Prime Minister Arthur Meighen was in Stirling, Ontario on this date in 1920 where he addressed more than 6,000 people who had gathered at a local farm to hear Canada’s new leader. Meighen had only held Canada’s highest political office for a month and people came from all over the region to hear him.
In starting his address, Meighen praised his predecessor, Sir Robert Borden. “I think I speak the mind of every sincere and intelligent Canadian when I say that he gave this Dominion an example of great devotion, Meighen said. “I believe I agree with the vast majority, including many who honestly differed from some articles of his policy, when I say he gave us as well an example of great capacity. It is one of the penalties of fame that the best words cannot be spoken and the best estimates made while the subject is under review and still lives, but I am confident history will do early justice to our late prime minister and place his name close to the front among the servants of democracy in this tried and belaboured generation.”
Of further interest was his description of life in Russia now that the communists held power. “There is nothing there but a disordered, disheveled, swirling, suffering, seething chaos of humanity, with assassination on top and starvation underneath," he said.
During his summer speaking tour Meighen spoke to audiences throughout Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces. He also traveled to Western Canada to further introduce himself as Prime Minister to as many Canadians as possible during these early days of his premiership.
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.