Two-and-a-half years after succeeding Sir Wilfrid Laurier as Liberal leader, Mackenzie again was now Prime Minister. He had beaten Arthur Meighen in the general election held earlier in the month and King and his team now took over the reins of power.
Shortly after King and his ministers were sworn-in, the rookie PM released a statement to the media. “In the formation of the Government I have aimed, above all else, at national unity,” King wrote. “This end I have felt would be served, and the federal spirit of our constitution most acceptably recognized, by according representation in the Cabinet, so far as might be possible, to all the Provinces of Canada ….. I made known that, regardless of existing differences, I was prepared to consider representation in the Cabinet of all who were prepared to advocate and support Liberal principles and policies; while it was felt by those with whom I conferred that existing conditions would not permit of representation of their followings on this understanding, I have reason to believe that the attitude assumed by myself in this particular was duly appreciated and met in like spirit."
The Mackenzie King era in Canadian politics had begun.
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.