One could easily write a book on the significance of October 30 in Canadian political history.  There is an extensive list of significant anniversaries to mark today!

• In 1995, the Quebec Referendum was held;
• in 1972, Pierre Trudeau's Liberals edged Robert Stanfield's Conservatives by two seats;
• in 1956, Bob Stanfield was elected Premier of Nova Scotia;
• in 1923, Canadian-born UK Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law passed away;
• in 1915, the great Father of Confederation and Prime Minister, Sir Charles Tupper, passed into history; and
• in 1893, Prime Minister Sir John Abbott died;

My favourite line about our third Prime Minister, Sir John Abbott, comes from the great Sir John A. Macdonald, who once remarked upon Abbott by observing that his cabinet colleague only smiled "from the teeth outward." How cool is that! Abbott, a legal scholar, taught Wilfrid Laurier, our greatest Prime Minister (along with Macdonald of course), while young Wilfrid was a law student at McGill.  I have always found it cool that Sir John Abbott's great-grandson is none other than famed Canadian actor Christopher Plummer, who has, sadly, now passed into history. While still on Right Honourable deaths, it is also important today to salute Andrew Bonar Law, who passed on this date in 1923.  As I have posted before, Bonar Law was New Brunswick-born and went on to become the PM of the UK.  What a journey, and it all began in the small NB community of Rexton. Continuing, it is also worth noting that the great Robert L. Stanfield -- whom I had the very high honour of interviewing once while I was a journalism student in the early 1990s (I found him one of the funniest persons from politics I have ever interviewed!) -- was first elected Premier of Nova Scotia on this date in 1956. And I'm not done yet as of course it was on this date in 1972 that Pierre Trudeau barely scraped by in the 1972 election, winning only two more seats than Bob Stanfield's Progressive Conservatives. Still, Mr. Trudeau held on and two years later won his second majority. Lastly, and I hate to recall it as it was so unsettling and scary, but it was on this day in 1995 -- exactly 25 years-ago -- where we all watched our nation almost fall apart. I speak, of course, about the 1995 Quebec Referendum. While the "yes" option failed, Canada barely won. I remember going to bed that night so upset and with hopes we could still somehow bring Quebec officially into the Constitution. I still have that hope.   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.