The appointed of Manitoba’s Ed Schreyer as Canada’s 22nd Governor General was announced by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau on this date in 1978. Schreyer was a former NDP Premier of Manitoba, having held his province’s top political job between 1969 and 1977. He would be Canada’s third youngest GG and the first to hail from Manitoba. Schreyer represented Her Majesty the Queen of Canada at Rideau Hall until 1984. A noted environmentalist and advocate of women’s rights during his Vice-Regal mandate, the former GG has just turned 89.
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.