here were a lot of sad Liberal faces in Ottawa on this date in 1979 as the recently defeated Pierre Trudeau announced that he was leaving politics. The former PM had had to hand over the keys to 24 Sussex Drive to Joe Clark only a few months before after the youthful party leader had earned a strong minority mandate from Canadians.
“There's no easy or ideal time and there are always strong public and private reasons both for going and for staying on,” Trudeau said at a press conference. “At a point in time, one simply makes the decision as to what is best.”
Little could anyone on November 21, 1979, including Trudeau himself, have predicted the events that would soon see him reversing himself and then, in February 1980, becoming Prime Minister again.
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.