It was on this date in 1980 that Canadian MPs and Senators first heard a Japanese Prime Minister address a joint-session of our Parliament. Masayoshi Ohira, a former foreign minister for Japan, had come to office in December 1978. Sadly, Prime Minister Ohira died of a heart attack only weeks after his address in Ottawa. One of the highlights of his premiership was hosting the G7 Summit in 1979 that brought then Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark and other world leaders to his nation. In 1986 Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone would become the second Japanese leader to take his turn at the podium in Ottawa for an address to our Parliament.
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.