Canada had yet another transcontinental railway line go into service on this date in 1914 with the arrival of a train at Prince Ruper, BC. The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway had been approved by Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier in 1903. The railway linked Ontario to Prince Rupert, BC. Laurier himself had turned to the first historic sod for the railway’s construction at a special ceremony at Fort William, Ontario, in September of 1905.
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.