A skilled reporter from the Montreal Gazette, his or her name now sadly lost to history, scored an exclusive interview with ailing Prime Minister Sir John Abbott on this date in 1892. The journalist arrived unannounced at the PM’s home where he discovered that Abbott was not there. Learning thanks to a timely tip that Abbott was visiting a friend nearby, the Gazette representative knocked at that door and was rewarded with a Right Honourable interview.
“My general health," the sickly Abbott said, “is fairly good; but I do not seem to recover from my weakness or regain my capacity for mental work. I took a trip… It lasted ten days and it would have lasted longer only, when we reached Tadousac (he was informed of a serious fire in the Montreal-area and had to return. My general health was benefited by the excursion and the exercise it involved, but I do not think that my capacity for mental or sedentary work was at all improved; but rather the reverse.”
After a long discussion, Abbott ended the interview politely. “I am sorry," concluded the Premier, "that I cannot tell you more just now, but really things are at a standstill."
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.