It was on this date in 1982 that Saskatchewan voters sent Grant Devine to the Premier’s Office in Regina for the first time. His Conservatives routed Allan Blakeney’s NDP in the provincial election. They captured 55 of the 64 seats, while earning 54% of the popular vote. Only the second Tory to become Premier of Saskatchewan (the first was James Anderson in 1929), the Regina-born Devine would serve in the province’s top political job until 1991 when he and his party were defeated by Roy Romanow’s NDP.
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.