The great Franklin Roosevelt passed into history on this date in 1945 while at his Georgia retreat at Warm Springs. He was only 63-years-old and was only weeks into his fourth term as President of the United States. Canadians joined their American neighbours in mourning the Man from Hyde Park as our citizens also listened to his famed fireside chats and other addresses (including those when he assumed the role of war leader when the World War II arrived) that helped lift the spirits of North Americans at the height of the 1930’s Dust Bowl. In my family, my grandmother and my mother both told me they broke down in tears when the news of FDR’s death came over their radio at home in Toronto.
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.