While he is mostly forgotten by most Canadians (and Americans!) today, former U.S. President William Howard Taft – who also became Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court – was perhaps the American President who knew Canada best. For decades Taft, a Republican, spent long periods each year at his cottage in Murray Bay (now known as La Malbaie) Quebec. During his Presidency (1909-1913), a period when by tradition US Presidents were not allowed to leave the United States, Taft longed for his Canadian cottage.In the late 1920s, a writer for The New Yorker -- his or her name is lost to history, unfortunately -- wrote a piece for the magazine describing Taft’s life in Quebec. It is placed below.The New Yorker, September 14, 1927As he has done for twenty-five out of the last thirty-five years, Mr. William Howard Taft has been spending the summer at Murray Bay in Quebec. His sixty-ninth birthday on September 15 will find him looking some years less than that, a little less stout than he once was, but as jovial and as much a part of the Canadian colony as ever.Earlier in the summer he was ill, but now once again sees him on the golf course, which skirts the St. Lawrence River, and hears him laughing easily and heartily as a good shot, exclaiming “Piffle” or “Posh” at a bad one.His unpretentious cottage, on the same grounds as his brother’s, is between the railroad on the shore and the highway higher up the side of the hill. The porch overlooks the river, which is twelve miles wide at Pointe au Pic.The Chief Justice is almost an unofficial mayor of Murray Bay. His interest is deep in this small-scale Newport of Canada. One realizes it when seeing him stroll with Mrs. Taft down the main street and pass the two general merchandise stores. His stops to chat about this and that are numerous, but it is noteworthy that they are almost exclusively with the older generations.A great many of the younger generation do not recognize the only living ex-president of the United States. As a matter of fact, he has but to return to his cottage to be very much in the younger set. Almost always one or more of his three children are there and most of his ten grandchildren.His life is quite simple; in his establishment there are his secretary and a few well-trained servants.… Weekends are unknown; guests come for fortnights, each household carefully scheduling its summer. Canadians and Americans are numerically almost equal.There is an old-school air about the place. The general custom of picnics is preserved; so also the dogcart. On the porch of each house overlooking the golf course, hangs a telescope or an opera glass through which to seek the lord and master when luncheon is on the horizon.There are polite dances at the hotel which last only until midnight. The two trains a day and the river steamer’s stops are events. Conversation is easy, intimate, and usually about golf.caption id="attachment_716793" align="alignleft" width="281" William Howard Taft's summer home in Quebec/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.