There were only a few days left in the Presidency of Dwight Eisenhower when Prime Minister John Diefenbaker arrived at the White House on this date in 1961 for meetings with the outgoing President. Little did anyone know that this would prove the last positive encounter Dief would have with a U.S. President while he was PM. John F. Kennedy was inaugurated on January 20, 1961 and a personal animosity between the two leaders developed that would cloud the bilateral relationship until Dief’s defeat in 1963.
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.