70 per cent of the vote, easily defeating Tony Clement and Belinda Stronach. Two-years later Harper would be elected Prime Minister and the newly merged Conservative Party, a merger of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties, would remain in power for almost a decade.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.