It was on this day in 1948 that the St. Laurent Years began, with Mr. St. Laurent becoming our Prime Minister, replacing William Lyon Mackenzie King. I have long thought that Mr. St. Laurent was one of our truly great Prime Ministers. My favourite story about him involves him in a personal sense. One Sunday after he attended church services. One of his assistants attended the same church and after the service Prime Minister St. Laurent walked up to his assistant and greeted the man's son. "Hello young man," he said to the boy, "I work in the same office as your dad." He led Canada through the 1950s and is so often ignored today by historians because, I guess, he made governing look so easy. However, as we all know, serving as Prime Minister is anything but easy. In the area of foreign policy, Mr. St. Laurent did our nation proud, serving with distinction between 1948 and 1957 amongst world leaders that included names like Eisenhower, Churchill, Nehru, Truman and others, with the able assistance of his foreign affairs minister, Mr. Pearson. His was the first Canadian government to start to take an interest in Canada's relations with the nations and peoples of Asia and beyond. In closing, one also has to admire the skill of Mr. King. After 22 years in power, he passed the torch to St. Laurent, with their party staying in office almost another decade. The only other success like this in our history concerning a hand-off to the next PM leader occurred under Mr. Pearson. He successfully passed the torch to Mr. Trudeau Sr. and the Liberals continued in power another 16 years -- though this period was broken up briefly by Pierre Trudeau's defeat by Mr. Clark in 1979. So happy anniversary to Mr. St. Laurent who is surely marking it from his seat in the great House of Commons in the sky. caption id="attachment_537327" align="alignleft" width="383" Louis St. Laurent/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.