Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s visit to New Zealand to hold talks with leaders of there continued on this date in 1970. Our loyal Pacific friends (and Commonwealth cousins) were more than happy that a Canuck had dropped in.
“(Trudeau’s) ten-minute chat with well-wishers at the airport showed the fame Trudeau charm works as well in New Zealand as in Canada,” a newspaper report stated. “The presence of Mr. Trudeau in New Zealand is a welcome indication that British Columbia, our main Canadian contact, is not some separate Pacific country divorced by outlook and situation from the United States and Europe.”
The journalist added that “Mr. Trudeau's visit is being given wide radio and television coverage as well but it hasn't reached the excitement of one Hawaiian telecast when the announcer departed from his script to announce: ‘He's our type of guy definitely.’"
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.