Canada lost one of her greatest modern-era public servants and patriots on this day in 2023. Hugh Segal, who was first attracted to politics when Prime Minister John Diefenbaker spoke at his high school in Montreal in the 1960s, was 72.
Known by partisans of all stripes as the “Happy Warrior” of Tory politics, he served in the office of Leader of the Opposition Robert Stanfield before heading to Queen’s Park in Toronto where he served, proudly, as a senior advisor to Premier William Davis. Segal played a particularly significant role with Davis during the discussions surrounding the patriation of the Constitution in 1981 and 1982.
He went on to serve as Chief-of-Staff to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and as he had with Davis, had a key role in the constitutional reform efforts of the early 1990s.
In 2005, Prime Minister Paul Martin reached across the partisan divide and appointed Segal to the Red Chamber where he served with great distinction until his resignation in 2014. Afterwards he continued his work as a prolific writer in both the academic and public worlds.
Most importantly, for myself and countless others, Hugh Segal was a mentor and friend and I still miss him very much.
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.