It was on this date that Sir Charles Tupper’s memoirs started being advertised in newspapers across the country. The great man was in his 93rd year when they came out and with the publication of Recollections of 60 Years in Canada, he became the first-ever Canadian PM to write his memoirs.
“Sir Charles Tupper has well-earned the appellation of ‘The Grand Old Man of Canada,’ being the only surviving Father of Confederation, and although at the present time he is in his ninety-third year, his intellectual faculties are as active as they were during the years he spent in building up the Dominion,” the advertisement read. “It was while Sir Charles was administering the Department of Railways the Pacific was built; and in the new volume he sheds a new light on the story of that gigantic enterprise. In this volume also appear many letters from the greatest men of the age dealing with matters which have before been made public.”
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.