It was a difficult night on the national election campaign trail for Prime Minister Lester Pearson on this date in 1965. He spoke to a crowd of 3,000 at a Liberal rally in Montreal but had to cut his speech short after being repeatedly interrupted by separatist hecklers. “The chanting and heckling kept the Prime Minister’s speech to 15 minutes,” the press reported. “At one point about 20 young people were turned out by ushers and party workers and for a brief period a major interruption threatened.”
Things, however, could have been a lot worse. After the event an unexploded bomb, hidden about 65 metres from the stage, was discovered. Police had received a telephone warning about the explosive device and soon located it.
Luckily, no one was hurt. The Pearson campaign continued, uninterrupted despite the incident.
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.