Members of the Reform Party made history on this date in 1991 by voting to expand their party into Central and Eastern Canada. Led by Preston Manning, the decision placed the national spotlight on the party like never before.While the Reformers only won a single Ontario seat in the ensuing 1993 election, they had respectable showings in many other ridings in the country’s largest province.Overall, voters sent 52 Reform MPs to Ottawa in the 1993 election, including a new MP named Stephen Harper.  Preston Manning also entered the House for the first time.  Four years later, he would become Leader of the Official Opposition after the 1997 election.  Reform was here to stay.caption id="attachment_59957" align="alignleft" width="545" Preston Manning/captionArthur 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.