The 20th Speaker of the House since Confederation, James Glen, passed into history on this date in 1950. A Manitoba Progressive, voters first sent him to the House in 1926. Glen was then defeated in 1930 but returned to the House in 1935. In 1940 he became Speaker of the House. He would preside over the Commons until 1945 when he was named to Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s cabinet as Minister of Mines and Resources. Glen served three years in cabinet before ill-heath forced his resignation. He was 72 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.