James W. Lowther, Speaker of the British House of Commons, was in Ottawa on this date in 1921. He was on a special mission as it was his task to present to Canada, on behalf of the Empire Parliamentary Association, an exact replica of the Speaker’s Chair from the MOther of all Parliaments in London. As part of the special ceremonies that historic day, Leader of the Opposition Mackenzie King delivered remarks following those by Prime Minister Arthur Meighen.
“We of the Parliament of Canada, reverencing British traditions, and schooled in British Parliamentary lore, recognize such an occasion in this moment,” Mr. King said. “We recognize in our Parliamentary institutions, fashioned as they are upon the British model, the surest guarantee of freedom a people can possess. Above all, we recognize that it is around the Speaker’s chair that the battles of political freedom have been waged, and that it is in appeals to the authority of the Chair, as the symbol as the symbol of a people’s sovereignty, that British political liberties have been have been won (in Canada). This gift, therefore, is accepted by the Canadian House of Commons with a full appreciation of all that it signified of what we owe to England, the Mother of all Parliaments, as well as of what it expressed of unity and goodwill.”
Mackenize King was never the amongst the most eloquent when on his feet in the Commons but I think all readers of Art’s History will agree that he was at his best when he did so on this date in 1921.
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.