December 31, 1910.  So it was, on a New Year’s Eve in Montreal 110 years ago, that future U.S. President Warren Harding and his hometown (Marion, Ohio) mistress, Carrie Phillips, “retired” to Montreal to make some scandal. After arriving in Montreal that season, and some lovemaking – as reported by a recent biographer of Harding, James David Robenalt – the memory of that Canadian escape was magical in the minds of them both.  One year later, as reported by Robenalt, Harding wrote to his lover about their memory. “You can guess where (his thoughts) are heading,” Harding wrote, “on the New Year’s beginning a year before, when the bells sang the chorus while our hearts sang the rapture without words and we greeted the New Year from the hallowed heights of heaven.  Fate time that marvelous coincidence (and) it was impossible for us to have planned, and I count it to be one of the best remembered moments of my existence.” Good ole Warren.  A better lover than a President.  But I’m glad he found love while visiting with his mistress in our fair Dominion.  And, the love letters Harding wrote to Carrie have only recently been opened to the public.  Here’s the link if you wish to enter the sometimes scandalous world of Warren Harding, who, it should be noted, became the first-ever U.S. President to visit Canada while in office. More on that visit in the coming months. Happy New Year, all! caption id="attachment_530906" align="alignnone" width="306" Warren Harding and Carrie Fulton Phillips/caption   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.