All eyes were on Kingston on this date in 1938 as the great Franklin Roosevelt famously visited the Limestone City to deliver an address that remains one of the most significant ever made by a U.S chief executive on Canadian soil. As the war clouds began to gather over Europe, FDR used his visit to Kingston – where he received an Honorary Degree from Queen’s University – to send a message to potential hostile powers, particularly in Adolf Hitler’s Germany. In words that have gone down in the annals of Canadian history Roosevelt made a historic pledge that remains a pillar of Canadian-U.S. security policy to this very day. In doing so, he defied significant segments of his own population who preferred their country continue its isolationist approach to events overseas. “The Dominion of Canada is part of the sisterhood of the British Empire,” FDR told his Canadian audience. “I give to you assurance that the people of the United States will not stand idly by if domination of Canadian soil is threatened by any other Empire.” He also described his view of Canadian-American relations. “We as good neighbors are true friends because we maintain our own rights with frankness, because we refuse to accept the twists of secret diplomacy, because we settle our disputes by consultation and because we discuss our common problems in the spirit of the common good,” he said. “We seek to be scrupulously fair and helpful, not only in our relations with each other, but each of us at home in our relations with our own people.” After a luncheon in his honour on the Queen’s campus, FDR and Prime Minister Mackenzie King traveled to the nearby border between Ontario and New York State to officially dedicate the international bridge that still links both countries. It had been a momentous day.   Click here to listen to FDR’s address in Kingston on this historic day. Birthday alert: It is a great personal pleasure to send out birthday greetings to one of my personal heroes, former First Lady of the United States Rosalynn Carter, of Plains, Georgia.  The 2011 visit of her and President Jimmy Carter to our home in Kingston will forever remain one of the great honours of my career. caption id="attachment_579810" align="alignleft" width="623" President Roosevelt speaking at Queen’s University's Richardson Stadium, 1938/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.