On, this day in 1843, right here in Kingston, Governor General Sir Charles Bagot died.  He had been sick for many months but couldn't be moved, so the GG's final breaths came in the Limestone City, which of course was, at the time, the capital of the new Province of Canada.  (See my May 10 post for the dastardly story behind Kingston losing its status as the capital.) As it turns out, Governors General have had a difficult spell in Kingston. For example, in one of my favourite political deaths from Canadian history, Bagot's predecessor, the flamboyant Lord Sydenham, fell off his horse in Kingston and then died of -- wait for it -- lock jaw. Not a bad death.  I've always said that Lord Sydenham died out of the saddle!  Then, despite the fact that he had sworn he would never set foot again in Kingston's St. George's Cathedral -- after the Minister directed an anti-alcohol speech at the rookie GG on his first Sunday in Kingston when the capital was new -- Sydenham ended up being buried in the same church!  And he's still there!  So, thinking of our dead Kingston GG's today. caption id="attachment_558394" align="aligncenter" width="400" Charles Poulett Thomson, Baron Sydenham, GG of the Province of Canada 1839-41/caption caption id="attachment_558395" align="aligncenter" width="400" Sir Charles Bagot, Governor General of British North America, 1841-43/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.