Many Canadians exhibited more than their usual smugness when thugs encouraged by outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump attacked the Capitol Building in Washington on January 6, 2021.
What many here had forgotten in their smugness is the fact we had produced our own band of thugs who proved more successful than Trump’s. And on April 25, 1849, exactly 175 years-ago-today, a mob attacked the Parliament Buildings in Montreal and burnt them to the crowd. The Governor General’s carriage was attacked and so much more. You can read an article I wrote for the Ottawa Citizen about the Canadian incident in Montreal by clicking here.
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.