Canada’s 18th Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, announced that he was stepping down on this date in 1993. He had served almost nine-years in Canada’s most demanding political job. “I did not always succeed,” he told a press conference on Parliament Hill, “but I always tried to do what would be right for Canada in the long term – not what could be politically popular in the short term… Now history will make a final decision on what we did and what we are leaving our successors.”
“In a special way my gratitude goes to all the people of Canada who have honoured me with the greatest privilege a citizen of this country can ever know,” he said. “At all times, my effort was devoted to our common dream of a better, more united, and more prosperous Canada, for them and for their children.”
Mulroney remained in office until June and then turned over the reins of power to Kim Campbell after her election as Progressive Conservative party leader that June.
You can watch video of PM Mulroney’s resignation announcement at this link: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/1.3594168
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.