Delegates to the famed 1968 Liberal leadership convention were gathering in Ottawa on this date to choose a successor to the retiring Lester B. Pearson. The frontrunner, of course, was Minister of Justice Pierre Trudeau, who had only been a member of the party for three years. With this fact in mind, perhaps, he took time to describe what his new party was.
“For me,” he said, “the Liberal Party is the party of the future because its roots are planted in every section of the country; because it unites academic theorists and the practicing politicians; and, because it attracts the young and old, the rich and the poor, the businessman, the school teacher, and the factory worker.”
The following day Trudeau would be elected leader and become Prime Minister-designate.
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.