It was a very good day to be a Canadian Tory on this date in 1930. R.B. Bennett led his party to a convincing majority victory on July 28, 1930, defeating Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s Liberals. With the polls closed and millions of ballots counted, Bennett had won 131 seats compared to King’s 91. It was, however, a pyric victory as this meant the new Prime Minister would be coming to office just as the Great Depression started to be felt from coast-to-coast-to-coast. Bennett would be defeated after only one term and never return to the Prime Minister’s Office in East Block.
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.