Canada’s fifth Prime Minister, Sir Mackenzie Bowell, was born in England on this date in 1823. He and his family later moved to British North America, settling in what is now Belleville, Ontario. He was elected to the Commons in 1867 and remained in Parliament until his death in 1917. Bowell was PM from 1894 to 1896, succeeding Sir John Thompson who had died at age 49 in December 1894.
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.