Canada’s 13th Governor General since Confederation, Lord Willingdon, became the first GG to make an official visit to Washington on this date in 1927. When his planned trip south was announced five-weeks earlier, the New York Times previewed the visit. The paper also gave its readers a primer on the role of Governor General.
“There are those in the United States by whom the functions of the Governor General of Canada are not perfectly understood,” the paper reported. “He is not sent to this country by an arbitrary and dictatorial British Government to "govern” a colonial and subject race. Far from it. He is named by the King after the approval and consent of his Majesty's Canadian Government have been obtained. He is the personal representative of the King in the Dominion, and in his vice-regal capacity he ranks above even the Prince of Wales when the latter pays his periodic visits to Canada.”
“His functions are precisely those of the King himself in Great Britain, although necessarily he lacks something of the personal authority and privilege which are associated in the British Empire with the institution of royalty. Always he is a cultured gentleman of wide experience and shrewd observation, able and willing to put his disinterested advice at the disposal of the Government of the day.”
One of the highlights of Willingdon’s stay in the American capital was the state dinner hosted by President Calvin Coolidge in the GG’s honour at the White House.
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.