President Ronald Reagan was closely following his northern neighbour’s federal election on this date in 1988. Canadians were, of course, only days away from rendering electoral judgement on the free trade deal Reagan and his team had recently negotiated with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and his Tories. President Reagan took note of Liberal leader John Turner’s apparent success as the free trade election came to an end. “Canada is presenting a problem,” he wrote. “(Brian Mulroney’s) opponent Turner looks like he’s going to be the winner.”
In the end, of course, Reagan had nothing to do worry about. His partner in the historic Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, Prime Minister Mulroney, was re-elected with his second majority mandate only days later.
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.