Arthur Milnes, an accomplished public historian, is an award-winning journalist, now residing in Kingston, Ontario, where he serves as the in-house historian at the Frontenac Club Hotel. He has edited or co-edited 13 books that highlight the lives and legacies of Canada’s Prime Ministers and U.S. Presidents, the latter in the Canadian context. These include his ‘Canada Always: The Defining Speeches of Sir Wilfrid Laurier’ (2016) and ‘Canada Transformed: The Speeches of Sir John A. Macdonald’, and ‘A Bicentennial Celebration’ (2014), a Globe and Mail bestseller, which he co-edited. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs. Milnes 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.
In this series — launched December 8, 2020 — Art Milnes explores milestone moments in Canada’s political history, occasionally drawing upon his own interactions with some of the notables figures as he offers insightful glimpses and anecdotes that remind us that Canada, too, has a rich and colourful political history.
Sep 25 2023 — Arthur Milnes — National Newswatch — Canada’s future Prime Minister, Robert L. Borden, was married on this date in 1889. His bride was his fellow Nova Scotian, Laura Bond. Prime Minster Borden’s biographer, Robert Craig Brown, gives this description of the woman who would become Lady Borden. “She was seven years younger than Robert, a bright, attractive, strong-willed young woman,” he […]
Sep 24 2023 — Arthur Milnes — National Newswatch — Canada’s 23rd Prime Minister paid tribute to the 17th Prime Minister on this date in 2020 in the House of Commons. John Napier Turner, a cabinet minister under Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau, who served as PM in 1984, had passed into history only a few days before. You can read Justin Trudeau’s tribute below. Arthur Milnes is […]
Sep 23 2023 — Arthur Milnes — National Newswatch — It was a tough-talking Sir Wilfrid Laurier who spoke to a gathering of the Methodist General Conference being held in Ottawa on this date in 1914. The First World War had started a month previously with the German invasion of Belgium. Germany’s attach was in violation of the Treaty of London, which guaranteed the neutrality […]
Sep 22 2023 — Arthur Milnes — National Newswatch — A distinguished visitor arrived in Ottawa on this date in 2011 in the person of David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The highlight of his trip to Ottawa was the speech he delivered to a joint-session of Canada’s Parliament. “The relationship between Britain and Canada is deep and strong,” Cameron said. “At the Chateau […]
Sep 21 2023 — Arthur Milnes — National Newswatch — Canada’s New Democrats lost one of their party’s pioneering figures on this date in 1983 with the death of Andrew Brewin. A long-time CCF activist and lawyer, he was an NDP MP from 1962 to 1979. He is perhaps remembered most for his work as a lawyer assisting Japanese Canadians who had been interned by […]
Sep 20 2023 — Arthur Milnes — National Newswatch — History was made on this date in 1968 when Lincoln Alexander took to his feet in the House of Commons. It marked the first-time the voice of a Black Canadian had ever been heard in the House. Alexander, a lawyer and World War II veteran, had been elected a Tory MP from a Hamilton, Ontario […]
Sep 19 2023 — Arthur Milnes — National Newswatch — The eyes of the Commonwealth and the entire world were on London one-year-ago today as the funeral for Her Majesty the Queen took place. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau graciously invited his colleague past Prime Ministers to represent Canada with him at the historic gathering in London. Former PMs Campbell, Chrétien, Harper and Martin were able […]
Sep 18 2023 — Arthur Milnes — National Newswatch — The remarkable life and career of Paul Martin Sr. entered a new phase on this date in 1968 when he rose for the first time in the Senate of Canada and delivered his maiden address. First elected to the Commons in 1935, he had been a cabinet minister under Mackenzie King, Louis St.-Laurent and Lester […]
Sep 17 2023 — Arthur Milnes — National Newswatch — Federal Tory leader Robert Borden started on a journey through Western Canada on this date in 1906. His mission was to rally the Tory troops and prepare them to do electoral battle against the Laurier Liberals in time for the next election. While in Red Deer, Alberta, he was entertained at home of a Conservative […]
Sep 16 2023 — Arthur Milnes — National Newswatch — Sir Wilfrid Laurier was on hand to welcome the Duke and Duchess of York (the future King George V and Queen Mary) to Canada on this date in 1901. The Royals arrived at Quebec City and were greeted by thousands. Over the next month they would crisscross Canada twice by train, meeting countless Canadians from […]
Sep 15 2023 — Arthur Milnes — National Newswatch — Like many men who came of age in the Victorian age, our 10th PM, Mackenzie King was, shall we say, a little hung up about sex. My friend, historian Allan Levine, whose one-volume biography of King, William Lyon Mackenzie King: A Life Guided by the Hand of Destiny, is now the standard work on our longest-serving PM, shares […]
Sep 14 2023 — Arthur Milnes — National Newswatch — Members of the Red Chamber had a new Speaker on this date in 1891 with Prime Minister Sir John Abbott’s appointment of John Jones Ross as their Speaker. A veteran politician, Ross had served in the pre-Confederation Legislative Assembly of the United Province of Canada, in Quebec’s Legislative Assembly and Executive Council, and as a […]
Sep 13 2023 — Arthur Milnes — National Newswatch — For the first time in Canada’s history an Indigenous voice was heard in the House of Commons on this date in 1968. Len Marchand had been elected as a Liberal MP for a British Columbia riding in the famed Trudeaumania election held earlier that year. He would make history again in 1976 when he was […]
Sep 12 2023 — Arthur Milnes — National Newswatch — The Second World War was only two-days-old (for Canada) when 19-year-old Pierre Trudeau, in a letter to his then American girlfriend, described the impacts on daily life in Montreal visible in the aftermath of Canada’s entering the war against Germany and Italy. “Soldiers guard the Jacques Cartier Bridge; airplanes often survey the city,” he wrote. […]
Sep 11 2023 — Arthur Milnes — National Newswatch — Former Prime Minister Joe Clark chalked up another marker in his remarkable political journey on this date in 2000. He would be returning to the House of Commons as a MP after a seven-year absence. And if that wasn’t enough, he was coming back as leader of the same party, the Progressive Conservatives, that he […]