An important journalist and political speechwriter was born on this date in 1931. Frank Howard, who would write for the Montreal Gazette, Montreal Star, Globe and Mail and the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, made his mark in the 1960s covering his home province’s Quiet Revolution.
Raised in Francophone Quebec, Howard and his columns helped bridge the gap between Quebec and English Canada during that crucial decade. He later worked at the highest levels of the federal government, speechwriting for cabinet minister Eric Keirans and performing similar duties in the Department of External Affairs. After his government service, Howard covered the federal bureaucracy for two decades through a column in the Ottawa Citizen. He passed into history in 2008.
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.