Veteran MPP and Mike Harris cabinet minister Ernie Eves was elected his province’s Tory party on this date in 2002. He would succeed Mike Harris who had stepped down after receiving back-to-back majority mandates from voters in Canada’s largest province. Under Harris, Eves had served as both Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance. Eves officially became Premier several weeks later, on April 15, 2002. However, his time in the corner office on the second floor at Queen’s Park would prove to be short. He led his party into the 2003 election but was defeated by Dalton McGuinty's Liberals in October of that year. On the personal side, it is also an important anniversary as on this date in 2014 Canada’s then-sitting Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, dropped by my house and performed a ceremonial tree planting.  His tree is doing fine and Alison and I still await a visit by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to our famous garden for his planting. When that occurs , Mr. Trudeau will become the eighth Prime Minister to do the planting honours for us. Over to you Prime Minister Trudeau! caption id="attachment_609951" align="alignleft" width="525" Ernie Eves' Queens Park portrait/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.