Canada, like all Her Majesty’s realms, was plunged into a period of official mourning upon the Queen’s death. In Ottawa, Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier delivered a famous eulogy to the fallen Queen. One of those watching Laurier’s speech from the public gallery was a young civil servant named Mackenzie King. He wrote about Laurier’s tribute to the fallen Queen in his diary.

“It was a beautiful oration,” King wrote. “The language chosen with care to a word, the thought pure and deep, the theme sustained throughout, eulogy with profusion, deserved praise without fulsome flattery. He spoke without a note and really without hesitation. He did not speak very loudly however, and to a degree seemed to have exhausted a little of his spontaneous force beforehand.”

“I watched him before he began to speak and while calm in manner, as he always is, he was nevertheless, like a warhorse pawing the turf for a start,” King continued, “he was putting things in order and taking a mouth full of water. I was greatly charmed with his reference to the rebellion which I fully expected was coming. As I hung over the barrier from the upper gallery and listened to him, I felt the keenest ambition to be beside him on the floor of the House. As I see the calibre of other men there, I have no fears as to my abilities if opportunity presented to serve this country well in Parliament. For Grandfather’s sake I should like to lead, for his sake and the sake of the principles he stood for.” 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.