Prime Minister Stephen J. Harper made history on this date in 2013 when he stood before the British Parliament in London to address MPs and members of the House of Lords. In doing so, he became only the second Prime Minister of Canada to be invited to speak at the mother of all Parliaments. Mackenzie King was the only other Canadian PM to have received this honour and spoke there during the dark days of the Second World War.
“For anyone who fully understands and truly cherishes our free and democratic institutions and their nature and the long history upon which they rest there is no honour to compare with an invitation to stand here, at the very cradle of our political system and to address the Members of the Parliament of Westminster,” Prime Minister Harper at the beginning of his address.
“Canada is in many ways such a different country from yours,” he continued, “with our vast geography, our many cultures, and our two national languages, a heritage that dates from the founding of our state by our first governor, Samuel de Champlain, and preserved to this day by our French-speaking fellow citizens. Yet, at their very core, our Canadian institutions of government are most profoundly indebted to their British ancestors for both their shape and their remarkable durability. And so, as a Canadian, I am deeply honoured, and profoundly humbled
to be here.”
You can watch Mr. Harper’s speech in full at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln9YIV1Wt5I
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.