A future Governor General and a future Prime Minister were participants in a Commonwealth foreign affairs conference in Pakistan on this date in 1954. Pierre Trudeau and Roland Michener were among in the delegates from Commonwealth nations discussing foreign policy issues in a conference organized by the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs. Other members of Canada’s delegation included George Brown, professor of history at the University of Toronto and formerly editor of the Canadian Historical Review; Ewen Irvine, associate editor of the Montreal Star; Edgar McInnis of Toronto, president of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs: Ronald Ritchie of Toronto, assistant manager the Ontario marketing division of Imperial Oil Ltd.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Mohammed Ali, kicked off the ten-day conference with a keynote address. Other nations that took part in the discussions included Australia, India, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and Malaya.
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.