Canada’s Prime Minister learned of the death of his U.S. counterpart the night before through the media. President Warren Harding had passed into history on August 2, 1924 while in San Francisco.
“This morning I was startled on receiving the morning’s paper to read of the death of President Harding,” King wrote in his diary the day after Harding’s death. “I felt how I should always be on duty and at work. I went to my library after breakfast and wrote out a telegram to Mrs. Harding and a short appreciation of the President. It took quite a long time. Arranged to have flags put at half-mast on all public buildings and official dispatch to be sent U.S. Government. The recent visit of the President to Vancouver had brought us as countries very close together.”
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.