The great James Gladstone was born on this date in 1887. He would later become a proud member of Alberta’s Kainai First Nation. Gladstone made history in 1958 when he accepted Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s request that become a member of the Senate, making him the nation’s first-ever Indigenous member of the Red Chamber. Senator Gladstone served with distinction in the Red Chamber until he passed into history in 1971 and is rightly remembered today as one of the most significant Indigenous leaders of his era.
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.