Today is the 125th anniversary of the birth of the Right Honourable Roland Michener, Canada’s 20th Governor General. He served at Rideau Hall as Her Majesty the Queen’s representative to Canada from 1967 to 1974. He used his Vice-Regal office, for example, to encourage Canadians to improve their physical fitness. He also presided over much of Canada’s Centennial Year celebrations.
An Albertan by birth, Michener was elected as an Ontario Conservative MPP in 1945 and was quickly named to Ontario Premier George Drew’s cabinet. He then turned to federal politics and voters sent him to the House in 1953. With the election of Tory Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in 1957, Michener was appointed Speaker of the House of Commons and served in that role until 1962. Prime Minister Lester Pearson later appointed him Canada’s High Commissioner in India.
Michener passed into history in 1991.
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.