Canada is infamous for the lack of respect and honour afforded our late Prime Ministers. And sadly, this historical neglect is a long-standing Canadian trait. On this date, however, in 1956, an Ottawa Citizen columnist called for the federal government to buck this unfortunate trend and highlight the life and public service of Canada’s only living past Prime Minister (at the time), Arthur Meighen.
“Regardless of politics,” wrote Austin F. Cross, “we should honour any man distinguished enough and great enough to have been our Prime Minister. True enough, I may not have voted for him, but surely, he belongs with Bennett, Borden and Laurier, among our finest statesmen. But I have never seen any sign of our government stirring their stumps over this man. Like the late Agnes Macphail, perhaps they prefer to wait for death, then put up a bust. No thing is truer than the fact that you can appreciate the flowers more when you are alive than you can on your coffin. Let's do something for Arthur Meighen while we still have him in our midst.”
Cross’s call, of course, was largely ignored by federal officials. Even today, decades after he passed into history in 1960, Meighen lacks a Parliament Hill statue.
Only in Canada.
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.