Canada’s federal Liberals had a new leader on this date in 1984. John Napier Turner, who would go on to serve as Canada’s 17th Prime Minister, came out on top at the Ottawa leadership convention, defeating future PM Jean Chrétien. I’ll let Turner biographer Steve Paikin describe what came next as the new leader mounted the stage in triumph.
“There was an expectation in the hall that the beloved former leader (Pierre Trudeau) would take to the microphone, congratulate his successor, and then urge all Liberals to unite under the new leader to defeat the Tories,” Paikin writes in his 2022 book, John Turner: An Intimate Biography of Canada’s 17th Prime Minister. “Trudeau, iconoclastic to the end, did none of that. As he was invited to the podium, he took a single step forward and waved to the crowd, which roared its approval. But then, Trudeau did nothing, and the crowd noise dissipated …. The moment called for Trudeau to set aside whatever issues he had with Turner for a bigger cause. But when the moment arrived, Trudeau refused to meet it.”
It was John Turner’s big day and not the best one ever demonstrated by Pierre Trudeau.
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.
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.