A youthful University of Toronto student started to keep his diary on this date in 1893. Little did he know that it would one day become one of the most important documents in Canadian political history. By the time Mackenzie King wrote his final diary entry only a few days before his death in 1950, would grow to approximately 30,000 pages. You can read the first page of this remarkable document below.
“This diary to contain a very brief sketch of the events, actions, feelings and thoughts of my daily life. It must above all be a true and faithful account. The chief object of my keeping this diary is that I may be ashamed to let even one day have nothing worthy of its showing, and it is hoped that through its pages the reader may be able to trace how the author has sought to improve his time. Another object must be here be mentioned and is this. The writer hopes that in future days, be they far or near, he may find great pleasure both for himself and his friends in the remembrance of events recorded. If either aim is reached this present diary will not have been in vain.”
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.