Ontario’s greatest Premier, Oliver Mowat, took office for the first time on this date in 1872. Mowat, who was later Knighted, was a Father of Confederation and brilliant jurist and legal scholar. He also demonstrated great longevity in Ontario’s top political job, holding it for a remarkable 24 years, a record that still stands. Mowat only left the Premiership in 1896 to join the new federal government led by Wilfrid Laurier as Minister of Justice. Later, Laurier appointed Mowat as Ontario’s Lt.-Governor. This grand old man of Ontario and Canadian politics would pass into history in 1903.
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.