One of Canada’s greatest humourists, Stephen Leacock, was born on this date in 1869.  While Leacock wrote Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town amongst many other works of fiction, on Art’s History today – no surprise – we celebrate Leacock as the giant of Canadian politics that he was. Over the decades, Leacock provided the intellectual groundings of Canadian Toryism. In 1935, Prime Minister R.B. Bennett asked Leacock to stand as a Conservative candidate.  The writer and professor declined. Earlier that year Leacock penned the introduction to transcripts of Bennett’s famous New Deal radio addresses in book form. Before the R.B. era, Leacock also traveled the country stumping for Robert Borden. Professor Leacock was also an expert in pre-Confederation political history and his work studying Baldwin, Lafontaine and other leaders during the quest by the future Canadians for responsible government have stood the test of time.   caption id="attachment_599256" align="alignleft" width="640" Professor Stephen Leacock/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.