Justin Trudeau was elected leader of Canada’s federal Liberals on this date in 2013, earning more than 80 percent of the votes cast. Only a month before his main opponent in the race, former astronaut Marc Garneau, had withdrawn from the race, saying it appeared that Trudeau was impossible to beat. A little more than two-years after becoming party leader, Trudeau would be Prime Minister.
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.