Canada’s 15th Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Pierre Trudeau, was born on this date in 1919. He entered federal politics in 1965, and only three years later was Canada’s Liberal leader and Prime Minister. Trudeau held Canada’s top job from 1968 until 1979 and then again (after his defeat by Joe Clark in 1979) from 1980 to 1984. One of my great thrills as a young high school student took place in the fall of 1984. I wrote Mr. Trudeau at his law office in Montreal, shortly after he had left politics. He called me after receiving my letter and invited me to have coffee with him a few weeks later. The past Prime Minister gave me about 45 minutes of his time and this was a milestone moment for me in shaping what would become a life-long interest in Prime Ministers and Canadian political history. I remain in his debt today. Mr. Trudeau passed into history in 2000.
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.