The forthcoming wedding of John Diefenbaker and his fiancé, Oliver Palmer, was announced on this date in 1953.
“John Diefenbaker, 58, Progressive Conservative M.P. for Prince Albert, will be married in Toronto Tuesday to, Mrs. Olive Freeman Palmer Willowdale, it was announced today,” the Toronto Star reported. “After a small wedding for close family friends the couple will honeymoon on Canada's west coast and in Mexico.
Mr. Diefenbaker, a widower with no children, will be married to Mrs. Freeman Palmer, a tall, good-looking brown-haired widow, by Rev. Charles D. Stone at Park Road Baptist church (Toronto) at 7.30 p.m. There will be no attendants at the ceremony. Guests will number about 20, and will include Mrs. Freeman Palmer's daughter, Carolyn, 19, an occupational and physiotherapy student at the University Toronto.
After the honeymoon the couple will live both in the west and in Ottawa. Mrs. Freeman Palmer is the daughter of the late Rev. and Mrs. Charles B. Freeman of Kingston. Until recently, Mrs. Freeman Palmer has been with the Ontario department of education as acting director of guidance. Mrs. Freeman Palmer was born at Boland, Man. Her family had lived for five generations in Nova Scotia. She is a graduate of McMaster university.”
Diefenbaker’s first wife Ena, called “The Other Mrs. Diefenbaker” by her biographer, had died two-years previously. They had been married in 1929.
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.