Future Prime Minister John Thompson, who had recently been sent to Ottawa by Nova Scotia voters in a by-election, took to his feet in the House for the first time on this date in 1886. Thompson was immediately named to cabinet, appointed by Sir John A. Macdonald as his Minister of Justice. The rookie minister’s job on March 22, 1886 was defending the government in the aftermath of the controversial execution of Louis Riel the previous fall.
At the time, Thompson’s speech was widely celebrated. One of the era’s greatest journalists, John Willison, for example, described the Nova Scotian’s impact on the House after that first address. His description is worth of quoting at length.
“The House of Commons distrusts eloquence. It is seldom that a great platform orator catches its atmosphere,” Willison wrote. “A long training in provincial politics constitutes a positive disqualification for the Federal Parliament. But from the first Sir John Thompson had the manner of Parliament. From the first he commanded its interest and confidence. He was simple, lucid, persuasive and convincing. He seemed to be interested only in the logical structure of his argument. He was not so anxious to achieve a personal triumph as that he should be understood and that the cause for which he pleaded should suffer nothing by imperfect statement or intemperate advocacy. In short, he gave an impression of simplicity, sincerity and integrity, and in Parliament these are the qualities that prevail.”
You can read Sir John Thompson’s maiden address in full at this link: https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC0504_01/276
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.