Lester B. Pearson, who had been sworn-in as the nation’s 14th Prime Minister only a week before, was in the U.K. on this date in 1963. He held talks with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and was also sworn-in as a member of Britain’s Privy Council by Her Majesty the Queen. Pearson’s visit was designed to settle ruffled feathers in Canada-U.K. relations after the difficult Diefenbaker years. Pearson succeeded in his mission and not long after he returned to Ottawa would depart for Cape Cod for a fence-mending mission with President John F. Kennedy. Canada-U.S. relations had sunk to their lowest under Diefenbaker due to the poisoned relations that had developed between the Prime Minister and the American President.
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.