The infamous drug Thalidomide was ordered off the market in Canada on this date in 1962. Sadly, this decision came three months after other western nations had pulled the drug. It should also be noted that our American neighbours never approved the drug. The innocent victims, whose mother’s had taken Thalidomide during pregnancy in Canada, received little support from Ottawa in the decades that followed. You can read the Report of the Thalidomide Task Force of the War Amputations of Canada that chronicled the crisis and aftermath that was published in 1989 at this link: https://thalidomide.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/synopsis-war-amps-report.pdf
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.