Some big anniversaries today.  My NDP friends will enjoy this reminder that it was on this day in 2003 their party elected the late, great Jack Layton as leader.  His was an impressive first-ballot victory, with Layton receiving almost 54 per cent of the vote.  He went on to lead the NDP to their best-ever election result in 2011 when the Party more than doubled its previous tally of MPs and formed the Official Opposition with 103 sitting members. Sadly, Mr. Layton passed on shortly after this success. Today is also a chance to recall the service to Canada of a politician rarely celebrated these days.  I speak, of course, about Stéphane Dion.  On this date in 1996 then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, responding to the Quebec Referendum results the previous fall (where we nearly lost the country), brought Mr. Dion and Pierre Pettigrew directly into his cabinet. Neither Dion nor Pettigrew had even been elected to the House yet. After the appointment, Mr. Dion put his heart into defending Canada in his home province at a very difficult time for federalism.  His public letters challenging Premier Lucien Bouchard and other separatists are ones that history itself will surely honour.  I have felt that Mr. Dion doesn’t often receive the proper credit for his work for the nation during this period.  He left the safety of academia and answered our Prime Minister and nation’s call.   Thank you, Mr. Dion. And, happy anniversary. 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.