Field Marshal, the Right Honourable Lord Byng of Vimy arrived at Quebec City by ship on this date in 1921 to take up his duties as Canada’s 12th Governor General. Greeting him and offering official greetings on behalf of Canada and Quebec were Prime Minister Arthur Meighen and Quebec Premier Louis-Alexandre Taschereau.
“I've never done anything like this, you know, and I expect I'll make mistakes. I made some mistakes in France, but when I did the Canadians always pulled me out of the hole,” he said at an official luncheon upon his arrival in Canada. “That's what I'm counting on here."
He would serve at Rideau Hall until 1926. His tenure, of course, is best remembered today for his unfortunate role in what became known before history as the King-Byng constitutional crisis.
Lord Byng passed into history in 1935 back home in England, aged 72.
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.