The Right Honourable Arthur Meighen was once again sworn-in as Prime Minister exactly 100-years-ago today. He did so on June 29, 1926 after his predecessor, Mackenzie King, resigned as PM and left the Crown with no government. With no Prime Minister to advise him, Governor General Lord Byng invited Meighen, who had previously served as PM in 1920-21, to form a government which soon lost a non-confidence vote in the Commons. These events were parts of the concluding chapter in what became known before history as the King-Byng Crisis.
In the ensuing election King would, in effect run his campaign against the Governor General, not Meighen and his Tories. This, too, was an unprecedented move by King given that the Crown’s representative, could not fight back.
In the end, Meighen’s second time in the PM's chair would end a few months later when King and his Liberals defeated the Tories. In that election, however, Meighen's Conservatives won 45 per cent of the popular vote. King and is Liberals were closely behind 43 per cent support. King's Liberals added 16 seats while Meighen's Tories lost 24 seats, flipping power in the Commons to the Liberals and making King PM once again.
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.