Canada’s 25th Governor General, the Right Honourable Roméo LeBlanc, passed into history on this date in 2009. He had made history as the first Acadian to represent the Crown in Ottawa when appointed to his vice-regal post by Her Majesty the Queen, on the advice of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, in 1995. During his Rideau Hall mandate he promoted both the study of Canadian history and volunteerism across the country.
In his public service before becoming Governor General, LeBlanc had served as a leading Liberal cabinet minister. An accomplished journalist, he had served as Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s Press Secretary early in the 15th Prime Minister’s tenure at 24 Sussex Drive.
LeBlanc was 80 when he died.
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.