No difficulties in choosing today's political history anniversary to mark. It was of course on the evening of August 8, 1974 that U.S. President Richard Nixon delivered his resignation speech before his fellow Americans and the world. I have a distant memory (I was only eight-years-old) of my history-teacher father making us all watch this speech. President Nixon knew Canada well and knew Canadian Prime Ministers dating back to Louis St. Laurent, the latter whom he dealt with as Vice President under Dwight Eisenhower.  As President, Nixon faced our own Pierre Trudeau for five years. I have never agreed with the myth that Pierre Trudeau and Richard Nixon despised one another. It is true, of course, that they would not have chosen to be friends, but they were both professionals who worked well at guiding Canadian-America relations during their terms in office.  It is worth noting that Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau made a supportive telephone call to President Nixon at the height of Watergate.  You can listen in on the call at this link. Years later, out of office, Richard Nixon developed a warm relationship with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney while the latter led Canada. I wrote to Richard Nixon once, in the 1980s, and received back a signed and dedicated copy of his first book, Six Crises, that I still treasure today. I will never grow tired of reading about this complicated man who combined greatness with insecurities and illegal activities that caused his downfall. A video of Nixon's resignation speech, delivered 46-years-ago this evening, is here.   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.