Maclean’s reported that Jean Chrétien had his work cut out for him on this date in 1997. The 20th Prime Minister was busy personally signing more than 1,000 Christmas cards, then national magazine said. It appeared that the PM was like many men and have saved this vital seasonal duty to the last minute. While thousands of such cards are signed by the PM of the day each year, most go out with a copy of these signatures in place of those original Right Honourable autographs. There is no word yet from PMO revealing how many Christmas cards Prime Minister Mark Carney is personally signing this year.
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.