A pair of sad anniversaries to mark today.  It was on this date in 1984, that James Sinclair, father of Margaret Trudeau, and thus Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s grandfather, passed into history.  Mr. Sinclair, who was one of the stars in Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent’s cabinet, was a veteran of the Second World War.  First elected in 1940, Mr. Sinclair went on to serve 18 years in the House of Commons and was best known for his service as Minister of Fisheries.  In political retirement he returned to British Columbia and became a leading Canadian businessman.  Mr. Sinclair was 75 at the time of his death. In my own career, I once had the honour of assisting legendary Parliamentarian Allan J. MacEachen with his unpublished memoirs.  He told me many times about his respect and admiration for Mr. Sinclair and the latter’s skill on the floor of the House. It was also on this date, this time in 1951, that John Diefenbaker’s first wife, Edna, died after a battle with leukemia.  She was only 51.  Edna married Dief in 1929 and quickly became key to her husband’s rise in politics.  More outgoing than her husband, she was popular with MPs of all parties on Parliament Hill before being struck down by her disease.  Sadly, Mr. Diefenbaker hardly ever spoke of Edna again, barely mentioning her in, for example, his memoirs, One Canada.   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.