January 5, 1953. It was on this date 68 years ago that Ontario lost a political legend, the truly larger-than-life Premier that was Mitch Hepburn.
Mitch, as he liked to be called – more on that later – took power in Ontario at the height of the Great Depression. A northern Huey Long, one of his most famous and wildly popular acts was presiding over a public auction of all the limousines used by his Tory predecessors. And if that wasn’t enough populism, he also sold off the Lt. Governor of Ontario’s stately official residence in Toronto.
A Liberal, Mitch was also known, once he arrived in the Premier’s Office at the Ontario Legislature, for his famous battles with Mackenzie King.
Mitch ruled Ontario from 1934 until 1942 and his shadow – for good or ill – hovered over Queen’s Park long after he was gone.
The church minister who presided at his 1953 funeral famously described him this way:
Yup, that was Ontario’s Mitch Hepburn, a political legend if there ever was one.
caption id="attachment_531496" align="alignnone" width="550"“You met him, you shook hands with him, you were warmed by his famous smile, and you heard him say, 'I'm Mitch Hepburn'; and in a few minutes you were calling him Mitch, and you liked it, and you felt you had always known him.”
Mitch Hepburn (Source: Archives of Ontario Date. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)/caption
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Today we also mark the death, in 1933, of one of my favourite U.S. Presidents, Calvin Coolidge. For almost twenty-years now my wife and I camp every summer at Vermont’s Coolidge State Park at Plymouth Notch, the tiny village that gave rise to Cool Cal. This means, I note with great pride, that I have toured the Calvin Coolidge State Historic Ste there more than 20 times, and I even paid dues for a few years to keep up my membership in the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Association.
As you can imagine, Alison, my long-suffering wife, has put up with a lot when it comes to vacations with me over the past 24 years. I insist that all of our travels involve visiting historic sites related to U.S. Presidents or Canadian Prime Ministers. So my bride has been taken to Plains, Georgia, the home of my hero, Jimmy Carter, nine times; FDR’s Hyde Park was another stop and we’ve also taken in “exciting” trips to Warren Harding’s hometown of Marion, Ohio and there was that visit to the isolated northern Vermont birthplace of Chester Arthur that was a particular hit …
But I digress. Back to Coolidge.
caption id="attachment_531500" align="alignnone" width="550"
Calvin Coolidge/caption
A true son of Vermont, Calvin never used two words when only one would suffice. At a White House event, as the story goes, two women went up to the President and announced that they had made a bet, telling the great man that one of them said they could make him say at least three words.
“You lose,” Coolidge replied.
So I mark his death today because he was the U.S. President who first received the official credentials of a Canadian Ambassador to Washington. It was 1927 and Vincent Massey was our chosen representative to the Great Republic to the south.
It was a momentous occasion in Canadian history.
As for Coolidge, he had only one question that historic day for Ambassador Massey of Canada upon receiving and accepting the latter’s credentials.
Wait for it!
“Is Toronto near a lake,” he inquired.
And the rest is history.
That’s my Cal! See you next summer Mr. President …
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.
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.