Canadians learned they were going to the polls after Prime Minister John Turner announced on this date in 1984 that the Governor General had agreed to his request to dissolve Parliament. Turner had only taken office as Prime Minister a few days before. Journalist Steve Paikin, in his ground-breaking 2022 biography, John Turner: An Intimate Biography of Canada’s 17^th Prime Minister, reveals that his subject didn’t expect to win against Tory leader Brian Mulroney. “Despite buoyant polling numbers, despite the Liberals being considered by many to be the natural governing party, and despite the public’s apparent approval of Turner’s replacing (Pierre) Trudeau, the new Prime Minister told his daughter Elizabeth he was under no illusions about the fight to come. ‘There was no expectation of winning,’ Elizabeth says her father told her. ‘Trudeau had pissed off so many people, particularly in the West. He fought the campaign with gusto but that was what he told me from the beginning.” On September 4, 1984 Turner, indeed, was defeated by Mulroney, winning only 40 seats while the Tories earned a massive majority mandate, sending 211 MPs to Ottawa.