Veteran Liberal MP and cabinet minister Bill Graham became interim leader of his party on this date in 2006. First elected in 1988, he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Defence under Prime Ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin. Graham would hold the position of interim leader and Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons after the resignation of Paul Martin as Liberal leader after his defeat at the hands of Stephen J. Harper and his Conservatives two months previously. Popular on all sides of the House, Graham held his job until December 2006 and the election of Stephane Dion as the party’s permanent leader. Graham passed into history in 2022 at age 83.
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.