Only five-days in office as Prime Minister on this date in 1984, Brian Mulroney had his first private audience with Her Majesty the Queen while both were in New Brunswick. In the years that followed, the Queen and Mulroney would develop a warm relationship, particularly as the Commonwealth strove to combat South African apartheid.
Years later, in his Memoirs, Mulroney reproduced the entry in the private journal he made after his meeting with the Queen.
“My first private meeting with the Queen took place in her suite at the hotel in Moncton,” he wrote. “We were alone and she struck me as being composed, resolute and quite sympathetic …. Pursuant to a meeting with Premier (Richard) Hatfield, I told Her Majesty of the strong monarchial traditions in the PC Party, and my intention to ensure they were respected.”
The rookie PM then continued his account.
“We chatted amicably about John Turner’s decision to call an election in the first place,” he wrote in private. “He had apparently conveyed to Her Majesty, at Windsor Castle, that he had no mandate, that things could get worse, and he felt an early election call was advantageous to his case. At this point, Philip, entered, poured himself and the Queen a strong Beefeater martini, and offered me one. When I declined in favour of a soda, he laughed and said, ‘Thank God those charged with running the government stay away from the evil booze.’ I assured him it was rather a universal and widely advanced trait in Canadian politicians, and he chuckled, and joined in the conversation about John Turner, why he called the election, etc. I said that I had a high regard for John Turner, but that someone had persuaded him to accept horrible political advice since attaining the leadership.”
Then Mulroney’s diary entry concluded.
“Her Majesty offered a private, intimate meal in honour of the new prime minister and his wife. I think about twenty attended, all told,” the 18th Prime Minister wrote in his private journal, an entry he later placed in his best-selling 2007 Memoirs. “At dinner, the Queen told me of her affection for John F. Kennedy’s mother, Rose, because when she and Margaret were young, a relative died, and the two girls were banished to a small room when important guests called. Only Rose Kennedy came into the room and chatted with them. They were ignored by the other guests – and she remembered it, some forty years later! One shouldn’t really cross the Queen I concluded.”caption id="attachment_930359" align="alignleft" width="299"
Queen Elizabeth and Brian Mulroney/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.
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.