Canada’s future Minister of Finance was born on this date in 1923. Edgar Benson would go on to teach at Queen’s University and entered politics in 1927 as MP for Kingston. He would later serve as Minister of National Revenue and President of the Treasury Board in Lester B. Pearson’s cabinet.
In 1968 the Kingston Liberal became Co-Chair of Pierre Trudeau’s successful campaign to secure the leadership of the Liberal party. Benson was then appointed to the new Prime Minister’s cabinet as Minister of Finance, serving in the all-important post for four-years. Benson would also serve Trudeau as Minister of Defence.
He left politics in 1972 and would then become President of the Canadian Transport Commission, and later, Canada’s Ambassador to Ireland. He passed into history, age 88, in 2011.
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.