Former Prime Minister John Napier Turner was in Kingston on this date in 2012. He was in the home community of Sir John A. Macdonald to pay tribute to the Father of Confederation.
“I still think and believe that Sir John A. Macdonald was our greatest Prime Minister,” the 17th PM told a large audience that had gathered at Macdonald of Kingston’s statue in the city’s main municipal park. “He understood, as few people have, the relationship between our two founding peoples. (Macdonald) is a hero of mine. Sir John A. is responsible more than any other human being for the existence of Canada. He reached out to Lower Canada, now Quebec, and he made it happen. He saw the Canadian Pacific Railway through to its completion, against considerable opposition, and thus he created of Canada something more than a mere geographical expression.”
Less than a decade later the statue where Turner had delivered his address was torn down on the orders of Kingston City Council. A Nanos poll of residents of the Limestone City earlier this year reported that more than 70 percent of Kingstonians want that statue returned to its place in City Park.
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.