Zoé, Lady Laurier, passed into history at age 80, on this date in 1921. Family, friends and colleagues of her late husband, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, were at her bedside as she passed into history at Laurier House in Ottawa. Born Zoé Lafontaine, she married Wilfrid in 1868 and the couple enjoyed 51 years of marriage.
The 1921 federal election was in full-swing at the time of her death but Opposition leader Mackenzie King, her husband’s successor as leader of the Liberal party, paused to pay tribute to Lady Laurier. You will find his statement below.
Hon. Mackenzie King: The heart of our country will deeply touched by the word of Lady Laurier's death. Like Sir Wilfrid, Lady Laurier belonged above all else to the nation. During fifty years and more of married life she shared with Sir Wilfrid all the vicissitudes, the joys and the trials of his great career, and since his death, in every word and act she has disclosed a fortitude and devotion to the ideals of their united lives, which have been a revelation to her most intimate friends.
At her advanced years the near approach or death was inevitable, once the nature of here illness became known. We who now left to fight on without the inspiration of her example and constant solicitude may well feel saddened the sense of personal loss we so keenly experience. We would fail, however, alike of her faith and her spirit, if we did not see a kindly Providence in the hand which to the very end through such a long and eventful life has now spared her the pains of prolonged suffering and the infirmities of age.
The nation will find its consolation in the thought that of all joy’s, reunion with the one most dearly loved is of our human hopes the highest, and that in the passing of Lady Laurier that is the meaning of death. Having regard to the many of bygone years in which she and Sir Wilfrid shared, there conflicts be something very beautiful will always as well as comforting in the thought that it was at a brief should moment of political turmoil that she should have been taken away from the have strife of tongues to where beyond these voices there is peace.
Reunited death, as they were ever united in life, the memories of Sir Wilfrid and Lady Laurier will ever be cherished throughout our Dominion as a national possession and greatly revered wherever the history of our country is read.
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.