Two giants of early post-Confederation politics completed their final political battle on this date in 1900. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who had himself defeated Sir Charles Tupper and his Tories for the first time four-years before in 1896, was victorious a second time. He and his party earned a second majority mandate, winning 128 seats out of a total of 213, when the polls closed in the new Dominion’s election. Tupper and his Tories won 70 seats.
The campaign was Tupper’s last and he resigned his party’s leadership shortly after with another Nova Scotian, Robert Borden, taking up the Tory reins. As for Laurier, he would go on to earn two more majority mandates and serve 11 more years as Prime Minister.
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.