Future Prime Minister Kim Campbell made her parliamentary debut on this date in 1989. She had been elected in Vancouver Centre in the general election held in the previous fall. Campbell, who would make history by becoming our nation’s first female Prime Minister almost exactly five-years to the day later, was participating in a debate about Canada’s response to the now infamous oil spill by the Exxon Valdez in the Gulf of Alaska weeks before.
You can read her remarks at this link.
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.