As is tradition on Art’s History, we always pause to mark the maiden addresses delivered in Parliament by our 23 Prime Ministers. And today it is the turn of John Diefenbaker. He stood in the House of Commons for the first time on this date in 1940. Dief would go on to serve an incredible 39 straight years as a Member of Parliament. He was a master of debate in the Commons and still known today as one of the most effective Leaders of the Opposition ever to have held that job. Mr. Diefenbaker was an incredibly complicated man and -- at the risk of sounding like an arm-chair psychologist -- it might be fair to suggest the floor of the Commons was the only place our 13^th Prime Minister felt truly at home. A link to the Hansard report of Dief’s first House speech is here. caption id="attachment_566298" align="aligncenter" width="526" Rt. Hon John Diefenbaker in the House of Commons/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.