Pierre Trudeau’s first Minister of Finance, Edgar Benson, passed into history on this date in 2011. He was 88.
Benson was elected to the Commons in 1962 representing Kingston. Two-years-later he was named to cabinet as Minister of National Revenue by Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson. In that role he played a key role as Medicare was ushered in late in Pearson’s term.
In 1968 he was named co-chair of Pierre Trudeau’s famed leadership campaign. The latter named Benson Minister of Finance and Benson authored the last federal balanced budget until Paul Martin did the same almost 30 years later. In 1972 Benson became Minister of National Defence. He chose not to run again in 1972 and Trudeau named him head of the Canadian Transport Commission, and later, as Canada’s Ambassador to Ireland.
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.