Legendary Alberta Premier Ralph Klein moved a step closer to retirement from politics on this date in 2006. In a leadership review, only 55 percent of rank-and-file provincial Progressive Conservative party members endorsed his leadership, a far cry from the commanding levels of support he traditionally had received. A few days later Klein announced his resignation timetable and he would be replaced as Premier and party leader less than a year later. He had served exactly 14 years in Alberta’s top political job. Klein passed into history, a beloved figure, in 2013.
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.