Today, of course, is the birthday of the nation’s eighth Prime Minister, Sir Robert Born. A proud Nova Scotian who was one of the leading lawyers of his generation, Borden caught the political bug in the early part of his professional career. He happened to be in Ottawa in June 1891 when the great Sir John A. Macdonald of Kingston passed into history. When Wilfrid Laurier delivered his famous address to the House in tribute of Macdonald, Borden was there in the public to witness history. One of our greatest (and most underappreciated Prime Ministers) Sir Robert led the nation during the First World War. He passed into history in 1937.
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.