Prime Minister R. B. Bennett began an important visit to the American capital on this date in 1933. He was there to discuss joint economic matters with the newly sworn-in U.S. President, Franklin D. Roosevelt. A historian later described how the two leaders appreciated one another.
“Roosevelt and Bennett were quite different in temperament but they got along well, as the president’s natural ebullience was joined by the grace and charm that Bennett could muster when necessary,” wrote Bennett biographer, John Boyko, in his ground breaking biography of our 11th PM, Bennett: The Rebel Who Challenged and Changed a Nation. “Although the relationship was not nearly as warm as the one FDR would later establish with Mackenzie King, the two concluded business efficiently and agreed that increased trade was in both their best interests. A joint communique announced, ‘We have agreed to begin a search for a means to increase the exchange of commodities between our two nations.’”
During his Premiership, Bennett, one of the most unfairly maligned Prime Ministers ever, also dealt with President Herbert Hoover. Bennett, through his talks with the Americans, also in many ways helped lay the groundwork for the eventual building of the St. Lawrence Seaway.
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.