The Ottawa Journal provided extensive coverage of the scene at the airport. “He came off the RCAF Comet Jet, bouncing with vitality and beaming his pleasure with what he emotionally called ‘this most affectionate welcome of my lifetime,’ the paper reported in a story that started above the fold on page 1. “He spoke immediately of his satisfaction with the decision of the conference to stand, as he phrased it, ‘on the basic human principle of justice and equality for all men,’ even at the regretted price of South Africa's coming departure from the Commonwealth. The crowd cheered him end serenaded him with ‘Jolly Good Fellow.’ The RCAF Central Band was on parade. Bunting and maple leafs festooned the hangar. The red carpet led to the hangar door. It was quite a production the RCAF staged. At 7.55 a.m. up went the great hangar doors. In streamed the morning sun. The Comet, its jets still shrieking, rolled abreast of the door, and an RCAF crew ran out the ramp to the big silver plane. Bare-headed, waving his blue Homberg (hat), the Prime Minister appeared at the door and came down the ramp, Mrs. Diefenbaker close behind him.”

Dief later reported on the Commonwealth gathering in a special 50-minute address to the Commons. “He spoke of the very real feeling of ‘tense drama’ that had gripped the conference, and speaking almost as if to himself, remarked on what he called ‘the strange thing’ of South Africa leaving and Cyprus entering the Commonwealth at the same time,” the Journal reported. “He concluded with the quiet confession that he had come home with a new and deeper appreciation of the power of this multi-racial association of missions of many religions as an influence for peace and progress in the world.”

One of the young Tories on hand that special day was none other than future PM Brian Mulroney. Decades later he would take up Dief’s banner and Canada would again play a leading role in combatting apartheid in a different time and era.