While John Diefenbaker was often dismissed by professors, editors and bankers, ordinary Canadians (so-called) never lost faith in the grand old man of Canadian politics. Columnist and author Richard Gwyn confirmed the hold Dief had on Canadians in a column published in the Toronto Star on this date in 1976. He reported that Volume I of the 13th Prime Minister’s memoirs, One Canada, had already sold 90,000 hardcover copies and sales were on track to top 100,000. Gwyn went on to report that Dief hoped to sell 250,000 copies of all three volumes of One Canada, making him one of the most successful prime ministerial memoirists of his times.
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.