RoseAnne Archibald, a veteran Indigenous leader from Northern Ontario, was elected leader of the Assembly of First Nations on this date in 2021. She made history in doing so, becoming the first-ever female leader of this all-important Canadian Indigenous body. “Today is a victory and you can tell all the women in your life that the glass ceiling has been broken. I thank all of the women who punched that ceiling before me and made a crack,” she said during her acceptance remarks to the virtual convention held at the time of COVID.
Two-years after her victory, however, Archibald was removed from her post after some AFN staff accused her of harassment and bullying. A third-party report later concluded she was in violation of the organization’s code-of-conduct, whistleblower and harassment policies.
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.