A future national Tory leader was born on this date in 1881 in Pembroke, Ontario. Robert “Fighting Bob” Manion would become a medical doctor and then enter politics, winning his first election to the House in 1917. He would serve in the cabinets of Arthur Meighen and R.B. Bennett. Manion was chosen as Conservative leader in 1938 and face-off against Mackenzie King and the Liberals in the 1940 war-time election. He and his party went down to defeat and Manion resigned the leadership shortly after. He passed into history in 1943.
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.