A backbench Liberal MP made an announcement on this date in 1968 that helped ensure he would never be a member of a Pierre Trudeau cabinet. Toronto-area MP Ralph Cowan, who (wisely?) chose not to re-offer in 1968 after Trudeau won the Liberal leadership, had first been elected to the Commons in 1962.
On February 15, 1968 Cowan told the press he was starting a campaign to discredit Trudeau as the latter geared up for his leadership run. "I don't want an NDPer leading the Liberal party," Cowan told reporters. As reported by CP, “Mr. Cowan said he is distributing English translations of an article Mr. Trudeau wrote for the magazine Cite Libre in April, 1963. The article attacked Prime Minister Pearson for accepting nuclear warheads for the Bomarc missiles.”
Students of Canadian political history will recall that Trudeau, while still an academic, had labeled Pearson the “defrocked prince of peace.” While Mr. Pearson had gotten over the article, Mr. Cowan, obviously, had not!
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.