As noted yesterday on Art’s History, the great Sir Winston Churchill was in Ottawa on this date in 1941. During his stay he delivered his famous “Some chicken, some neck” speech to Canadian parliamentarians.
Among the Canadians outside Centre Block that historic day was just a boy. His name? John N. Turner and he would go on to become Canada’s 17th Prime Minister.
Decades later Turner described how he met Churchill that day. He did so in an interview with the official magazine of the International Churchill Society, Finest Hour. You will find the relevant parts of their interview with Mr. Turner below.
Finest Hour: Prime Minister, we are fascinated with your account of meeting Churchill in Ottawa on 30 December 1941. You could not have been very old.
John N. Turner: I was just a kid. My mother was a senior civil servant in Ottawa and I was twelve. She knew Prime Minister Mackenzie King, so we were well positioned just outside the House of Commons during one of his great speeches: “Some chicken! —Some neck!” I could hear every word because there were loudspeakers outside so we could listen. The speech is remembered for that line, but it also mobilized Canadian public opinion in the unity of the Commonwealth. I probably did not recognize its importance at the time, but I certainly did later in life.
I stood there with my sister as the great man came down the laneway. He mingled with the crowd and my mother introduced us to him. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Good of you to be here, good luck!” That meeting became indelible in my memory. I have met a lot of people in my lifetime, but I can say without hesitation, he was the greatest person I have ever met. He was already a hero in Canada, and to me at that moment even more so.
FH: When you had your encounter, he had just come from his photo session with another Canadian, Yousuf Karsh….
JNT: Oh yes! It was moments after those memorable photographs. Karsh was a friend of our family whom I saw frequently. He displayed his own kind of bravery when he yanked the cigar from Churchill’s mouth just before snapping the first picture. Can’t you picture that scene? The result was the signature photograph of Winston Churchill. Here we are nearly half a century after his death and the photo turns up every few weeks, just about everywhere.
FH: In the Fifties you studied in England. Did you get to see him in that period?
JNT: No, but my impression of him at that time, which I still hold, is that he was the greatest man of the 20th century. He rescued Britain and saved the free world. It was one man’s courage, one man’s voice. His leadership, and later his close relationship with Roosevelt, were crucial to turning near-defeat into victory.
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.