Kingston, Ontario's Sir Henry Lumley Drayton was appointed Canada's new Minister of Finance on this date in 1919. He replaced Thomas White, who had held the post since 1911.
In assuming the finance portfolio, it fell to Drayton to guide Canada's immediate post-First World War economy. Appointed by Sir Robert Borden, Drayton would serve in the same post under Arthur Meighen, until the government's defeat in late 1921. Five-years later, in 1926, Drayton would become Acting Minister of Finance in Prime Minister Meighen's short-lived government.
Drayton was later appointed the chairman of Ontario's Liquor Control Board in 1928. He would pass into history at age 81 in 1950. 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.