America’s plain-spoken former president, Harry Truman, told reporters on this date in 1962 that he wasn’t too pleased with Canada and the government of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. During a press conference in Independence, Missouri, Truman took Canada to task for its lukewarm support of America’s response to the USSR in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The homespun ex-President had a point as Canada delayed placing its armed forces on high alert at the height of the crisis. “We have supported them in former times and in crises," the citizen-farmer said. "They should stand behind us today... The Latin American countries have made a stand, and our position is strengthened in these countries and that part of the world. And that is another reason I don't like the stand Canada has taken."
This criticism would have stung Prime Minister Diefenbaker because one of his political hero’s was none other than – you guessed it – Harry Truman.
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.