It is a great pleasure at Art’s History to wish all our readers a happy Alexander Mackenzie Day! Yes indeed, our second Prime Minister, largely forgotten today, has his own special day on the calendar in his adopted hometown of Sarnia, Ontario. The good folks there named their Civic Holiday after Sandy Mackenzie and have been celebrating the first-ever Grit PM since the late 1990s. In a country that does far too little to honour its own history and the past leaders that have shaped a great nation, Sarnia is bucking that sad trend.
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.