Prime Ministerial birthday alert! It was on this date in 1947 that Kim Campbell, destined to make history by becoming Canada’s first (and so far, only) female Prime Minister, was born in Port Alberni, British Columbia. After a varied career in academia and provincial and local politics, Ms. Campbell was elected MP for Vancouver Centre in the 1988 federal election. By 1993, she had served in two of the federal cabinet’s most important and prestigious portfolios, Defence and Justice. Not long after Prime Minister Brian Mulroney announced his resignation plans, Campbell entered the leadership race to succeed the 18^th Prime Minister. In June of 1993 she made history, becoming leader of the Conservative Party and then Prime Minister.  It was a remarkable moment in Canadian history, one that will be recalled by Canadians for generations to come.  While she and her party were defeated in October that year, Campbell went on to serve with distinction when the Chretien Government appointed her as Canada's Consul General in Los Angeles and later in a variety of other international posts that brought great credit to her – and to Canada – along the way. I owe Madam Campbell a great deal as she has always been a great supporter of my non-partisan work in the field of Canadian political history.  Along with then sitting Prime Minister, Stephen J. Harper and former PM John Napier Turner, she traveled to Kingston to help my community and Canada mark the bicentennial of Sir John A. Macdonald’s birth in 2015.  And, of course, she planted a ceremonial tree at our home on that historic and wonderful day. My wife, Alison, and myself, consider it a high honour that she spent a few hours with us at our home on January 11, 2015. And aside from the politics and history, we have never forgotten the bond she formed that day with our own four-legged “son,” Mr. Nixon – she is definitely a dog-loving person! So, it is a particularly personal pleasure to send birthday greetings, via “Art’s History,” to our friend, Canada’s first-ever female Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Kim Campbell. caption id="attachment_543712" align="aligncenter" width="293" Portrait of Kim Campbell/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. caption id="attachment_543713" align="aligncenter" width="440" Tree planting at Art Milnes' house/caption caption id="attachment_543714" align="aligncenter" width="440" Former Prime Minister Kim Campbell with Nixon/caption