Father of Confederation Sir Oliver Mowat rose in the Senate on this date in 1896 and delivered his maiden address in the chamber of “sober second thought.” He had served as Ontario’s Premier for almost 25 years and agreed to join the new Liberal PM, Wilfrid Laurier, as a senior cabinet minister after the latter was victorious in the 1896 campaign
You can read his address at this link: https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_SOC0801_08/37
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.