A towering figure in American politics was remembered by Canadians of all party faiths in the Globe and Mail on this date in 2009. Senator Ted Kennedy, the last of the Kennedy brothers, had passed into history the day before. My friend Jane Taber, then a Globe columnist, reached out to Canadians like Brian Mulroney, Ed Broadbent, John Turner and Tom Axworthy, among others, to gather their thoughts on Kennedy’s death.
"Well, God love him," Mr. Mulroney told Jane. "He had no malice in him because he had a good soul. He had that warm Irish heart."
Pierre Trudeau’s brilliant Principal Secretary, Tom Axworthy, who became friends with Kennedy when he taught at Harvard, said the fallen U.S. Senator often discussed Canadian social policies. "He was a tremendous admirer of [our health-care system]and kept saying, 'I just wish we could have your system down here,'" Axworthy said.
Long-time Kennedy family friend, John Turner, said Ted Kennedy was an "American hero in the positive, activist, public-service sense."
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.