The great Sir John A. Macdonald of Kingston returned to power with a firm majority mandate after the polls closed on this date in 1878. His victory remains one of the greatest comebacks in Canadian political history. Only five-years before Macdonald and his party were (rightly) driven from office thanks to the Pacific Scandal. Now, however, Canadians gave the Grand Old Man of Canadian politics another chance. Once safely back in office, Macdonald would never again lose the reins of power. He was still Prime Minister, 13-years later, when he died in 1891.
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.