It was a busy day in Ottawa on this date in 1912 with Parliament resuming after a recess. No one, it seems, was busier than Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden. “Parliament opened today,” he wrote in his diary. “Weather most beautiful like a day in May. Very brilliant scene. (Sir James) Lougheed and I in uniform met H.R.H. (Prince Arthur, the Duke of Connaught), the Duchess and the Princess. Saw afterwards several of our men. They seem in very good form. State Dinner at Government House this evening. Sat next to Lieut. Governor (Sir François) Langelier. Wood’s A.D.C. got drunk and had to be taken home by an orderly. Debate on Address fixed for Monday.”
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.
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