Few Canadians today seem to be aware that Canada’s Father of Confederation, Sir John A. Macdonald of Kingston, successfully fought for Indigenous voting rights in 1885. The move was so progressive for the era that a later government ended the practise 14 years later. But, on this date in 1960 Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and his government finally restored the franchise to Indigenous peoples Macdonald of Kingston had first instituted generations before.
You can read more about John Diefenbaker’s decision to restore Indigenous voting rights at this link to an on-line display at the Diefenbaker-Canada Centre: https://diefenbaker.usask.ca/exhibits/online-exhibits-content/the-enfranchisement-of-aboriginal-peoples-in-canada-en.php
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.